Detective Lt. Richard Ream, left, and Det. Gary Johnson are pictured in December 1974 looking over the casefile for Patricia Fairbanks. The 14-year-old Jamestown girl was found dead two years earlier near her West Ninth Street home. P-J file photo

For five long decades, Pamela Wakeley has been left to wonder how her sister could have come to such a horrific end so close to the family’s home.

Perhaps even more troubling for the 70-year-old Jamestown woman is the thought that her sibling, and her brutal murder, have been forgotten as time’s passed by.

A unit within the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office already is turning up new information regarding the 1972 killing of Patricia Fairbanks. That’s music to the ears of Wakeley, who was 18 years old when “Patty” was last seen leaving the family’s West Ninth Street home on her way to a nearby drug store.

“I feel like this story has been forgotten about, and that always made me feel sad,” Wakeley told The Post-Journal shortly after the Sheriff’s Office identified a “person of interest” in the unsolved homicide case.

A FATEFUL TRIP

Pamela Wakeley, left, is pictured with her sister, Patricia Fairbanks, in an undated photograph. Five decades after her sister was killed, Wakeley is hoping for a resolution. Submitted photo

By 1972, Wakeley had moved out of the family home in Jamestown. But she was there the afternoon of Nov. 28 and remembers watching TV with her sister.

She also recalls her mom, Delores VanDamme, needing cotton swabs, a request that would set into motion something that would impact the family for decades to come. Fairbanks volunteered to go to a nearby drug store where she knew the pharmacist well but found she was 15 cents short. She came home and got the necessary dime and nickel from her mom and headed back to the store.

She never made it.

“What I remember is just going out looking for her,” Wakeley said. “And I remember that the police at the time thought she’d run away, but my mom and I did not believe that she had run away.”

It was hard to fathom how Fairbanks could have gone missing so close to home.

“We checked with friends and other people because, even though we didn’t believe she’d run away, we had to be doing something,” her sister said. “One of us would stay by the phone in case she tried to call.”

At the time of Fairbanks’ disappearance in 1972, police were looking for another local teen who had gone missing. A 16-year-old Bemus Point girl was last seen the previous August.

A BODY IS FOUND

On Dec. 29, a month after Fairbanks was last seen, a girl’s body was discovered in the rear of a West Ninth Street residence by a neighborhood boy. In early newspaper accounts, the body was said to have been located “between a small wooden shed and pile of lumber.”

The girl had been strangled and also suffered traumatic head injuries.

To Wakeley, the discovery was devastating news.

“It was horrific,” she said. “All those police cars and the ambulance there, your heart just drops because you just knew that something happened there.”

Wakeley’s mom went across the street and positively identified the body as being Fairbanks. Wakeley herself wasn’t allowed near the crime scene, and for good reason.

“My mother said it was terrible,” she remembered. “We had to have a closed casket (at the funeral).”

Speaking with The Post-Journal in 1980, then-Police Chief Richard Ream said he remained convinced that Fairbanks was killed the night she was reported missing; a previous autopsy indicated the 14-year-old had been dead for only a few days from when she was found.

“She wasn’t robbed. She wasn’t molested,” Ream told the newspaper. “It apparently was a spur of the moment thing. I feel we never could prove premeditated murder.”

A FRESH LOOK

No charges have been filed in the 50-plus years after Fairbanks was killed. Wakeley, whose mom has since died, has done her best to keep her sister’s name included in online discussions of missing persons or unsolved homicide cases involving women.

According to the Sheriff’s Office, the case was taken up this year by the department’s Unsolved Crimes Unit. A review turned up a “person of interest” identified as William A. Swartzman, a man who lived in the Jamestown area when Fairbanks was killed.

Swartzman died in Warren in 1997.

News of a possible suspect came as a surprise to Wakeley. “What I was told at the time of what was thought was completely different than what I’ve been told now,” she said.

Investigators are looking to speak with anyone who may have been in contact with Swartzman between August 1972 and January 1973.

“If you had a face-to-face encounter with Swartzman in Jamestown in an area bounded by West Eighth Street to the south, West Tenth Street to the north, North Main Street to the east, and Washington Street to the west you are asked to call Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Investigators today,” the Sheriff’s Office said.

Wakeley is more hopeful now than at any point in the last five decades she will learn what happened to her sister. She’s thankful to the two senior investigators looking into the case for the Sheriff’s Office, Tom Tarpley and Tom Di Zinno.

“I think we’re on the best track right now,” she said of a resolution.

Tarpley told The Post-Journal last week that Swartzman made contact with Pennsylvania law enforcement in January 1973, a month after Fairbanks’ body had been found. During that contact, Swartzman apparently made comments about the Jamestown homicide that hadn’t been made public.

Information regarding Swartzman’s comment was eventually shared with Jamestown police.

During their investigation into the murder, Tarpley said city police searched a stolen rental car possessed by Swartzman that contained the identification of two women. At the time police were unable to locate the women, and Swartzman was reportedly uncooperative.

“At that point, the leads on him went dry,” Tarpley said.

However, with the help of Hayden Burgeson, a crime analyst with the Sheriff’s Office, investigators this year were able to locate an obituary for one of the two women. That obituary provided a connection between Fairbanks and Swartzman’s girlfriend, who also lived near the teen’s home.

Tarpley and Tom Di Zinno believe Fairbanks was probably murdered behind the pharmacy. The crime may have been heard by the brother of Swartzman’s girlfriend.

“When he looked he couldn’t see anyone and the noise had stopped,” he said. “There was a bar across the street and he didn’t put 2 and 2 together.”

In the meantime, Wakeley is awaiting word on whether there’s a connection between Swartzman and her sister’s death. She recalled the friendship the two had, which at times included some friction as is sometimes common between young siblings.

She remembered being excited with her sister after learning the two girls were getting a doll they wanted for Christmas.

There were other memorable Christmas mornings as well.

“One year we ran down the stairs to the tree and a bird flew out of the Christmas tree,” she said. “It nearly scared us to death. The only thing we could figure was that the basement door had been left open a little and there was a little part of a (window) pane gone. I remember how scared we were with this bird flying around and everyone laughing later.”

Anyone with information regarding Swartzman or Fairbanks’ murder is asked to contact the Unsolved Crimes Unit at 716-753-4578 or 716-753-4579. Investigators also can be reached by email at UnsolvedChautauqua@sheriff.us.