Police exhume girl’s body in 40-year-old cold case

The teenager was stabbed several times with a 5-foot hunting bow.

LEBANON, Pa. (AP) — The memory of his murdered daughter is never far from Herman Reber’s mind.

In his shirt pocket, he keeps a circle-shaped magnet with her picture on it — a smiling teen’s face peeks through a curtain of long, dark hair.

What’s most painful for Reber is that the killer of Margaret Lynn Reber, known as Peggy to her friends and family, has not been found in the 40 years since she was strangled, beaten and stabbed to death two months before her 15th birthday.

This week, the exhumation of Peggy’s body by Lebanon County authorities gave him new hope for an answer.

“I’m living here by myself for about seven years now, and it’s getting rough, just sitting here and thinking about this,” said Reber, 74, sitting in the living room of his mobile home near Lebanon, about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

The exhumation and reburial occurred on Tuesday at a hillside cemetery where an arrangement of artificial roses, hydrangeas and irises adorns Peggy’s grave.

It was unclear what kinds of tests were performed, and District Attorney Dave Arnold declined to say what evidence investigators were seeking, when the results would be available, or whether investigators have a specific suspect in mind.

“Can we solve this? I don’t know, but the answer is we’re hopeful,” Arnold said in Friday’s editions of The Patriot-News of Harrisburg. “Solving a 40-year-old murder is a lot harder than solving a two-day-old murder.”

Arnold did not return a telephone message left at his office by The Associated Press on Friday.

Peggy Reber was alone in the apartment she shared with her mother, Mary Alice Reber, at the time of the murder. Her parents had divorced after 13 years of marriage, and Herman Reber was remarried and no longer living with the family.

Mary Alice Reber and a neighbor discovered Peggy’s body after returning to the apartment in the middle of the night from an out-of-town trip. She had been stabbed several times with a 5-foot hunting bow, and the killer had apparently used enough force to puncture her left lung, stomach, bowel, liver and heart.

Herman Reber learned of the crime after police called his second wife’s sister; he and his wife had just moved to a new home in Lebanon and didn’t have telephone service.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Arthur Root, a man who sometimes stayed with Mary Alice Reber, was charged in the killing based on hair and fibers police said were found on him and the body, but he was acquitted after his trial in 1970.

His teeth did not match bite marks that were found on Peggy’s body, according to court records.

Arnold told the newspaper he decided to re-examine the case after he took office in 2006. He has not convened a grand jury to investigate it.

Kevin Snavely, a former Lebanon police detective, also took an interest in it two years ago and sought to reopen it.

“I happened to read the case file, and it really piqued my interest,” Snavely said. “I did determine that yes, [the suspect] is still out there, and I’ll just say that he’s still local.”

Snavely was fired from the department earlier this year, but he declined to say why.

Nevertheless, he said he also is encouraged that new tests have been performed on the body.

“I commend them for moving forward,” he said.