On the evening of June 17, 1985, 49-year-old Joseph Bertone left his home on Diehl Drive in McKeesport, Pennsylvania after his wife asked him to pick up milk and Pepsi. At 10:00 p.m. he called from his car phone and said he was at a truck garage in nearby Duquesne. That was the last time his wife or immediate family heard from him.

Bertone was described as having black hair, brown eyes, several scars on his abdomen, chest, left eye and upper lip, and a tattoo on his right forearm. He wore a ten and a twenty-four-inch gold rope necklace and a distinctive wedding ring with JOEY spelled in fifteen diamonds. His 1985 Cadillac Seville was seen leaving the Duquesne garage being driven by an unknown man with glasses; when Bertone’s business partner Joseph F. Rosa tried to follow, the Cadillac sped away and was lost. Ten days later the car was found abandoned in a Holiday Inn parking lot near Harmar.

Bertone had owned Joey’s Restaurant and Lounge, which suffered bombings in 1978 and was destroyed by another blast in 1982. Court testimony later in a 1990 racketeering trial alleged involvement in the cocaine trade and says he had planned a trip to Florida that day and had asked Rosa to bring $1,000. His body has never been located and no charges have been filed.

Did anyone in the area know Bertone’s movements that night or recognize the man seen driving his Cadillac?