William Bryan Lepko was 17 when he disappeared from Wheeling, West Virginia, on January 29, 1980, after leaving home to attend a party with a man who planned to buy his blue Chevrolet Nova. Within days the Nova turned up registered in Maine to Malcolm Joseph Robbins, a man later tied to multiple murders. Robbins was arrested in New Jersey in November 1980 for another killing; while being questioned he confessed to Lepko’s murder and gave information that led Maine authorities to Lepko’s remains in February 1981.

A pathologist testified that Lepko died from stab wounds to the head and back, contradicting Robbins’s claim that he had stabbed Lepko in the stomach in self-defense. Prosecutors later presented Lepko’s killing as an additional homicide during Robbins’s California death penalty proceedings, introducing the vehicle registration, Robbins’s confession, recovery of the remains and the medical findings. Robbins’s confession and possession of Lepko’s car are central facts; court records do not clearly show a separate trial or conviction for Lepko’s murder in West Virginia or Maine.

Did anyone in Wheeling in 1980 have information about Lepko, his planned sale of the Nova, or the man who took the car?