Seventeen-year-old Melvin Pittman, known as Rickey, was one of five Newark teenagers who vanished after an evening of basketball on August 20, 1978. That night he and friends Randy Johnson, Michael McDowell, Ernest Taylor, and Alvin Turner were last seen getting into a pickup driven by local carpenter Lee Anthony Evans; Evans later told police he dropped them off about 11:00 p.m. None of the five has been seen or heard from since.

A few days after the disappearance someone phoned one mother from a Washington, D.C., payphone claiming to know the boys’ whereabouts and demanding money, but that lead went nowhere. Social Security numbers for the teens were never used and none of them ever applied for a driver’s license.

In March 2010 authorities arrested Evans and his cousin Philander Hampton after Hampton, in custody on an unrelated charge, gave a detailed confession alleging the boys were locked in a closet in a Camden Street house and the building set on fire. Investigators found no human remains or physical evidence at the site Hampton described. Hampton later pleaded guilty to five counts of felony murder in August 2011 as part of a deal to testify; Evans was tried in November 2011, represented himself, and was acquitted. The five young men’s whereabouts remain unknown.

If anyone knew Melvin, his circle of friends, or saw that pickup in Newark on August 20, 1978, please share what you remember.