Family Secrets – Where is Tracy Byrd?
Suspended from school? Pregnant? Missing Mother?
March 1983: Tracy Byrd was just 14 years old when she was dropped off at school by her mother’s boyfriend. Then she disappears. Months later, Tracy’s mother is kidnapped and murdered. This is a twisted tale full of secrets, rumors and theories. Through it all, the same question lingers – where is Tracy?
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BACKGROUND: TRACY DROPPED OFF AT SCHOOL, THEN MISSING
It was pouring rain when Tracy Byrd was dropped off at school by her mom’s boyfriend, Paul Greenwald on the morning of Monday, March 7, 1983. That would be the last point on the timeline according to authorities that Tracy was known to have been alive. She was not on any attendance rosters in at Bensalem High School that day as she had been suspended, a fact that she had apparently hidden from her mom. Where did she go? Even Tracy’s best friend Dene’ Boushell, who had seen Tracy during the preceding weekend and who lived in the same apartment complex didn’t know where her good friend was. “She sat in front of me in algebra class. Monday was algebra - it was first period and she wasn’t there.” Boushell told APB Cold Case that she was shocked when she learned that Tracy was missing. Boushell and her brother were interviewed by police the following day, she said. Boushell and other friends checked the places where they usually hung out together, but there was no sign of Tracy.
“SHE TOLD ME SHE WAS PREGNANT”
Tracy’s brother, Dale Raesly, Jr. who was 18 then, remembered the last day he saw Tracy. He was sleeping on the couch that Monday morning when he remembered Greenwald calling to Tracy to get ready for school. “I remember Paul saying, ‘you’re gonna be late’ to Tracy,” said Dale. He said that Greenwald and Tracy left, and very soon afterward, Greenwald returned home. After school that day Tracy didn’t come home, but that wasn’t so unusual, he said. Dale believed that it was the following day when Jean called Tracy’s school and learned that Tracy had been suspended and wasn’t even supposed to be at school the day before. We were unable to determine why Tracy had been suspended. Jean called police to make a missing person report and the investigation began.
Boushell said that the weekend before Tracy disappeared, the two of them had been together. “She told me she was pregnant,” recalled Boushell of the words spoken by Tracy. Boushell described the conversation as Tracy telling her that her period was late. Boushell said that Tracy had a boyfriend, described as the son of a man at the apartment complex where Dene and Tracy both lived. “I asked her if her boyfriend was the father and she said, ‘no’,” added Boushell.
There were no smart phones and few security cameras compared to today. As much as they tried to find Tracy, there were no clues. The girl who loved music, dancing, and the movie Grease was gone. Weeks turned into months. During the summer of 1983 Tracy would have turned 15. It was an emotional and stressful time on the family.
MOM’S BOYFRIEND ABUSIVE; KIDNAPPED HER; STABBED MAN; RETURNS HOME
Tracy’s brother Dale told APB Cold Case that Paul Greenwald had been physically abusive to his mother, Jean. According to published reports, in November 1980, 3 years before Tracy’s disappearance, Jean Byrd had broken up with Greenwald. It was reported that when Jean was at her apartment with another man, Greenwald forced his way inside. It was alleged that Greenwald stabbed the man and fled with Jean. Said Dale, “He kidnapped her, dragged her down three flights of steps, stabbed the boyfriend in the hand… and proceeded to drive through 20 Middletown Township and Trenton police officers.” After a 12-mile police chase that ended with Greenwald crashing into a tree, he was charged with a crimes including felonious restraint, burglary, and assault.[1] Ironically, it was Jean Byrd who testified in defense of Greenwald at his sentencing for the burglary and abduction charges. It was reported that the Deputy District Attorney (D.A.) asked for jail sentence, but the judge gave him probation. The D.A. was quoted as saying that decision was likely attributed to Jean’s testimony.[2] To the dismay of Dale, his mother let Greenwald back into their lives.
SPLIT UP AGAIN; STALKED BY FORMER BOYFRIEND; MOM GOES MISSING
With that background about Greenwald and his relationship with Jean, let’s go back to 1983 and the months following Tracy’s disappearance. There have been no significant leads as to her whereabouts. The stress in the home was palpable with the already-tumultuous relationship between Greenwald and Jean. Dale told us that things got to the point where they weren’t paying their rent, and Jean and Greenwald split up again. Jean and son Dale moved in with one of Jean’s friends at nearby Country Commons Apartments, while older brother Frank stayed with one of his friends. They were all away from Paul but were still concerned how he would react to another breakup. Then, on October 7th, seven months after Tracy had disappeared, Jean goes missing. She had left her apartment to go out on a date that evening, said Dale, heading to her car wearing blue jeans and a white sweater. By the next day she had not returned home. Police question neighbors but there were no reports or signs of a scuffle or fight. Police believed that something happened between the time she left her apartment and before she ever reached her car in the parking lot. Dale told us that he and his mother both knew she was being watched by Greenwald. “Paul would stalk my mom. He’d park the green station wagon across the street at the church, hide it behind some high hedges and just sit there and watch the house all day from 11 in the morning until the lights went down at night.” Dale said that his mother was no match for Greenwald whom he described as a strong man who swung a hot-mop doing roof jobs, and describing his mother as petite. Dale said that when she left to go out that evening, it was the last time he ever saw his mother.
MOM’S BODY DISCOVERED IN A FAMILIAR DELAWARE LOCALE
About 10 days after Jean left her friend’s apartment, a body was discovered in a shallow grave in the 5000-acre Blackbird State Forest in Delaware. A couple of photographers were hiking in the area on October 18 when they came across a decomposing body. The victim’s head was bound in duct tape, and was partially clothed. The body was taken to the morgue and a physical description was sent over the police teletype in an attempt to identify the female body. Later that evening, detectives in Bensalem, Pennsylvania who were investigating Jean’s disappearance reached out to Delaware authorities wondering if this could possibly be Jean Byrd.
The coroner determined that the woman’s cause of death was asphyxiation, and the manner of death was homicide. But the identification would be later confirmed through dental records – it was Jean Byrd. She was wearing the same sweater and jewelry she had on when Dale saw her leave the apartment just days before.
Dale Byrd told APB Cold Case that Blackbird State Forest was a familiar location. It was a place where they had all gone as a family. And when the FBI took Dale to the area to look over the location, he recognized it instantly. It was a location that, until then, was a good memory of a couple of family camping trips. “It was fun. We’d sit around the fire and do the normal things that families do…” Tragically his mother’s body had been recovered by police just yards away from where he remembered sitting around that campfire. The most obvious suspect in Jean’s murder is Paul Greenwald. He had a violent past, especially with Jean; he had been stalking her and was familiar with the location where her body was found.
FORMER BOYFRIEND IS ARRESTED AGAIN - NOW FOR HOMICIDE
Police continued their investigation and in November of 1984 – about one year after Jean Byrd’s body was found, and about a year and a half after 14-year-old Tracy went missing, 38-year-old Paul Greenwald was arrested by Delaware State Police for Jean’s murder. Reports indicate that he ultimately admitted to suffocating Jean who was found with duct tape wrapped around her mouth and face.[3][4] And just as a jury had been seated and his trial was about to begin, Greenwald entered a plea to manslaughter.[5]
GREENWALD DEAD
He was due to be sentenced on March 20, 1986[6], but to everyone’s surprise, he evaded any penalty by taking his own life, overdosing on pills that he had stockpiled. The prosecutor’s office had reportedly pressured him to disclose whatever he knew about Tracy, but he maintained that she was alive and well when he dropped her off at school, and never admitted to any wrongdoing or knowledge of her whereabouts.[7]
DETECTIVE BRINGS NEW EYES TO THE CASE
Any hopes of getting information from Greenwald was gone. With no new information, Tracy’s case goes cold. Then, in 2002 Bensalem , Pennsylvania Police Detective Christopher McMullin is given a couple cold case files while he’s on light duty, recovering from an injury. The first file is labelled, “Tracy Byrd,” a file that was already 19 years old. McMullin begins by talking with Tracy’s brothers, friends, and grandmother. The detective also speaks with Jean’s ex-husbands. As he speaks with family members, the astute detective is routinely asking them for a DNA swab. In the days when Tracy went missing, DNA was just entering the scene in forensics. But as McMullin was doing his legwork in the early 2000’s, DNA had become commonplace. McMullin told APB Cold Case that when he spoke with Mr. Byrd, the man believed to be Tracy’s biological father, he said that the gentleman admitted that he might actually be Tracy’s father. But McMullin got a DNA swab from him just in case. He also tracked down another man who could have been Tracy’s father, and enlisted the assistance of Florida authorities to get a DNA swab from him. All of the DNA specimens are in the national DNA database known as CODIS in the event they can be linked to an unidentified DNA specimen.
COULD PUBLICKER JANE DOE BE TRACY BYRD?
McMullin continues his investigation and quickly learns of an unidentified female whose body had been recovered from an underground industrial well at the former Publicker Distillery in nearby Bensalem. Skeletal remains were discovered by a couple walking in the area in 1988 and were determined to be of a young white female, between 17-23 years old, and it was believed she had been there for 3-5 years. They also found a set of fetal bones within the skeleton. Everything was beginning to line up with Tracy Byrd, although the age estimation was off a bit, but again, these were estimates. Detective McMullin was encouraged that he may have just found Tracy Byrd, and he waits for DNA results from the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) – a national database of DNA profiles. “I had requested CODIS do a direct comparison between the family reference samples, between her brothers and alleged fathers and maternal grandmother,” said the detective. As we discussed this lead, I could feel he excitement that he must have felt at that point in the investigation. The facts and circumstances pointed to the very real possibility that this would be, should be Tracy. McMullin said, “I would have bet my next check back then that I was going to get a hit.” But then the results came back – it was not Tracy. It was another missing girl from Philadelphia. (Listen to our upcoming episode: The Girl in the Well). So another family has information about their loved one, but Tracy’s family still waits for answers, and McMullin forges ahead with other leads. Among those leads was, of course, Paul Greenwald. After all, it’s not every missing persons case where the last person in contact with your missing person is charged with killing the mother months after the daughter’s disappearance. It was a lead that had to be scrutinized. Detectives did search Blackbird State Forest after Jean’s body was discovered, but they found no traces of another body. When asked if he suspected any inappropriate conduct by Greenwald against Tracy, Dale told us, “As far as I know he made no sexual advances toward Tracy – he might have.”
OTHER SUSPECTS, OTHER MOTIVES?
But could the violent, stalking, and homicidal behaviors of Greenwald be distracting us from another motive and perhaps another suspect? McMullin explored that as well. If you presume the rumor to be true that 14-year-old Tracy was pregnant, if the father of the baby was an adult, he could have been worried about a statutory rape accusation, said McMullin. If the father was close to Tracy’s age, he might have been fearful about being a teen parent. Said McMullin, “there was always a theory that the father of her child may have attacked her and killed her, as well.”
TRACY’S FAMILY WAITS FOR ANSWERS
Tracy’s family still holds out hope that maybe someday they will get an answer. “Forty years is a long-time. I’ve had 7 hearts attacks, I’m in congestive heart failure, and I don’t have much time left. And I’d like to see this done before I go,” said Dale.
Tracy’s school friend will never forget her beautiful friend who dressed stylishly and wore feathered earrings. “She was a good friend, and a good confidante.” Said Dene Boushell.
Tracy’s friends and family want to bring her home; any hopes of her being found alive somewhere were dashed decades ago. They all wonder who could be responsible – was it her mother’s boyfriend who was last seen with her; or someone who feared the ramifications of having gotten her pregnant? Or could it be some other motive altogether? Police say this case will not close until there is an answer. If you have any information about the disappearance of Tracy Byrd, call Bensalem Police detectives at 215-633-3719. Visit APBColdCase.com for show notes, including photographs, a timeline, and a “Who’s Who” for this episode.
Upcoming episodes will explore the cases of two other young women from Pennsylvania whose cases are strangely intertwined with Tracy Byrd’s investigation. Check www.APBColdcase.com for more information.
PODCAST LINK
RESOURCES:
If you need urgent help, call 911
National Domestic Violence Hotline
https://www.thehotline.org/
800-799-SAFE or text START to 88788 – also, check your own state/regional resources
Suicide Hotline – Dial 988 or call 800-273-8255. Also check your state’s mental wellness and crisis assistance resources.
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[1] Bucks-Mont News; Doylestown Intelligencer, Nov. 12, 1980, p. 98
[2] Estranged husband pleads guilty to suffocation death of woman; Doylestown Intelligencer, 12/19/1985, p. 94
[3] Inside Detective; RGH Publishing Co., New York; May 1986, pp. 46-47
[4] Estranged husband pleads guilty to suffocation death of woman; Doylestown Intelligencer; Dec. 19, 1985, p. 94
[5] Inside Detective; RGH Publishing Co., New York; May 1986, pp. 46-47
[6] Delaware County Daily Times, Chester, PA; Mar. 26, 1986
[7] Ibid