It was a murder that sent shockwaves through the community.<\/p>\n
“Because these things don’t happen in Emmaus,” said Emmaus resident Denise Tempest.<\/p>\n
27 year old Barbara Solt, a beloved coach strangled, sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in her apartment.<\/p>\n
“It was a scary time for us all. Because we all liked her it was a very hard time,” said former Emmaus High School Athlete Lisa Gaumer.<\/p>\n
While the borough mourned, investigators followed every lead.<\/p>\n
Initially, the list of potential suspects was long.<\/p>\n
An ex-boyfriend, a co-worker, a man accused of committing sex crimes in the area around the same time.<\/p>\n
Investigators even looked into a possible connection to serial killer Timothy Krajcir, who’s now serving time for the murders of 9 women from 1977 to 1982.<\/p>\n
One of his victims was 51 year old Myrtle Rupp in Muhlenberg Township, Berks County in 1979.<\/p>\n
Krajcir impersonated a police officer to gain access to Rupp’s home, before raping and killing her.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of her murder in 2007 after his DNA connected him to the crime.<\/p>\n
After finding out he was living in Lehigh County in 1982, investigators gave Krajcir a polygraph about Barbara’s murder.<\/p>\n
It registered a flat line.<\/p>\n
Krajcir has denied killing Barbara.<\/p>\n
43 years after the murder, at Friday night football it’s not hard to find people who remember what happened.<\/p>\n
“I was about 10 years old,” said Emmaus resident David Erbe.<\/p>\n
“It’s very scary something like that happens and nothing came of it,” said his wife Dee Erbe.<\/p>\n
It’s not for a lack of trying.<\/p>\n
“The stack of reports that was done for just physical evidence in this case were probably that thick,” said Lehigh County Detective Joseph Vasquez.<\/p>\n
Over the last four decades, investigators have done more than 200 interviews.<\/p>\n
“The community is still invested in justice for Barbara and it’s something that has been passed down to every generation of detectives in our apartment,” said Emmaus Police Det. Sgt. Adam Knoblauch.<\/p>\n
Emmaus Chief Jason Apgar is part of the latest generation.<\/p>\n
“I get asked about it all the time,” said Chief Apgar.<\/p>\n
Barbara was Apgar’s 2nd grade PE teacher.<\/p>\n
Apgar says in the past, investigative efforts to extract DNA that would lead to a suspect profile in Barbara’s case have been fruitless.<\/p>\n
But now investigators are hoping advances in DNA technology will finally help them catch her killer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a murder that sent shockwaves through the community. “Because these things don’t happen in Emmaus,” said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154,31],"class_list":["post-33577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}