Detectives Seek Public’s Help in 50-Year-Old Cold Case of Bucks County Teen’s Murder
Police officials are pursuing new leads in a nearly 50-year-old cold case murder of a Bucks County teenager who was stabbed in the Oxford Valley Mall parking lot.
The teen — 17-year-old Patricia Bartlett, who attended Pennsbury High School — was at the mall on Jan. 13, 1975, purchasing photo paper and toner at The Camera Shop to photograph a snowstorm when she was savagely stabbed by an unknown attacker. When police discovered Bartlett in the area of the parking lot near the Gimbels department store, she had received several stab wounds. Bartlett was transported to Middletown’s St. Mary’s Medical Center, where she later died.
Over the past five decades, few leads about Bartlett’s unsolved murder had surfaced. Despite dozens of police interviews, polygraph tests with persons of interest, and a police sketch, the trail to catching Bartlett’s killer had grown cold.
On Monday, Jan. 13, Middletown Police Department detectives announced they were looking to members of the public for new information on the 50th anniversary of her death.
“Patty suffered a heinous death at the hands of an unknown violent predator,” Bucks County District Attorney Jennifer Schorn said in a statement posted on the Bucks CrimeWatch website and shared with the Bucks County Herald. “Although the case went unsolved, Middletown Township Police have never forgotten about Patty’s murder.”
In a Jan. 13 press release, Schorn said detectives from her office are “working hand in glove with Middletown to pool resources to continue in this endeavor.”
Schorn urges anyone with information about the murder of Patty Bartlett to contact Bucks County Detectives at 215-348-6354 or the Middletown Township Police Department at 215-750-3870. Tips can also be shared through CrimeWatch at bucksda.org or, anonymously, with the Middletown Township Police Department at mtpd.org on the tips link or on the anonymous tip phone line at 215-750-3888.