In 1993, Tricia Reitler was a freshman at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana. She was a psychology major. She did well in school, and her grade point average was high. On March 29, 1993, around 8 p.m., was the last time anyone saw her.
That night, Reitler was working on a term paper and decided to take a break. She walked to the Marsh Supermarket, which was about a half mile from the campus of the university. She bought a soda and a magazine and then left the store, planning to go back to her Bowman Hall dorm.
She never got there, and no one has seen or heard from her since. Bloody jeans, a shirt, and shoes belonging to Reitler were found in a field near Seybold Pool and Center Elementary School. The field is between Marsh’s Supermarket and the school.
Investigators said that six or seven unidentified people were playing basketball on the Center School playground next to the pool when Reitler went missing, but none of the possible witnesses have come forward with information about her case. Authorities think that Reitler was taken against her will while she was walking back to campus. Her disappearance is thought to be due to foul play.
At one point, Donald W. Grenier was thought to be a possible suspect in the case of Reitler. Grenier was arrested in 1999 and charged with taking a young girl from the Marion area and molesting her. His house was searched for clues that might link him to Reitler’s case and the disappearance of Wendy Felton in Indiana in 1987, which seemed to have some things in common.
The search turned up nothing, and Grenier has since been cleared of any involvement in the cases of both Reitler and Felton. Grenier has always said that he didn’t do anything wrong in either case.
Tony R. Searcy, who has a history of breaking the law, has also been thought of as a possible suspect in Reitler’s case for a long time. He has said he had nothing to do with it, and Searcy has never been arrested in connection with Reitler’s disappearance.
Several months after Reitler went missing in 1993, police found things related to her case in a van owned by Larry DeWayne Hall. This led them to think of another possible suspect. At the time, Hall lived with his parents in Wabash, Indiana, in the 300 block of Grant Street.
Inside Hall’s car, investigators found maps, ether, photos, and newspaper articles about Reitler. With this case summary, there is a picture of him. In December 1994, he was arrested and charged with kidnapping Jessica Roach, a teen whose body was found in a cornfield in Indiana in 1993.
Hall signed a statement saying that he had kidnapped and killed Reitler, but he later changed his mind. Because there wasn’t enough evidence against him, he was never charged with her disappearance. Investigators looked for Reitler’s body in Grant County, Indiana, near the Mississinewa Reservoir. Hall took them to the place where he said he had buried her body, but there was no sign of her there.
Hall is in a psychiatric prison in North Carolina, where he is serving a life sentence for kidnapping Roach. He is still thought to have taken Reitler, which is a crime. He admitted to killing Laurie Depies, who went missing in Wisconsin in 1988, and hinted that he had something to do with Paulette Webster going missing in Illinois in 1988. Police think he killed between 30 and 40 women, but he has only been charged in Roach’s case.
Reitler’s case hasn’t been solved yet. No one has ever found her. When she went missing, her family lived in Olmsted Township, Ohio, which is south of Cleveland. She is the oldest of four kids in a Christian family that is very strict. Her parents think that she has died.
