“When you cross the boundary lines from Pittsburgh to Baldwin, you leave the real world of law enforcement far behind you.”

The quotation appeared in a May 1988 article of Pittsburgh Magazine. The man who made the statement was not named, but he was identified as a Sergeant with the Baldwin Borough (Pennsylvania) Police Department.

The Pittsburgh Police believed their borough counterparts on the southern end of the steel city had covered up their involvement in the disappearance of twenty-five-year-old Michael Rosenblum eight years earlier. Following the article’s publication, most of western Pennsylvania, including many within the Baldwin Police Department, concurred. The corruption is believed to have extended to the top of the borough hierarchy as the Baldwin Chief of Police is believed to have orchestrated the shenanigans.

Part of Michael Rosenblum’s remains were ultimately found, but how he died and who killed him remain a mystery. A decorated policeman turned private investigator believes if not for the corruption, or at the very least, negligence, on the part of the Baldwin Police Department, Michael’s death would not still be an over forty-year-old mystery.

Michael Rosenblum

Michael Rosenblum lived with his parents, Maurice and Barbara, in Shadyside, part of eastern Pittsburgh, where his father owned a profitable insurance company. After Michael failed at college, Maurice gave him a job as a salesman.

Michael began experimenting with drugs in high school and soon became an addict, hooked on Percodan, Valium, and Tussionex, a powerful and addictive cough syrup. The drugs produced mood swings making him irritable.

In addition, Michael had been arrested three times from 1974-80 for traffic violations and drug possession. On one occasion, he had attempted to flee the police after being ordered to pull over.

Drug Addict

Michael had been in and out of several drug rehabilitation centers. Each time he would do well for a while before relapsing. The unfortunate pattern repeated itself following his release from the Western Psychiatric Hospital, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, on January 10, 1980.

On February 13, Barbara found a bottle of un-prescribed painkillers in his bedroom.

Michael And His Mother, Barbara

At wit’s end, Michael’s parents ordered their son out of their home, telling him not to come back until he was clean.

After years of being sympathetic, Maurice and Barbara hoped the “tough love” approach would produce better results. Unfortunately, it did not.

Kicked Out

An irate Michael went to the home of his girlfriend, Lisa Sharer, in Whitehall, ten miles south of Shadyside, where she lived with her adoptive mother. Lisa, a thirty-year-old twice divorced mother of three small children, was a woman of stark contrasts.  She was a former Playboy bunny, but like Michael, she was also a drug addict who had been arrested several times. They had met a few months earlier at the Western Psychiatric Institute, where both were undergoing treatment.

Lisa and Michael awoke together on Valentine’s Day, but a day of romance was not to be. Michael had a severe drug-induced hangover, and Lisa drove him for treatment to Jefferson Hospital. She took her three-year-old daughter with them. When they arrived at the hospital at approximately 10:15 a.m., Michael refused treatment. Lisa says he was still agitated and ordered her to drive to his home so he could talk to his parents.

On the way, Lisa sideswiped a curb and damaged a tire in the Homestead Borough of the Monongahela River Valley section of Pittsburgh, only a few miles from Michael’s home.

At approximately 10:30 a.m., Lisa pulled into a Boron gas station in West Homestead to have the tire filled with air. As the station attendant pumped the tire, Michael became more agitated, and engaged Lisa in a heated argument nearly turning physical, prompting the station owner to call the police. Before they arrived, Michael angrily demanded the keys to Lisa’s car. Fearful for herself and her daughter, she complied.

Michael told Lisa to meet him at his parents’ home in two hours. As he drove her 1979 Pontiac Sunbird out of the gas station, he backed into a guy wire of a telephone pole, likely further damaging the vehicle. The time was approximately 11:35 a.m.

Lisa and her daughter hitched a ride home. Angered at Michael, she did not go to his parents’ home as he had instructed. Feeling a need to use drugs again, she instead checked herself into the Western Psychiatric Institute.

Michael also never arrived at his parents’ home and missed a scheduled 12:30 meeting with an attorney in downtown Pittsburgh to contest a recent speeding ticket.

Michael And Lisa Are Seen Arguing

After she had still not heard from Michael the following day, Lisa phoned his parents. Michael had still not returned home. Lisa told the Rosenblum’s of the incidents at the hospital and gas station.

Concerned, Michael’s parents filed a missing person report with the Pittsburgh police. Detective Stephen Tershak headed the searches for Michael and for Lisa’s car.

Detective Stephen Tershak

On May 21, three-and-a-half months later, the Baldwin Police Department notified Lisa that her car was in the Street Run Auto Service. The salvage yard owner, George Colbert, had attempted to obtain a salvage permit from the state only to learn the car had been reported stolen. It had been sitting in the junkyard for nearly one-hundred days.

The car had been found by Baldwin police officers Chester Lombardi and Robert Weber on River Road, connecting Pittsburgh with Baldwin, at approximately 12:45 p.m., on February 14, only two hours after Michael had left the gas station driving the car. It was blocking the westbound lane of traffic ¼ mile on the downtown side of Glenwood Bridge. The two left tires were flat, the keys were missing, and the engine was cool. Hundreds of photographs were strewn about the car’s front section, along with numerous pieces of mail, children’s toys, and clothing.

Officer Weber says before requesting a tow, they radioed in the license plate number and Lisa Sharer was identified as the owner. The vehicle was towed to the Baldwin police pound where it remained until May 21. At the time, Michael Rosenblum, and thus Lisa’s car, were not yet reported missing.

The Pittsburgh police had contacted every area department about the missing vehicle on February 15, when Michael was reported missing. Detective Tershak found it hard to fathom how the car had been sitting in the Baldwin police tow yard, undetected, for three-and-a-half months.

Lisa’s Damaged Car Is Finally Located

The Baldwin police claimed they mailed a letter to Lisa on February 15, one day after the car had been impounded. Lisa was adamant that she had never received such a letter and remained so even after the department produced a copy of the letter.

Baldwin authorities also claimed they searched for Lisa but were unable to locate her. Records, however, show that West Homestead Police Sergeant Eugene Kobra called the Baldwin Police on February 15 and informed dispatcher Fred Kinger that Lisa was in Room B-14 of West Penn Hospital where she was undergoing drug treatment and that she had filed a police report stating Michael Rosenblum had taken her car in an agitated state.

The Alleged Letter To Lisa

Around the same time as Michael’s disappearance was receiving press coverage, Maurice received two anonymous phone calls regarding his son.

One call was made before Lisa’s car was discovered; the second was made after the vehicle had been located. In both cases, the caller made a short statement before hanging up: The Baldwin Police had arrested Michael on the day he went missing, February 14.

Maurice dismissed the calls as cranks. Soon, however, his son, who was listed as a missing person, also became a wanted person.

 

Maurice And Michael

In May 1980, three months after he was last seen, the Baldwin Police Department issued an arrest warrant for missing person Michael Rosenblum on a charge of armed robbery. I could not definitively determine when in May the warrant was issued, i.e. if it occurred before or after May 21, the day Lisa’s car was found, but it seems more likely it was issued before that date. The warrant was made by Officer Warren Cooley.

The Baldwin Police sought Michael in connection with the armed robbery of a drugstore on April 28, two-and-a-half months after he had disappeared.  Witnesses saw only the perpetrator’s forehead and chin because the robber wore a ski mask and sunglasses. A composite sketch of the suspect, however, was made without the mask and sunglasses.

The drawing strongly resembled Michael Rosenblum, too strongly, in Detective Tershak’s opinion. He believed the sketch was copied from Michael’s missing person flyer.

The Baldwin Police soon had more troubles as it was learned that Officer Cooley had not consulted a witness who described the getaway car in detail. The vehicle did not match Lisa’s car.

One week later, the warrant for Michael Rosenblum’s arrest on the armed robbery charge was dismissed when another man, Robert McCullough, confessed to the robbery. He had no connection to Michael.

                                       Michael                          Composite 

                                    Rosenblum                     Of The Robber

Three questions puzzled the Pittsburgh Police about their Baldwin counterparts:

• 1) Why had they not responded to their request for information when they had Lisa’s car in their possession for three months?
• 2) Why had they issued a warrant for Michael’s arrest when he was a missing person?
• 3) Was there any truth to the phone calls that they had arrested Michael on the day he disappeared?

Formerly Wanted

Still Missing

Maurice Rosenblum believed the Baldwin Police had covered up information relating to his son’s disappearance. He took his suspicions to Pennsylvania Attorney General LeRoy Zimmerman, but his office, as well as that of the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, cleared the Baldwin Police Department of any wrongdoing.

Maurice Suspects A Cover-Up

No new information of significance surfaced in the disappearance of Michael Rosenblum until 1986, six-and-a-half years later, when Maurice received an anonymous letter. The writer urged him to speak to Jean Haslett, a former Pennsylvania State Trooper and Baldwin Police dispatcher.

Haslett told Maurice that two-to-three months after finding Lisa’s vehicle, an irate Baldwin Police Chief Aldo Gaburri ordered his clerk, Fred Cappelli, to type a letter notifying Lisa that her vehicle had been towed to the Streets Run Auto Service junkyard. The timing fit when the period when Baldwin Police had produced a copy of the letter they claimed they had mailed to Lisa the day after they had found her car.

Jean Haslett

Former Baldwin Police Department Dispatcher

Fred Cappelli corroborated Jean Haslett’s assertion, saying he believed he had typed the letter near the May 21 date when Lisa’s car was located in the junkyard, but claimed that Chief Gaburri had ordered him to backdate the letter to February 15, the day Michael was reported missing and the day after Lisa’s car had been found on the River Road Bridge.

Haslett and Cappelli both believed Gaburri’s orders were unusual, but both said they did as they were ordered because they feared losing their jobs if they refused to comply.

Fred Cappelli

Baldwin Borough Police Clerk

Cappelli went on to say that Chief Gaburri further ordered him to sign the letter with the name of Chester Lombardi, the senior police officer at the scene when Lisa’s car was discovered abandoned on the bridge. Instead of mailing the letter, Cappelli says Gaburri ordered him to put it in the department files.

Cappelli said Lombardi, who died in 1982, had refused to sign the letter because it had been backdated. His partner, Robert Weber, later said the Chief wanted him to sign the letter, but that he too refused.

Not Lombardi’s Signature

Maurice Rosenblum wrote several letters to the Baldwin Borough Council, demanding an investigation into what he believed was a police cover-up in his son’s disappearance. On October 5, 1987, the Baldwin Borough Council held a hearing on the matter. They ultimately dismissed Police Chief Gaburri for interfering with the investigation into Michael’s disappearance.

Gaburri, however, appealed his conviction to the Civil Service Commission, which concluded there was no misconduct on his part and reinstated him on December 31. The Chief had several perceived “cronies” on the commission who, many critics believe, had his back, no matter what he was accused of doing.

 Aldo Gaburri

Baldwin Borough Police Chief

Among those to whom Chief Gabrurri was close was Baldwin Borough mayor, Samuel McPherson. Gaburri reportedly dismissed traffic tickets at McPherson’s request, and even covered up an accident in which McPherson’s son, Sam, Jr., had crashed into a Baldwin Emergency Medical Service ambulance.

Samuel McPherson

Baldwin Borough Mayor

In May 1988, over eight years after Michael Rosenblum was last seen, Pittsburgh Magazine ran an investigative article about his disappearance. Reporter Jim Harger made direct allegations against two Baldwin police officers, Donald Miscensik and Warren Cooley, the latter being the officer who issued the questionable arrest warrant of Michael for the drug store armed robbery.

Harger wrote that shortly before Lisa Sharer’s vehicle was found on February 14, Officers Cooley and Miscensik were assigned to serve a warrant in McKeesport, a route which had them traveling along River Road. According to police logs, the two officers never served their warrant and were not heard again on the radio for nearly three hours.

Cooley and Miscensik sued the publication for libel and defamation of character, saying the article unjustly accused them of having involvement in Michael’s disappearance. In March 1990, as the case was about to go to trial, the two sides reached an agreement of a $50,000 settlement for each officer.

Bombshell Revelations

Michael Rosenblum was declared legally dead in 1990. In April 1992, over twelve years after his disappearance, a hiker in a wooded area known as Forty Acres (now known as Hays Wood) found several articles of clothing consistent with those Michael was wearing on the day he disappeared. The locale was not far from the Monongahela River in Baldwin Borough and only three miles from where Lisa’s car had been found on River Road a dozen years earlier.

Investigators subsequently searched the area and found a human skull ultimately identified as that of Michael Rosenblum. He is believed to have been murdered, but the cause of death could not be determined.

No more remains were found.

Some of Michael’s Remains Are Located

After Lisa’s car was found in the junkyard on May 21, 1980, Chief Gaburri authorized a search of the River Road.

Volunteers, however, were allowed to search only along the Monongahela River and were denied permission to search other sections, including the Forty Acres wooded area where Michael’s skull would be found twelve years later.

Gaburri Was  In A Hurry

By the time the partial remains of Michael Rosenblum were found, former Detective Stephen Tercsak had become a private investigator. He and many others believe Officers Warren Cooley and Donald Miscenik are responsible for Michael Rosenblum’s disappearance and ultimate death. Cooley had a reputation as a bully as he had been accused of police brutality several times. In addition, two people alleged he had attempted to extort money from them.

Tercsak believes Officers Cooley and Miscenik came upon Michael driving Lisa’s car as they were on their way to serve the unrelated warrant and attempted to pull the car over because it was damaged or because Michael was driving erratically. Michael was still hungover and in an agitated state and, Tercsak believes, as he had done on another occasion, fled when he saw the police.

A chase may have ensued resulting in the police running the Sunbird off the road. Michael may have attempted to fight the officers and was beaten to death in retaliation.

Tercsak’s theory was bolstered following the Unsolved Mysteries segment of Michael’s story in January 1989. A man jailed at the Baldwin Police Station for drunk driving said he was held with a badly-injured Michael who appeared to have been beaten and to have been shot in the leg. The inmate says he observed officers taking Michael out of the police station. He presumed they were transporting him to a hospital.

Instead, Tercsak believes, they took him to the Forty Acres area where they killed him. No evidence, however, was found to support the theory.

The Former Detective Believes

Michael Was Killed By Crooked Cops

Police Chief Aldo Gaburri died in 1997 without ever being criminally charged with any mishandling or wrongdoing in the investigation into Michael Rosenblum’s disappearance and death.

The Shady Chief Is Never Charged

Pittsburgh area. Shortly after marrying for the third time, extended family members lost contact with her.

Lisa Leaves

Maurice Rosenblum believed his son’s drug problems began after meeting family friend Dr. Paul James who, he said, wrote his son hundreds of prescriptions for the drugs he became addicted to. The New Jersey Attorney General’s office opened an investigation after Maurice threatened to take the story to The New York Times.  Dr. James eventually surrendered his license to avoid criminal charges.

Maurice Rosenblum died in 2008; Barbara died in 2018.

If you have any information on the death of Michael Rosenblum, please contact the Pittsburgh Police Homicide Division at 412.323.7161.

Maurice With A Picture of Michael

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/151681830/michael-l-rosenblum

SOURCES:

• Observer-Reporter
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Pittsburgh Magazine
• Unsolved Mysteries