South Greensburg Girl Vanished in 1975, Family Still Waits for Answers

Teresa “Teri” Rhodes was 13 years old when she vanished on September 27, 1975, last seen leaving a house party in South Greensburg on her way home. More than five decades later, Westmoreland County officials are once again asking the public for help, hoping someone who has stayed silent for fifty years finally comes forward.

Rhodes had left home around 11 a.m. that day, telling her family she was going shopping with a friend, according to case details recorded by the Doe Network. Instead, she spent part of the evening babysitting with a friend, per facts reported by WPXI. The same friend later admitted that the two of them had attended a house party on Bell Way that night, telling investigators she last saw Rhodes there around 6 p.m., according to the Doe Network's case file. Police believe Rhodes stopped at that party on her way home before disappearing entirely, WPXI reports.

At the time, Rhodes was an eighth grader at St. Paul's Middle School and, per her family, was not yet permitted to date. She left behind everything — her purse, her money, her clothing — and had no history of running away, the Doe Network's records note. Her family has long maintained that she always told them where she was and never missed a family dinner, a detail her relatives shared with TribLIVE in 2015.

Early Missteps Slowed the Search

The investigation stumbled almost immediately. Former South Greensburg Police Chief Jerome Todaro, who was a part-time officer in 1975, later told TribLIVE that local law enforcement “dropped the ball” by first treating Rhodes's disappearance as a runaway case rather than launching an immediate missing-person investigation. According to Rhodes's sister, when her mother first called police, the chief was away at a family cookout and told the family to file a report the following day.

By the time searches ramped up, investigators had turned to tips that sent teams digging in St. Clair Park in Greensburg and Schenley Park in Pittsburgh — joint efforts that crossed municipal lines into Allegheny County, as TribLIVE detailed in its 2015 retrospective. Those searches and digs turned up nothing. No physical evidence connecting either site to Rhodes's disappearance has ever surfaced.

Four Agencies, Decades of Dead Ends

Rhodes's case has passed through the hands of four separate law enforcement agencies over the past fifty years: South Greensburg Police Department, Greensburg City Police, Pennsylvania State Police, and Westmoreland County Detectives, according to the Westmoreland County District Attorney's Office. Each has identified persons of interest at various points, but investigators have never gathered enough evidence to bring charges or make an arrest.

The renewed appeal comes as part of a deliberate monthly effort by the DA's office to shine a spotlight on unsolved major crimes across the county, following earlier features on the 2007 homicide of Kelly Smith and the 2015 murder of Drew Molinari. The office's CrimeWatch platform and social media presence are used to systematically re-examine cold cases in hopes of shaking loose new leads.

Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli has also convened the county's first investigatory grand jury in three decades, a tool meant to compel testimony in long-unsolved major crimes. That grand jury recently helped produce homicide charges in a 2022 New Kensington cold case that had gone years without resolution, as reported by the Observer-Reporter.

A Family That Never Got Answers

Rhodes was the youngest of six children born to William and Nellie Rhodes. Both parents died without ever learning what happened to their daughter, as did her brother Mark, according to TribLIVE's 2015 reporting. Four siblings survive her, still waiting for the closure that has eluded the family for fifty years.

National missing-persons databases list Rhodes as having a distinct dimple on her left cheek and a dog-bite scar on her upper lip, physical markers that could still aid identification, per the Charley Project. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has also released an age-progressed image showing how Rhodes might look at 58 years old, part of its ongoing effort to keep long-term missing children cases visible to the public.

Rhodes's case is one of more than 500 open missing-persons cases in Pennsylvania and among more than 25,000 active cases nationwide, according to statistics from NamUs. Law enforcement agencies across the country continue to face significant backlogs working through long-term missing minor cases that date back to the pre-digital era.

How to Submit a Tip

Investigators say they are still working to find Rhodes or the person responsible for her disappearance, but so far the evidence brought forward has not been sufficient to support charges or an arrest, per WPXI's report. Westmoreland County Detectives are asking anyone with information to call 724-830-3287. Tips can also be submitted anonymously, either by phone or online by scanning a QR code provided by investigators.