Overview

Vickie Lynn Rust went missing September 1981 from Pennsylvania and was found murdered just a few days later but an entire state away – New York – her murder is still unsolved.

Exact Location Found:

W 33rd St and 11th Ave Manhattan
New York City, New York
On September 14th, 1981

Lower Red Circle: W
– Vickie’s body was found.

Upper Red Circle:
– Where Vickie was staying at.
– It known as “The Covenant” at 460 W 41st St

Both photos point out where Vickie was found. The one directly above is zoomed out further to show what other buildings are around currently.

Map of the same area, but from early 1980s. Vickie was found in the warehouse has since been demolished and replaced.

11th and 33rd at present day. The warehouse was replaced with a skyscraper, the black building on the shoulder.

Same area but years back when they were in the process of demolishing the warehouse and building

Detailed Case Breakdown

Vickie is our first case for personal reasons – she is my cousin so, naturally, she is the reason we started our website. Vickie was murdered in 1981 after running away to New York City from Mercer, Pennsylvania. She went to Sharon, PA and hopped a bus to NYC and was found dead just 3 days later. She was 13 years old.

According to her death certificate she was killed via ligature strangulation. Her face was disfigured with a brick making identification difficult.

There were many strange pieces to this case and some mysteries have been solved, including solidifying her identity through familial DNA (Comparing her brother and mother’s DNA against her own 40 years later).

Some points provided by the news was that she had run away months before her murder. She was found, lied about her identity and was finger printed in NYC when she was caught and arrested. She was sent back home to Mercer, PA where she ran away again months later, only to be murdered.

Her parents were NOT notified when she was discovered, instead a priest was contacted back in Mercer, PA and flown out to “Identify her body” and it was that priest that made the identity because he ‘recognized her body’. No one could identify her face because it had been disfigured by the brick. NYC further identified her via her finger prints they had taken with the fake alias months earlier.

The strange way of identifying her made the family question if it really was her. They also felt police were disinterested in solving the case. Vickie’s father personally tried to solve the case himself and worked to the best of his ability all the way up until his passing in 2021.

NYC Cold Case Detective, Robert Deckert, picked up the case in 2023 after the family (myself) reached out to the Cold Case office and asked them to try and use DNA technology to see if they could discover who committed this murder. He went even further by clearing up the question whether or not this was Vickie who was actually killed by testing her DNA against her mother and brother. It came back late 2024 that she was, in fact, Vickie.

A wonderful surprise also happened when the detective was able to test some of the previous evidence and found foreign male DNA. They are now running that DNA and the family is waiting for the results which will likely lead to answers as to who took Vickie from this world.

That all said – the why is still not there and although the case is 40+ years old, we are still reaching out and hoping for answers as to why this happened. Someone has to know something! Please feel free to comment on this case and sharing it! One day – we hope to have answers!