Bonita Bickwit Missing 7/27/73 NY

Distinguishing Characteristics: Brown hair, brown eyes. Bickwit's nickname is Bonnie. Some agencies reverse her first and middle names, as in "Mara Bonita Bickwit." Clothing Description: A t-shirt and blue jeans. Details of Disappearance Bickwit was working as a mother's helper at Camp Wel-Met in Narrowsburg, New York when she vanished on July 27, 1973 with her boyfriend, Mitchel Weiser. Bickwit and Weiser planned to hitchhike to attend a concert festival featuring The Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead in Watkins Glen, New York. The concert is believed to have been the largest in history, with over 800,000 people showing up. Weiser met Bickwit at Camp Wel-Met and they set off for the concert, which was 75 miles from Narrowsburg. Neither has been seen since. It is believed that Weiser and Bickwit had approximately $25 between them. They carried backpacks, sleeping bags, and a cardboard sign that read "Watkins Glen." They were last seen hitchhiking along State Route 97. Authorities initially believed that the couple simply ran off together. Bickwit and Weiser had secretly exchanged wedding rings earlier in the summer of 1973. Both were intelligent teenagers who attended John Dewey High School, a Brooklyn alternative school for gifted, high-achieving students. Bickwit lived in Borough Park with her family when she was not working at Camp Wel-Met; Weiser lived in Midwood. Both Bickwit and Weiser are from stable, middle-class Jewish families. Both Weiser and Bickwit's loved ones say the two seemed ill at ease before they left for the concert. Bickwit sneaked away from Camp Wel-Met and went home one day the week before she vanished, and took $80 which she had been saving for a bicycle. Her family was not home at the time, but neighbors saw her. She was also having difficulties with the family she was working for. Bickwit asked them for the night off when Weiser showed up on July 27, and quit in anger when they refused. She told her employers that she would come by after the concert to collect her clothes and paycheck. Weiser, meanwhile, was worried that he would not be able to attend the college of his choice. Despite this, however, their loved ones believe Bickwit and Weiser were just having normal adolescent problems and would have never run away from home. Bickwit's best friend was in Europe the summer she vanished, but she exchanged letters with Bickwit and says their communications were normal. Weiser was looking forward to taking his drivers' test, which was scheduled for a few weeks after he disappeared. Bickwit and Weiser's families and friends have never forgotten about the two. Weiser's family has kept a phone listing in the Brooklyn telephone directory since 1973 in case either of the teens decide to contact them. Years following their disappearances, Weiser's father accepted a collect call from someone identifying herself as "Bonnie." By the time the operator was able to connect them, the caller had hung up. She did not call back and has never been identified. In 2000, a witness, Allyn Smith, claimed he saw both Bickwit and Weiser drown while they were on their way back from Watkins Glen. Smith, then 24, said he was also going to the Watkins Glen rock festival and hitched a ride on a Volkswagen bus and two teenagers, whom he identified as Bickwit and Weiser, were also on the bus. He did not know their names but had heard them talking about the girl's summer camp and recalled their clothing. They all stopped to cool off in a nearby river when Bickwit got into trouble in the water. Weiser jumped in to save her and they were both swept away, still alive. The bus driver told Smith he would call the police at the nearest gas station, but authorities have no record of such a call being made. Police call Smith "credible" but wonder why, as an athletic Navy veteran, he did not try to rescue the drowning teenagers. They are investigating his account, which has not been confirmed. The driver of the bus has not been found and Smith cannot remember the location of the river the teens allegedly drowned in. As a result, his story cannot be fully investigated. Bickwit and Weiser remain missing and their cases are unsolved. Their families have criticized the police for what they call a perfunctory investigation. The original case files have apparently been lost. Included in the files were the only existing copies of Bickwit's and Weiser's dental records, which could have been used to identify their bodies. Authorities now admit that they made many mistakes in the investigation. A new investigator has been assigned to the cases. The state attorney general got involved in the investigation in 2000, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the teens' disappearances. Bickwit and Weiser's families hope the additional assistance will help solve the case. Investigating Agency If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Sullivan County Sheriff's Department 914-794-7100 Last updated August 18, 2005; age-progression updated. http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/bickwit_bonita.html

http://members.tripod.com/dewey_people/bonniemitch2.htm From: News and Views | City Beat | Sunday, June 18, 2000 At Dewey HS, a Reunion — And 27-Yr. Mystery By DON SINGLETON Daily News Staff Writer here was a reunion at a Brooklyn high school yesterday, with a mystery as its central theme. Twenty-seven years ago, two teenagers from John Dewey High School headed off to a huge, Woodstock-like music festival in Watkins Glen, N.Y. Bonita (Bonnie) Bickwit and Mitchel Weiser vanished and have not been seen since. There was speculation that the young couple had eloped or joined a commune. Maybe even joined a cult. But as days turned to weeks and months, people began to fear the worst. Yesterday, 100 members of the Class of 1975 gathered at Dewey High School on Avenue X to celebrate a reunion and to plant an 8-foot red maple tree in the missing couple's names. The tree ceremony was "a dedication, not a memorial," because nobody knows if they're alive or dead, said Bonnie Shipper, a classmate who now lives in Mountain View, Calif. It was four years after Woodstock when Bonnie and Mitchel left a camp in upstate Narrowsburg on July 27, 1973, and headed for Watkins Glen. Bonnie, then 15, of Borough Park, and Mitchel, then 16, of Midwood — both from stable, middle-class Jewish families — set out with backpacks and sleeping bags to hitchhike the 75 miles to Watkins Glen. For their close friends, it was as if the pair — neither the radical hippie type — vanished off the face of the Earth. They never called, they never wrote, and when school started again in September, they didn't show up. For their families, it was the beginning of 27 years of pain — the pain of wondering without knowing, of searching without finding, of trying not to think about horrible possibilities involving serial killers. That summer, Bonnie had been working at Camp Wel-Met, sponsored by the UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in Narrowsburg, 90 miles north of the city. "Bonnie was my best friend in high school," said Michelle Festa, valedictorian of the Class of 1974. "I went to Europe for the summer, and we had written letters to each other. She was working at Camp Wel-Met for a month, and Mitchel went up to pick her up, and they were going to go to the concert." At first, everyone assumed the two — who had secretly exchanged wedding rings that summer — had run off to be together. But when there was no call or no letter, thoughts turned darker, to fatal accident, to murder. "I could have been that little Jewish girl in the peasant skirt and the earth shoes," Shipper said with a shiver. "The whole thing is just heartbreaking." Police were notified, but after investigations the families describe as perfunctory, the case went nowhere. "They didn't do anything," Festa said. "We want to get the attorney general involved." "There's a lot of different ways you can go," Mitchel's sister, Susan Liebegott of Brooklyn, said yesterday. "Maybe he got sick and was hospitalized. Maybe they got taken by a cult." She recalled a day in 1985, when she was pregnant and thinking about her brother, then missing more than a decade, when the thought that he had been murdered flashed into her mind. "I felt like a knife going through my chest," she said yesterday morning. And when she spoke at the dedication of the maple tree, with 100 members of Bonnie's class listening, she choked up. "I've always felt strongly that my brother would come home alive, but now it doesn't look like it," she said. But then there were other incidents that brought hope. "Years ago, when my parents were in Arizona, the phone rang and the operator asked my father if he would accept the charges on a collect call from Bonnie," she said. "He got all excited and said yes, but the operator told him, 'I'm sorry, she hung up.'" No one called back. But the Weiser family has kept a phone listing in the Brooklyn directory since 1973, just in case Mitchel or Bonnie should ever call again.

View Full Version: Bonita Bickwit Missing 7/27/73 NY