The Headless Body on Interstate 79

 

Washington Observer-Reporter January 23, 1988

It was a bone-chilling day in Washington County on January 22, 1988, but the chilliness I remember had nothing to do with the weather.

While the temperature did dip to a low 23 degrees in Washington County that day, I remember it for the cold-hearted crime that occurred 38 years ago along Interstate 79 in South Strabane Township.

It all started when a north-bound truck driver named David Weimer pulled his rig over on the west berm to look for a tire. Once in the woods, he stumbled upon some garbage bags that were wrapped around a large object. He poked around and was shocked to find a headless body.

Not knowing what to do, Weimer drove to the office of the Washington Observer-Reporter newspaper, which was located about five miles away on South Main Street in Washington. My current administrative assistant Randi Ross (Marodi) who was working in the newsroom at the time as a new, relatively inexperienced reporter, remembers the day Weimer walked into the newsroom.

Washington Observer-Reporter June 29, 2022 by Randi Ross Marodi

“He walked up to the counter and told News Editor Byron Smialek that he had found a body without a head in the woods along Interstate 79,” she recalls. “As Byron looked around the room for a reporter, I remember thinking, ‘Pease don’t look at me. Please don’t ask me to go into the woods with a truck driver to search for a body.’ That’s when Jeff Hoch, a more experienced reporter, walked up to the counter and told Weimer he would meet him at the state police barracks to report the crime.”

Marodi admired Hoch’s quick thinking and breathed a sigh of relief as he put on his coat and left with the truck driver.

“A couple of hours later Jeff returned, carrying a bag of McDonalds food, which he calmly ate as he banged out the details of the grizzly crime he has just encountered,” she said. “I was in awe of his journalistic skills and equally impressed with his ability to eat a greasy burger and fries after looking at a dead body.”

I also remember the day Weimer reported the discovery at the barracks. Crime Sgt. Roger Waters assigned the case to Trooper Bernard Stanek and a team of criminal investigators that included me. We were quickly dispatched to the scene of the crime, which was about 1,000 yards south of Racetrack Road on Interstate 79. The scene was processed by the state police forensic unit which quickly determined that the victim had been decapitated, and that the murder itself occurred at another location.

As an investigator, I knew we would be performing a lot of mundane tasks to make sure we would have successful conclusion. Because the body was found on a Friday and I was on weekend duty, I had to interview residents near the area where the body was discovered. Nothing noteworthy was discovered, but on January 29, 1988, we got a break when the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, DC, informed us that the victim was Richard E. Poling of Niles, Ohio. Poling, a 33-year-old steel mill worker, had committed a crime as a young man, therefore his fingerprints were in the national database.

Washington Observer-Reporter February 26, 1988

The next day I headed to Niles, Ohio, north of Youngstown, with Sgt. Waters, Trooper Stanek, and group of investigators to gather more information. It was cold when we started the arduous task of interviewing numerous people in the victim’s neighborhood. Soon, it became clear that we should look more closely at the victim’s wife Marie Poling, the 29-year-old mother of three and a nurse’s aide at a nearby nursing home, and her lover Rafael Garcia Jr. Our task was to link our newly gathered testimony to the physical evidence.

One interview that really stuck out was when Marie Poling’s young daughter, told us that she “saw mommy cleaning up ketchup in the kitchen.” Based on this and other evidence, we were able to secure a search warrant for the Poling house. We used a chemical substance known as luminol with the hopes that its glow would help us locate any traces of blood that had been left behind. We were shocked when the luminol did its job and the whole kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom started to glow with traces of blood splatter. It was later determined that Marie Poling had shot her husband in the head as he was lying on the nearby couch.

Tribune Chronicle file photo June 21, 2020 - Youngstown, Ohio

Testimony later revealed that after the murder, Marie Poling called her boyfriend Rafael Garcia Jr. and the two discussed various ways to dispose of the body. They decided it would be best if the head was removed to conceal his identity and the gunshot wound. The second part of their plan was to take Richard Polling’s body some distance from the home for disposal. Once the work was done, they loaded him into the vehicle and traveled 96 miles to Washington County, where they selected the location near Racetrack Road exit off Interstate 79 in South Strabane Township.  

Marie Poling said they chose the Racetrack Road exit because her husband liked race cars, and she thought that dumping his body near a racetrack would be a nice way to honor his memory. At the time, she had no idea that Racetrack Road was the home to a harness horse racing track, not a racecar track.

After dumping the victim’s body along Interstate 79, the couple drove south to find a good spot for the disposal of the victim’s head. Once they were south of the Laboratory exit, they stopped the vehicle and were startled by a state trooper who drove up in his patrol car. The trooper, who didn’t approach the car on foot, yelled over and asked if they needed assistance. Marie Poling and Garcia were standing next to the car, where a bag containing the head sat on the front seat, told the trooper that they were just switching drivers. The trooper left, but Marie said they would have used a handgun to shoot him if he had approached their car.

The couple got back in the car and proceeded onto Route 40 East, where they stopped about 1.5 miles East of Route 519. They pulled onto the berm and attempted to dispose of the victim’s head by tossing it over the guardrails. When the object got hung up in some brush, Garcia retrieved it and tossed it into an adjacent field. The head was discovered on February 25, 1988, in North Bethlehem Township, about 12 miles away from the spot where the body was discovered.

The Vindicator March 8, 1988 - Youngstown, Ohio

The investigation into the murder of Richard Poling was a joint effort that involved numerous law enforcement agencies that worked hard to guarantee a successful conclusion and conviction. Because the murder occurred in Ohio, the case was tried in Trumbull County. During the trial, the prosecutor described Marie Poling as a cold blooded “black widow killer.” In August of 1988, Marie Poling was convicted of murder and abuse of a corpse. She was sentenced to life in prison, where she was denied parole several times before she died on May 20, 2024. Her lover, Rafael Garcia Jr. was sentenced to 13 years in prison and was released in 2001. Trooper Bernard Stanek, the lead investigator, who has since passed away, wrote a book about the case called “The Road to Justice.” Even though I retired from the state police many years ago, the Richard Poling murder is one case I will never forget.

 

Larry Maggi is a retired trooper with the Pennsylvania State Police, a former Washington County Sheriff, and a member of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, serving over 209,000 constituents in Southwestern Pennsylvania.