Witnesses said the boys gathered to play basketball at a park, though it is unclear whether they actually played. What is known is they were recruited to help a local carpenter move boxes from Newark to Irvington.
Police interviewed the then 25-year-old carpenter, identified as Lee Evans and known to the boys as "Big Man." He was questioned several times and even submitted to a polygraph test, which he passed, and was cleared as a suspect.
According to police reports, Evans told authorities he had hired the teenagers that day but claims he had dropped some of them off by 8 p.m. Then, he intended to drive McDowell home, but instead drove with him to pick up the rest of the boys again about 10:30 p.m. to move the boxes to Irvington.
But by that time, he decided it was too late to move the boxes and drove around in the truck before dropping the kids off at Clinton Avenue and Fabyan Place at 11 p.m.
Other witnesses tell similar tales of seeing the boys at different times getting in or out of vehicles. Conte believes the time frame of their disappearance is significant.
``They didn't all disappear at once," Conte said. "There was a 20- to 40-minute period when they were seen apart, two of them together, then three of them together."
After all the false starts and dead ends, Conte feels a collect telephone call from Washington, D.C., on the day after the teenagers disappeared could be an indicator of what really happened 20 years ago.
``The call was made to one of the families," Conte said. In it, the caller tells the person who answered the telephone "Your brother and his friends were caught in a truck heist and are being held in the Washington youth house."
``My question is, how did the caller know to say, `your brother' to the person who answered the telephone?" Conte asked. The caller's choice of words also troubles Conte as unnatural and he theorizes that perhaps it was the boys themselves calling to spin a tale to cover running away. "No other juvenile detention facility in the country is called a youth house, only in Essex County."
Some of the boys had minor scrapes with the law and marijuana was found in some of their rooms after their disappearance. Yet, Conte proposes other theories about a group being responsible for the disappearance of the teenagers or killing them, but he is unsure of a motive. Still another strong possibility is an auto accident, he says.
``They could have stolen a car and gone for a joy ride," Conte said. "Who knows, they could have cracked up on a back road, driven into a creek or lake and sank."
Not the three others I presume. It also looks like this man has a son by the same name at age 31. That would have meant he had a baby not long before these kids disappeared.
