THE DREADED NEWS
Darlene Rudolph was baby-sitting her 4-year-old granddaughter Thursday afternoon when her phone rang with news she'd dreaded for nearly 30 years.
But even though she'd imagined it every day, come up with every possible horrific scenario, it still struck her hard in the gut.
She called her daughter and told her to come immediately to get the child. She couldn't hold it together much longer.
When her daughter arrived, Rudolph told her: Her oldest sister, Ranee Gregor, missing for nearly 30 years, was dead. Police said Edward Surratt had killed her and told investigators Ranee's body was unrecoverable.
Mother and daughter broke down in tears for the 15-year-old girl who disappeared on Oct. 21, 1977, days short of her 16th birthday.
Ranee had been with her boyfriend, John Feeny, 17, of Coraopolis that night. Police found Feeny's body the next day, shot with a 12-gauge shotgun in his van parked on a secluded road near the airport in Findlay Township. Ranee never was found.
A short while after talking to Frost, Rudolph, 62, sat alone in her Robinson Township home, still in shock, and worried about how to tell Ranee's two other sisters.
"I think in my heart, I knew she was dead," she said. "But as hard as it is to hear, it's better to get closure."
Worse was the news that her killer said Ranee's remains are "unrecoverable."
"Everybody's meaning of unrecoverable is different, even if we could get something," Rudolph said. "That really upsets me. It hurts a lot. If we at least had something to bury in a place, if there was something ... Not to have something of her is hard."
Rudolph does have Ranee's scarf, her mittens, books from her room, her baby dolls and favorite records, a copy of the yearbook that should have contained her senior picture. She keeps it all in a box she sifts through.
There was some small measure of relief, she said, because she was always afraid she would die and her three remaining daughters would someday have to deal with this news alone. The family kept Ranee alive, she said. "We talk about her all the time, all the time," she said. "You can't help it. She was a part of our lives. I thought about her every day."
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