Death Probers Find Trousers

Death Probers Find Trousers

A pair of trousers, two ‘passed” lie-detector tests and an obscure hamlet in West Virginia.

These three items today represented the latest developments in the investigation of the murder of Arland R. Withrow of 1197 Hunter Ave. in Ypsilanti Township.

The black trousers were found yesterday by two Sheriff's Department skindivers in the shallow water of Pine River which runs under Webb Rd. 14 miles west of Port Huron. Divers Lenard McDougall and William Stander, both sheriff’s officers,

recovered the pants after three hours of diving. Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey said the clothing was found under the bridge which spans the Pine River branch. Withrow’s nude body, bound and weighted down with a cement block, was found in the creek by hunters on Oct. 20. The 17-year-old Ypsilanti Township boy had disappeared from his home on the night of Oct. 16.

Harvey said the trousers appeared to have blood stains on them and have been sent to the crime laboratories of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington for examination. Still missing is Withrow's black and yellow shirt, his underclothing, and the socks and shoes he was wearing when he vanished.

The lie-detector tests involved in the 10-day-old investigation were given at the Wayne County Sheriff's Department’s road patrol headquarters near Wayne yesterday to two teen-age acquaintances of Withrows. The sheriff said both boys "passed” the tests, which showed neither had guilty knowledge of the murder. One of the youths was taken from his County Jail cell for the test where he is confined pending a trial on a break-in charge.

Harvey said other polygraph tests may be administered later this week to other persons who have been questioned and released in the past week.

The West Virginia town which now appears in the story of the investigation is so small it does not appear on regular maps. Its name is Pleasant Hill and it is located in Jackson County, Va., less than 20 miles from the Ohio River and the Ohio state line.

Robert Pugh, 32-year-old school teacher, was born in this tiny village. Pugh's nude and bound body was found near a Toledo, Ohio, subdivision shortly after Withrow’s murder was discovered. His body lay unidentified in a Toledo morgue until yesterday when fingerprint reports came back from FBI headquarters in Washington.

Harvey says the Withrow boy’s family is from the Pleasant Hill area and may have known Pugh.

'This possible link is too coincidental to pass over lightly,” Harvey said. “We’re putting two men on this angle of the case immediately.”

Earlier, the possibility of connection between the two deaths had been discounted by investigators.

The sheriff said the rest of the investigation has dropped down into the “routine” pace of checking out telephoned tips and running down leads being provided by citizens.