Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
The family of a murdered Bristol Borough woman received one of her items back after more than four decades.
Last Friday at the Bucks County Justice Center in Doylestown Borough, District Attorney Matt Weintraub and members of the Bucks County Detectives met with the family of Shaun Eileen Ritterson to return a gold ring that read “Love” 44 years after it was located with the woman’s body.
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Ritterson, who was 20 years old at the time she died, was found on the side of Church Hill off Holicong Road in Buckingham Township in June 1977. Newspaper reports from the time state Ritterson was cut open and her organs removed. The grisly murder has never been solved.
Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
Shaun’s sister, Grace Ritterson Gordon, accepted the ring, according to a news release from the district attorney’s office.
“Returning Shaun’s ring to her family is the right thing to do,” Weintraub said in a statement. “To me, it signifies that no victim is ever forgotten. Our humanity is much more important that preserving a piece of evidence in an old, old case just for the sake of posterity.”
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Gordon was prompted to contact Weintraub about the ring in July because it would have been Ritterson’s 65th birthday.
Bucks County Detective Timothy Perkins located the ring in evidence storage.
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“I was ecstatic,” Gordon said. “I told my mom, and she was very, very excited. She doesn’t wear jewelry but of course she wants to see it. I am going to get it cleaned up and I am going to wear it on a necklace to bring her closer to my heart.”
Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
Ritterson had three siblings.
Gordon said she and her family will always live with the loss of Ritterson and the trauma that comes along with it.
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In her comments to the district attorney’s office, Gordon said she focuses on the good memories and fun times.
“You learn not to deal with it, but to handle it in a different way,” she said. “Through meditation, looking at pictures, or, you know, just the great memories I try to recall. I look past the horrific crime that it was because that didn’t define my sister. That is not who she was. That is how her life ended, but that is not who she was.”
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One day, according to Weintraub, Gordon said she wants him to come with her when she visits the Church Hill location where her sister’s body was found.
“We will accompany them there, if it will help them in some way,” the district attorney said.
Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
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Ritterson’s unsolved murder gained new attention in 2012 when reporters Matt Coughlin and Laurie Mason Schroeder reexamined the case for the Bucks County Courier Times and Doylestown Intelligencer series “The Body on Church Hill” after they were allowed access to the investigative records. Along with the reporters’ series, the district attorney’s office reopened their probe and took a new look at the case.
In the 1970s and in 2012, police had interest in Ritterson’s uncle, Harry Ritterson, who she often spent time with. Harry Ritterson told the reporters he knew he had been looked at for Shaun Ritterson’s murder and wanted to clear his name, according to the news organizations.
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Detectives gained a search warrant for Harry Ritterson’s DNA but he died of cancer before it could be served. His daughter allowed them to take pieces of his hair before he was buried. The DNA was tested and compared to evidence found at the crime scene, but the samples were too far degraded and were returned inconclusive, Coughlin and Schroeder reported in 2013.
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