True Crime News: The Podcast · True Crime News

Revisit the 1981 murders of 2 Pennsylvania kids and the teen sentenced to death for killing them

January 6, 2026·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

A junior firefighter found Christopher and Cheryl about 30 feet below a strip-mine pit, under carpet.

1. True Crime News: The Podcast centers on the 1981 murders of Christopher Ziemba and Cheryl Ziemba in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. 2. Host Anna Garcia interviews author Brian Kincaid, and Nancy Moscatello joins as his cousin and podcast personality. 3. The episode asks how the Ziemba children disappeared, how investigators identified Joey Alizio, and why the case later mattered in juvenile death-penalty law. 4. Brian says the project began with a 1988 law-school paper on juvenile offenders and the history of death sentences for minors. 5. He cites more than 300 juveniles executed in U.S. history and points to Donald Frodner’s 1948 electric-chair execution in Ohio. 6. A friend from the Scranton area steered him toward the Joseph Alizio case, which had already been covered by the New York Times. 7. Diane Ziemba says she last saw Christopher, age 4, and Cheryl, age 8, walking away from the apartment on July 26, 1981. 8. The children went toward the Alizio house in a neighborhood where kids could still leave to play and return later for dinner. 9. Brian describes a Sunday-night search that drew 500 to 700 people and later a command post at a firehouse. 10. A husband and wife searching near Quarry Slope found carpet, hair, bone fragments, and fleshy material on a wooded coal-waste hill. 11. State Police Major Jordan and District Attorney Ernie Preate treated the area as a homicide scene and shut down parts of town. 12. Brian says a small child-killer profile from prison helped investigators focus on someone local and likely teenage. 13. The killer profile came from William Wright, convicted in the Freach-Keen murders from 1973 in Scranton’s Minooka section. 14. Wright told the trooper the wooded hill was known only to someone in the neighborhood and that the suspect was likely a teenage boy. 15. On Tuesday, investigators matched a piece of white shag carpet to a 1971 Plymouth Cricket parked at Joey Alizio’s house. 16. Witnesses later identified Joey’s car on the mountain, and the show notes that police first showed them the wrong car. 17. Brian says the trial featured 139 pieces of evidence, four weeks of testimony, Saturday sessions, and a Bucks County jury. 18. He describes Joey Alizio yelling in court at Ernie Preate, then putting his fist in the air and shouting, “It’s party time.” 19. The episode has a legal-investigation tone, with Brian giving detailed chronology and Nancy asking clarifying questions. 20. Listeners who like courtroom strategy, forensic reconstruction, and Pennsylvania true crime will get the most from it; listeners avoiding graphic child-homicide detail may skip it.

As heard by us

A careful revisit of the Freach Keen murders that lets the evidence and prison interview sharpen the case.

This episode stays close to the facts, using the Freach Keen murders to show how a case can change when investigators return to what they thought they knew.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a Scranton-area Pennsylvania true-crime case built around details, profiling, and the investigative tools of the day, with a missing-children search driving the pressure.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from True Crime News: The Podcast