On January 14, 1982, 11-year-old Jon Michael Dabkowski and 10-year-old Gabriel Minarcin disappeared while walking the short distance between their homes in Tarentum, Pennsylvania. Jon(11) and Gabriel(10) were school friends, and they lived 3 houses away from each other. The boys were at Jon's house for dinner. When they were done eating, they decided to take the short walk to Gabriel's house to play around 5:30pm.
Jon's mother became worried when Jon did not return around 8:30pm. Assuming her son was still at his friend's house, she called the Minarcin home to discover that neither of the boys had made it to Gabriel's house at all that night.
It was reported that a neighbor had seen them walking across the ice of the Allegheny River earlier that night. When police investigated, they determined that all sets of footprints on the ice returned to the shore safely (except Jon's page on Charleyproject claims that no footprints were found leading away from the river bank)
Regardless, divers and police searched the river just to turn up nothing. Weeks, months, years went by. 42 years later, and no evidence has ever been found of either boys. (Minus a man that had stolen Jon's identity in 1998, who coincidentally had the same handwriting as Jon).
Police do not agree on what happened to them. It is most likely believed the boys drowned in the river, or that they were abducted by someone.
Jon's father, Johnathan Dabkowski, died in 2012. Jon's mother still hasn't given up hope, but all I saw on the Minarcin family is that they moved to a remote location in California years ago. The Minarcin home in Tarentum was torn down. They declined to participate in a DNA sample update in recent years. Seems like they just want to move on. I don't have the impression that they are guilty of anything, but I could be wrong. There's limited info...
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