Jane McGuire:1972, Boston Heights, Ohio

 



  Jane McGuire grew up in East Washington, Pennsylvania. She had a big family with lots of siblings. 



   On September 20th of 1972, Jane was heading back to college. First she was going to visit her sister in Wheeling, West Virginia and then head to Columbus, Ohio to begin classes at Ohio State University. (One early article stated that she was headed to Athens, Ohio to begin classes at Ohio University.) She had previously attended Windham College. (I believe this may have been located in Vermont.)


  On September 21st when she hadn’t made it to her sister in Wheeling, West Virginia, her family reported her missing. Later that same day her orange and white van was found at a rest stop off state highway Ohio 8, near Boston Heights. (A later report described the site as near the community of Cuyahoga Falls.)That’s a small community near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It’s southeast of Cleveland. It’s nowhere near any logical route that Jane would have taken to college. Police had the van towed but only conducted a cursory search of the rest stop area. 


  An attendant of the rest stop was cleaning up rubbish and performing normal maintenance of the area around the rest stop when he discovered Jane’s body under some bushes about 500 feet from the road early on the 22nd of September. 


  Jane’s hands and feet were bound. Her clothes were “in disarray”. She had been shot three times. An autopsy determined that she had been killed late on September 20th or early on the 21st.


  I wondered if Jane’s van was out of gas. Why leave it? Was this killer trying to get to Cleveland? 


  In early November a suspect was arrested. Larry Joseph Via was an itinerant musician.


    Back on September 21st, he was arrested north of Lima, Ohio about 9:30 a.m. for hitchhiking. Two State Police officers would later testify at his trial. 

  

  In the days and weeks before the murder of Jane McGuire, Larry Joseph Via was traveling around with a girlfriend, Charmaine Phillips. She was a “go go dancer” and the two traveled the mid Atlantic region in her Cadillac picking up work where they could. She had a .25 caliber handgun that she kept for protection. The two also committed armed robbery whenever the opportunity presented itself. 




  He has recently been connected to the murder of a young man, Morgan Peters. This murder happened on September 18th, 1972. He murdered that man on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and not long afterward caught a ride with Jane McGuire. People assume that she picked him up as a hitchhiker but it might be that he carjacked her at a rest stop. 


  The murder of Morgan Peters added more time to Larry Joseph Via’s sentence when DNA and ballistics linked him to the crime in 2018.  Larry Joseph Via is still in prison in early November 2025.  


   Are these murders the only ones that Via committed? 


  Jane McGuire had ambition and a plan for her future. She was on her way to college. She had a boyfriend back in Vermont at Windham College. But her aspirations led her to a different college in Ohio. She should have had a lifetime to see where her dreams led her. 


  Rest in Peace Jane McGuire


  




  



   

   

  


   


Comments

  1. Editor, Boston Heights OverlookNovember 3, 2025 at 6:51 PM

    FWIW, that rest stop was along Ohio Route 8 back when it was just a little two-lane road, not the freeway it is now. It was in rural Boston Township, squarely between Boston Heights and Cuyahoga Falls, but decommissioned when the old road was bypassed in the 80s. This is certainly a sad bit of local history.

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