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Missing student's cap only clue to mystery
Sunday, April 29, 2001 By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Perhaps only the mighty Mon can explain what happened to Justin Hayduk.
Hayduk, a University of Pittsburgh freshman, vanished here during the early-morning hours of March 10.
His white Pitt baseball cap turned up three days later near the banks of the Monongahela River. Otherwise, police say, they haven't a clue.
A bloodhound sniffed the cap and headed straight for the river. Thinking that someone else could have worn her son's cap last, Cheryl Hayduk supplied his pillow from home for another test. The dog inhaled its scent, then loped to the Mon again.
"We're assuming at this point that he went into the water," said Detective Cpl. Phillip Scott of the Morgantown police. "Probably no one wants to think that their son or daughter would fall into the river, but it looks like a tragic accident. We have nothing to indicate foul play."
Searches of the river during the past six weeks have turned up nothing. Even so, Scott said, Hayduk's body could be concealed by the murky Mon, trapped in debris or swept miles away by the swift currents of spring.
Either notion pains his parents. So Cheryl and Mike Hayduk try to remain resolute that their oldest son is alive.
They held a party last Sunday to mark Hayduk's 19th birthday. Friends and family gathered in a park in his hometown of Chambersburg, Franklin County.
They swapped stories about him. They talked about another celebration for his homecoming. Then they launched balloons carrying pleas for help, should anybody cross Hayduk's path.
"The day was certainly bittersweet," Cheryl Hayduk wrote in a note to friends. "I know that the balloon launch was difficult for many. But try to think of it in a positive light. Those balloons may carry our message far and wide. I don't feel it was a goodbye. Rather, it was a mission of hope."
After six weeks and nothing but a damp baseball cap to go on, police admit that, for them, hope has faded.
Hayduk was simply not the type to disappear. A solid student, he seemed happy enough. A deeper look into his background led police to conclude that his life was as smooth as it appeared on the surface.
"We are doubters by nature, so we looked for the little things," Scott said. "We didn't find them. His family life was good. He had no bad relationships."
Beyond that, Hayduk, like many male college freshman, was anything but self-sufficient. When loads of his dirty clothes piled up, he called his grandmother in Port Vue to do his laundry.
On the night Hayduk traveled to Morgantown, he didn't take extra clothes with him. Since he vanished, his bank accounts haven't been touched.
Police say there is still much they don't know. They are certain of one fact only that reflects negatively on Hayduk -- alcohol played a part in his disappearance.
To help celebrate spring break, Hayduk drove to Morgantown with a hometown buddy, Chris Kille, a student at Edinboro University. They went to a bar and drank. Kille, 21, could be served legally. Hayduk packed a phony Pennsylvania identification card carrying the name Michael Stiffler.
After leaving the bar, which police would not identify, they attended a fraternity party and drank some more. Around 2 a.m., Hayduk and Kille had landed in front of the West Virginia University student center. While waiting for a bus that was to take them back to a friend's dormitory room, they got into a make-believe scuffle.
"They were jacking around, as kids will do," Scott said.
This foolishness attracted the notice of passing campus police officers. They thought Hayduk and Kille were brawling, and swooped in to break it up.
Kille panicked and ran. As officers chased him down, Hayduk walked the other way, toward the Downtown business district that abuts the river.
Bob Roberts, WVU's police chief, said his officers were soon busy writing Kille a citation for public intoxication. Some speculate that Hayduk evaded police for fear that he would arrested for underage drinking.
Once Hayduk moved down the street, police decided not to bother with him.
"You see a lot of things on a college campus on a Friday or Saturday night," Roberts said. "We didn't have a reason to pursue him."
By 2:40 a.m., Hayduk had slipped into the 123 Pleasant St. nightclub. He either fell asleep or passed out on a bench in the bar.
The club was closing and the band that had performed there was packing up.
A man shooting pictures of the band decided, for no apparent reason, to snap some shots of Hayduk. Police say those photos are definitive proof that Hayduk was still exploring Morgantown as late as 3 a.m., when he and the last of the customers were shooed from the bar.
Here the mystery of what happened to Hayduk deepens.
A bartender at 123 Pleasant St. told police he called a cab for Hayduk. Hayduk's mother claims to have witnesses who say the cabbie refused him service. The taxi driver told police he had no recollection of being called or of encountering Hayduk.
Scott, of the city police, said hundreds of young men hailed Morgantown taxis that weekend. Many of them, like Hayduk, were wearing blue jeans and baseball caps, so it would be unusual for such a customer to stand out.
The bar where Hayduk was last seen is a block from the Mon River. Police theorize that Hayduk fell or stumbled into the water.
His grandparents, John and Jane Hayduk of Port Vue, refuse to consider the possibility that he drowned.
"I know my grandson. That boy wouldn't be in there," Jane Hayduk said.
Since Hayduk enrolled at Pitt, she had seen a lot of him. With his bulging laundry bag, he visited every few weeks. Jane Hayduk supplied him with clean clothes and home-cooked meals. He entertained her with stories of college life.
Now, Jane Hayduk said, her days seem empty. She fills them with prayers to St. Jude, St. Anthony and St. Therese, a ritual that keeps her optimistic.
"He is going to come home," she said. "I could never think otherwise. I will live long to see him, and I am 75 years old."
In Chambersburg, Hayduk's parents and 16-year-old brother, Tyler, try to go about the business of making a living and attending school. Their days, though, are consumed by the case.
They have created an Internet site -- www.justinhayduk.com -- to track each development in the case. With the help of friends, they have started a reward fund so they can compensate the person who helps bring him home.
Police Cpl. Scott is rooting for them. But as the weeks roll by, he cannot deny his pessimism.
He's afraid that Justin Hayduk's first trip to Morgantown also was his last.
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