At cold-case trial, detective recounts start of 30-year probe

In the early days of an investigation that would span more than three decades, the man now charged with raping and killing a 14-year-old Bucks County girl in 1984 gave police conflicting accounts of when he had last seen her, a detective testified Wednesday .

George F. Shaw, 56, of Geneva, Fla., at first told Terry J. Lachman, then a Bensalem Township police detective, that he last saw Barbara Rowan about 4:30 p.m. Aug. 3, the date on which prosecutors say she was killed, Lachman said on the witness stand on the second day of Shaw's nonjury trial in Bucks County Court.

Shaw later revised that to 5:30, said Lachman, and then 6. Lachman said he interviewed Shaw on Aug. 7, 1984.

Shaw told him that on Aug. 3 the girl "was outside his apartment when he pulled up from dropping his wife off at work, and that Barbara began playing with his daughter," who was a toddler at the time, Lachman testified. Shaw said that Rowan had been at his apartment several times and that she wanted to baby-sit his daughter.

Another witness, Hayes Leroy Biggs, 48, whose sister lived in an apartment above the Shaws, also said he saw Rowan at Shaw's apartment late that afternoon.

He testified that he arrived at the building around 4:10 p.m. and spoke with Rowan. As he and his sister were leaving around 6:30 p.m., he could hear Rowan and the Shaw toddler laughing and playing, he said.

Shaw was charged in October 2015 after a grand jury investigation. Providing key testimony, Robert Sanders, 53, of Willow Grove, told the grand jury that he had been in Shaw's apartment when Rowan was killed and that the two men had put her body in the trunk of Shaw's car.

Sanders, who pleaded guilty in February to obstructing the long investigation and awaits sentencing, is expected to testify.

On Tuesday, the first day of testimony, Robert and Patricia Rowan each recalled on the witness stand the day their only child went missing, and their frantic search for her by foot and car.

In emotional testimony, Robert Rowan recounted identifying his daughter's remains after they were discovered in a wooded area. "Just a skeleton," he said. "Your only child."

Shaw has maintained his innocence. "He didn't do it. It wasn't him," his attorney, Louis Busico, said after Tuesday's proceedings. "This young girl sadly and horrifically was killed by someone else."