Crime Stoppers offering reward for information in Fayette killing
Donald Roy Wilt, 26, was shot and killed in a road-rage incident in Henry Clay Township in 1980. The case is still unsolved.
In this 2013 photo, Rosemary McClintock holds up a photo of her late husband, Donald Roy Wilt, who was shot and killed in 1980. The case remains unsolved.
Pictured is the 1969 Chevrolet Chevette Donald Ray Wilt was driving the evening he was killed along Route 40 in Henry Clay Township.
On Aug. 30, 1980, a Maryland man was shot and killed in Henry Clay Township in what was the first documented instance of homicidal road rage in Fayette County.
In an effort to generate leads into the death of 26-year-old Donald Roy Wilt, Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers is offering a $5,000 reward.
According to police, Wilt, a Grantsville resident, ate dinner with his wife, Rosemary, at a restaurant near their home. They left separately, her heading to visit family, and him driving west in a 1969 Chevrolet Chevette on Route 40 to meet a friend in Fayette County.
On his way, Wilt encountered a white Chrysler Cordoba. Witnesses told police they saw Wilt at different points on Route 40, hanging out of his window, yelling at someone in the Cordoba as the cars drove west.
Somewhere in Henry Clay Township, Wilt’s car slowed and crashed into some mailboxes and a tree on Route 40. First responders saw blood throughout the car, and found he had been fatally shot.
Police believe that something cracked Wilt’s windshield – either a stone kicked up from the Cordoba, or someone in it throwing something at Wilt’s car – and that prompted the exchange. Investigators theorize it was the driver of the Cordoba who shot and killed Wilt.
Twenty years ago, the Herald-Standard newspaper in Uniontown produced a series of articles detailing unsolved murders in and around Fayette County.
In a February 2013 article about Wilt’s death, an investigator said the road rage-style homicide was the first reported in the county, if not in the state.
A reporter also spoke to Wilt’s wife, Rosemary McClintock, who expressed hope that there would one day be closure in the case.
“This is a story that has a beginning but doesn’t have an end. It would be nice to have the ending,” she said at the time.
McClintock, who remarried after Wilt’s death, described him as a jovial man who loved her and their son, who was 5 when his father was killed.
She also spoke of the many family members and friends who passed after Wilt was killed – dying without knowing who’d taken his life.
“How many more people will be gone before we’ll ever have an answer?” she asked during the 2013 interview. “It’d be nice to have an answer, to know. There is somebody out there who looks at themselves every day in the mirror knowing that they did this. I just don’t know how people can do that. … They have to answer for something that they’ve done.”
State police Trooper Kalee Barnhart, public information officer at the Uniontown station said police have no new leads in the case, but asked that anyone with information about Wilt’s death call 724-439-7111.
The public can also contact Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers toll free at 1-800-4PA-TIPS (8477) or online at www.p3tips.com/tipform.aspx?ID=107. All callers remain anonymous and could be eligible for a cash reward.