Original subtitles

[reporter] It's usually busy on a Friday night

in the Pizza Capital of the World.

We're about 10 to 15% busier

than a regular Friday.

[Gregory] Everybody loved Mr. Baron.

He would give pizzas away to people that were in need.

This was very much a who-done-it from the get-go.

We need that one person that knows something

to give us a call.

[Gregory] They knew that something horribly went wrong

inside that restaurant.

[Stacy] It all just seems so stupid.

It just doesn't make any sense.

None of it had to happen... at all.

[chilling music]

[narrator] On the morning of January 26, 2017,

Robert Baron Sr.ú doesn't show up for work

at the pizza restaurant he ownsú in Old Forge, Pennsylvania.

[Sara] At that point in the operation of Ghigiarelli's,

it seemed like Mr. Baron and his son Bobby Jr.

Had a pretty good system.

The dough would get delivered.

They would roll everything out

into the pans for the day,

take a lunch break before opening for the night.

So it was their practise

that Mr. Baron would come, pick his son up in the morning,

go to the restaurant, get everything up and running.

Bobby Jr. texted his dad maybe like 7:30 in the morning.

"Like, hey, dad, I'm up, come and get me."

Which was the normal practise.

Mr. Baron never responded.

Bobby walked down to the restaurant.

When he arrived at Ghigiarelli's,

the dough delivery was still outside,

and that was his first clue that something was wrong.

[Sheryl] Robert Baron Jr., he entered the restaurant

and noticed that his dad wasn't there.

It was very unusual for him not to be there,

work was his whole life pretty much.

Other than being a family man,

he worked and lived at the restaurant.

So it was unusual he was not there

when Robert Baron Jr. arrived.

[Sara] Bobby realized things were out of place.

The cordless phone that was like the business phone

was in a place that it normally wouldn't be kept.

He called his mom.

[Gregory] Maybe he's with his mother?

His mother was ill at the time.

So maybe he's at his mother's house

checking in on his mother,

well, that provedú to be not... not the case.

He wasn't there.

And there was other places that they had checked,

was not there.

It wasn't until they discovered his cell phone inside

the kitchen of the pizzeria

that hey, something... something's not right here.

And that's when the family called directly

to the Old Forge Police Department.

[narrator] Robert's wife tells police

that everything was fine the night before

when she last saw her husband.

He was at his family's home the night before.

It was a slower night, so he left Bobby, Jr.

And at the time Bobby Jr.'s girlfriend worked there.

They ran the operations that night.

Mr. Baron went to his family's home,

which is a couple of blocks away.

Had dinner with Mrs. Baron

and at some point returned back to the restaurant

after it was closed up.

[Gregory] He had an apartment upstairs

that he was living in.

He would stay there a few nights a week.

It was just easier for him

by the time he closed at 11 o'clock at night.

He could just get up from upstairs early in the morning

to meet the dough delivery downstairs

between six and seven a.m.

So the Old Forge Police Department

came to the pizzeria because that's where the family was.

And once the Old Forge Police Department got inside

the restaurant itself,

they noticed little things.

Some things being out of place,

maybe a chair moved or tipped over.

And then they started to look a little further

and found some blood evidence.

Officer Kimball first noticed the blood

under the baseboards in the bar area.

I think just for the normal eye,

you may not have seen what Officer Kimball saw.

He had a point out to Mrs. Baron,

that's not sauce, that's blood.

And that's when the decision was made

to use luminol to see if there was more blood

than we initially could just see with a naked eye.

Once the luminol was applied,

the place lit up...

like a house decorated for Christmas.

There was an extensive amount of blood.

[Gregory] They also discovered a tooth, a human tooth,

inside of a deep sink trap as well.

They knew that something horribly went wrong

inside that restaurant.

[light music]

[narrator] For the tight-knit community of Old Forge,

the idea that one of theirown could be violently attacked

is unthinkable.

Old Forge is a quintessential small town.

Downtown Old Forge is probably six or seven blocks.

When you're on, Main Street Old Forge,

you can kind of feel like you're stuck in the '50s

'cause the facades of the buildings

have not changed since that time.

Old Forge is small town America.

Everybody knows each other in Old Forge.

Everything flows from Main Street, right?

That's where the police department is.

That's where the fire department is.

That's where the borough headquarters are.

Everybody walks to the football stadium on Friday night

and everybody goes to get pizza on Friday night.

[reporter] It's usually busy on a Friday night

in the Pizza Capital of the World.

Usually every Friday in Old Forge,

it's a tradition, M ain Street's like Las Vegas

[Stacy] They have their own style of pizza

called Old Forge Pizza,

which is unique it's square,

it's kind of like a Sicilian pie,

but it's not, it's Old Forge style.

It's a square dough, and usually has a mix of mozzarella

and American cheese,

and you can get it just about every block in Old Forge.

Ghigiarelli's Pizza is the original Old Forge pizza shop.

The Baron family, I believe his parents

purchased it from the Ghigiarelli's in 1961,

So they've owned and operated it in the Baron family

since the early '60s.

[Sheryl] The restaurant was owned

by Robert Baron Sr.'s mother.

He and his siblings then took over the restaurant

and he pretty much ran it on his own.

We're about 10 to 15% busier,

than a regular Friday night during Lent.

[Stacy] Robert Baron Sr. Ran Ghigiarelli's Pizza

for many, many years.

We interviewed him on Friday nights in Lent

when pizza shops in Old Forge would get really busy

and he was just known as a fixture

of the business community in Old Forge.

Everybody loved Mr. Baron,

he would give pizzas away to people that were in need

on a daily basis.

That was just a type of person that he was.

A long time business owner in Old Forge

has vanished and police believe

he may be in danger.

Their investigation is focused on

his family's restaurant

that's been in business for decades.

News Watch 16 Stacy Lange is live

in Old Forge with the story, Stacy.

Yeah, Don and Julie, Ghigiarelli's is

one of the famous Old Forge pizza restaurants.

It would normallyú be busy on a Friday night,

but it's been closed since yesterday.

Police say its owner Robert Baron

was last seen Wednesday night.

[Stacy] I came into work that morning on the 26th.

We had heard that there was a police presence

at Ghigiarelli's Pizza

and that it had become a missing person's case

and that Robert Baron Sr. Was missing

and that was highly unusual.

My photographer and I hopped in our car.

We drove down to Old Forge,

which is only about five minutes away from the station.

And there was an immediate feeling of

"oh, something is really wrong here."

[reporter] Baron's friends andúneighbours of the business say

a disappearance is out of character

for the father of three

who left an impression on otherú Old Forge business owners.

The best, the bestú neighbour you want to meet.

Always good to us when we moved in,

he sent over a couple of traysúof pizza, you know, to greet us.

And just so nice, we'd meet him in the backyard

and always friendly, nice conversation.

We're hoping for the best.

What I would like to say is, at this point in time,

we don't have any evidence of him being dead.

We certainly have not found a body or deceased person.

We are asking if anybody onú the public has information

or has seen Mr. Baron, you know, going back to Tuesday

to please give the Lackawanna County

Communications Center a call.

So you really don't know, right then and there

is he dead, is he just injured somewhere?

Where is he?

The car was also missing.

He had borrowed a car from a friend.

So the car was gone.

No one knew where that went.

Who would have taken the car?

Who would have known that he was borrowing

a car from a friend?

So there was a lot of moving parts to this case

from the very beginning.

[narrator] Three days after Mr. Baron is last seen,

his car is found.

Someone had called into our 911 Centre

that they located a car

they believed was the vehicleú Robert Baron Sr. was using.

The Old Forge's police responded to the scene where the car was

and it was determined that was the vehicle

he had been using.

Robert Sr.'s car wasúdiscovered on Connell Street,

which is within Old Forge, ú it is a dead end street.

My photographer and I, we wereú in Old Forge driving around

and we got word thatú the car had been found.

I think we may have heard it on the scanner.

So we went to where it was.

I remember taking note of the mud on the tires

and thinking that that was unusual

because it was a residential street.

It had been really snowy and cold.

So it's not like you would get that much mud

on your tires just from driving around Old Forge

at that point in the winter.

We got a search warrant for the car,

transported the carú to state police barracks

where it was later processed.

There was significant blood evidence

in the front passenger seat area of the car.

[narrator] Investigators fear this could now be more

than a missing person's case.

The Lackawanna County detectives at the time,

along with Old Forge PD,

that's where they started their investigation,

which is typical in any homicide or missing person investigation

is to do some digging on, on the victim,

what were his habits,

what were his business transactions,

did he have any enemies at the time?

Disgruntled customer

or a business partner, so-to-speak.

There was a lot of rumours that were going around.

[Sheryl] We went down the route of

was this possibly organized crime,

was this gambling, did it have anything to do with that?

And it was determined that it didn't.

[ criminologist] We don't see really any forced entry.

So now police detectives are now moving in the thought of,

this is probably someone familiar.

Uh, hmm, first question, whoúhad access to the individual?

Within the first 24 to 48 hours,

is when we started doing some of our own searching,

and we saw that we had had previous coverage

of Bob Jr.

[narrator] In a 2017 interview with WNEP,

Robert Baron Jr. is visibly devastated

by his father's death.

He would have just given them money, if they wanted money.

I don't understand why these people had to go in there

and bother him.

[narrator] Investigators ruled Baron Jr.

Out of their inquiries,

but could he offer any clues?

A working theory from the very beginning was that

there were people involved in drugs

who needed money

and they knew where to find it

and it was in Ghigiarelli's.

They learned that Baron didn't believe in banks.

He kept large amounts of money at the place of business.

[Sheryl] Robert Baron Sr., kept safes hidden

in the upstairs apartment.

This also was a cash business,

so there was a lot of cash in there.

The cash register was cleared out of any cash.

The safe upstairs were emptied of any cash.

[narrator] Detectives begin looking closely at someone

who once had access, trust

and a close connection to the Baron family.

A man called Justin Schuback.

There is this small sect, this small group in Old Forge

that we're using drugs.

They would often use together.

Mr. Baron didn't like Justin Schuback

for that reason.

There was a lot of suspicion

that Justin had something to do with the case.

Primarily with the Baron family,

they really were the ones who suspected

Justin had something to do with this.

[Stacy] Before things went south,

before the drugs really took hold,

Justin and Bobby were at the restaurant constantly.

Bobby Sr. thought of Justin as like another son.

Justin Schuback and Robert Baron Jr.,

they really were not close anymore.

It was about maybe a week prior to this incident,

Justin Schuback just showed up at the pizzaria

with his girlfriend at the time

and asked to speak with Bobby Jr.

So he kind of re-engaged himself

in Bobby Jr.'s life about a week prior to this incident.

[Sheryl] Justin Schuback, he was interviewed

in the very beginning of this case.

Once his name was mentioned,

a few of our detectives went down to his residence

and spoke with him.

He was cooperative with investigators.

He denied any involvement to Detective Colcharno.

[narrator] But as detectives dig deeper,

they begin hearing information about Justin Schuback

that raises new questions.

Justin Schuback would often buy drugs

from an individual known as Pat Boyle.

When Pat was interviewed,

he said that on the evening Robert Baron went missing,

the evening before he was reported missing,

Justin Schuback had owed Pat Boyle money for drugs.

Pat and Justin met up near the UPS store

in Old Forge on Main Street

and Pat informed us

that Justin had a significant amount of cash on him

that he usually never had.

[Sara] Justin Schuback and his girlfriend,

they were inseparable.

They were always together.

She was only 19 at the time.

She was not sure where he was when he left the house

on the evening that Robert Baron went missing.

She was constantly texting him "where are you",

"when are you coming home"

and he would respond with, "shh".

He said he was in the woods.

We knew that he obviously was lying to her.

He wanted to be hidden because he was not responding

to her phone calls.

He would only text her back

and then he kind of went off the grid.

He wasn't responding for a while.

He does come home at three or four in the morning,

and he comes in through a window

and his boots are all muddy, and he's sweaty,

and he won't tell her where he's been.

And then she finds out that in that morning,

the Bob Sr. is missing.

[narrator] By early 2018,

investigators are publicly describing

Robert Baron's disappearance as a homicide.

The case against Justin Schuback is compelling,

but also circumstantial.

The problems that we ran into were,

we didn't have any of his DNA in the restaurant

or in the bar area, and we had no body.

In the first week, we covered a lot of search parties.

[reporter]ú Thursday, February 2nd,

police scour the woodsú in two areas of Old Forge

state troopers walked sideú by side in a line for miles.

Dogs were brought in too, and a dive team

for the nearby Lackawanna River.

[Stacy] There's a lot of old coal mining land in Old Forge,

and I remember a search party in like an old coal dump

thinking that that may have been where he ended up,

They didn't know where to look.

I think every day we work harder,

we get closer, we findúsomething or talk to someone.

You know, we need that one person

that knows something to give us a call.

We all wonder where is his body?

Where is this poor man laying?

We just wanted to bring justice to the family,

justice to him.

[Gregory] The community is having to live with knowing

that there is a murderer living in their community.

That still could be among them.

So it was a pretty scary time for people living in Old Forge.

[Sara] We had so many leads.

This is a case that everybody came out of the woodwork.

And Detective Bauer ran down every single lead.

When I tell you every single lead,

we had our chief crawling through a sewer,

cause someone called in that Bobby Baron's body

was in a sewer.

We had a psychic saying they had a vision.

And so they drove to another county

and knocked on some random person's door saying,

"We're investigating Mr. Baron's disappearance

and a psychic told us that he's in your attic."

So no lead was too small.

You still lived in that community

knowing that the killer of an innocent man

was walking the street free in your neighbourhood.

Whoever did it, just come clean, just fess up.

I mean, you'll feel better about yourself.

You'll get off your chest and everything.

And if they don't, ú it's like... it's karma.

They'll come back and get them.

It did have, you know, a chilling effect.

The police chief will tell you, people were hounding him,

accusing him of somehow covering this up.

Like, it's just... There wasn't unsettleness to it.

[Everette] What the officers

have now is a person of interest.

You certainly have motivation.

You have money missing.

You have a person missing.

Unfortunately, the case goes cold,

even with all these elements that exist.

Restaurant owner Robert Baron

has been missing for 16 months now.

It has been two years

since an Old Forge businessman vanished.

Four years ago this week,

a Lackawanna County businessman,

vanished fromú his pizza shop in Old Forge.

News Watch 16's Stacy Lange

spoke with the family of Robert Baron.

They share new evidenceúthey hope may lead to Robert.

[Stacy] Robert Baron's missing persons poster

outside Ghigiarelli's Pizza onú Main Street in Old Forge

shows its age now.

We talked to Baron's wife Maria

and daughter's Brittany and Nicole over Zoom.

As each year passes, theynbecome more and more frustrated

that the case has not been solved.

I mean, where do you go from here?

I mean, nobody should beúable to get away with murder.

[Stacy] The family was getting very frustrated.

They didn't have any answers.

So they came to me and they said,

"We have surveillance video

from the night, Bob Sr. went missing

and we want you to air it."

We ended up doing a story with a surveillance video

that showed video of someone that we didn't know who it was

going back and forth

between the UPS store in Old Forge and Main Street.

The Barons are sharingú with us surveillance video

they tracked down more than a year ago

and passed along to investigators.

The video shows people who the Barons believe

may have information onú what happened to Robert.

The video was taken twoú blocks from the pizza place

on Main Street in Old Forge.

During the time it is believednthat Robert Baron went missing.

The first clip that we haveúblurred shows a man in shorts

walking by just afterú midnight on January 26th.

The Barons say this man matchesú the description of a man

that a witness sawú outside of Ghigiarelli's

less than an hour earlier.

The next video clip shows aú man holding a lit cigarette

and pulling a rolling suitcase behind him.

At the same time, the first manú comes back the way he came.

The Barons are interested in that suitcase.

Since they say a similar one was stored

in an apartment above Ghigiarelli's.

I still remember going up thereú and storing it in there.

And it's not there now, right?

- And it's gone. - Yeah.

So come on.

[Stacy] When were they gonna find him?

It was something that was constantly on our minds

that gave room to so much theory and rumours,

not just in our newsroom,

certainly not just in our newsroom, but in Old Forge.

It was something that people constantly thought about.

It was frustrating.

[narrator]úAs four years slip into five,

the questions only grow louder.

[reporter] This sign still hangs outside

of Ghigiarelli's restaurant onú Main Street, in Old Forge.

It now reads "five years, ú no Bob, no arrests. Why?"

Robert Baronú from Old Forge went missing

exactly five years ago.

He owned this business.

People who live in thisú part of Lackawanna County

can't believe where the time has gone.

I cannot believe it's been five years.

The time really flies right by.

And I wish they could... I hopeú they do something about it.

It breaks your heart, you know, ú I really wish, you know,

something gets solved in good time.

Five years go byú and can you just imagine

the strain on the familyú of not having any answer

as to where their beloved is?

[narrator] Five years after Robert Baron disappears

with no answers for the family

and suspicion lingering close to home,

local investigators make a critical decision,

they asked the Pennsylvania State Police

to take a fresh look.

So in 2022 in November,

I was asked by theú District Attorney's Office

if I would be willing to take a look at it

and maybe provide someú guidance and suggestions

on how to move the case forward.

I met with the District Attorney's Office

and the County Detectives about this case.

And usually before I do that,

I request the whole case file in digital format,

all of the lab reports any surveillance videos.

And in this case, specifically,

there was some raw cell phone data

that was collected in 2017 as well.

[Michael] Nowadays, every investigation

pretty much has a phone.

So there's somethingú that can be gleaned from

the phone piece of an investigation,

just like footprints and fingerprints

and DNA and everything like that.

[Gregory] I reviewed the whole case.

Corporal Dan Nilon is a cell phone analyst

within the state police.

So I asked him, I said, "Hey, I have this old records

from 2017 of Justin Schuback.

Would you mind taking a look at this and mapping it for me?

I want to be able to track Justin Schuback's movements

on the day that Robert Baron disappeared

and the day after."

[narrator] The key to tracking the phone is range to tower

or RTT information.

I'm looking at Justin Schuback's cellular records,

specifically, his RTT recordsú or timing advanced records.

And what they are are records

that each provider keeps on each cell phone.

It measures how far a cell phone is

from the cell phone tower at any given time.

[Sheryl] Obviously, the records are tied to a device,

not an individual.

But based on the other cellular analysis

of Justin's girlfriend's phone,

there was a lot of phone extractions done in this case.

She was communicating with him,

so we had text messages between she and Justin.

So based on their phone extractions,

we knew that he was in possession

of that device at that time.

I loaded the records up into a mapping software,

and Corporal Allen and I went over the records,

one by one, second by second.

And we were able to see that Justin Schuback's device

was at Ghigiarelli's pizza place,

the night that Robert Baron went missing.

The device was at the pizza place,

and then it seemed to go south into Old Forge,

and then it returned to the pizza place again,

and then it finally left the pizza place

and travelled down past the residence of Justin Schuback

into what appeared to be a wooded area,

which is filled with old coal mines, comb banks,

and woods, and power lines.

And then we saw that the device returned

to the area of Justin Schuback's residence

for several hours

as we presumed he was sleeping in the residence.

And then when it left the residence in the morning

it travelled back to that wooded area again,

which we thought was very strange

and definitely needed further investigation.

[Michael] If this guy was a camper

and he goes to the woods all the time,

then it's no big deal.

But once you start seeing that

mmm, this phone doesn't typically go over there,

why did that phone go there that night?

We had looked at the records in the case,

and there had been a search done previously in the woods,

but it did not encompass the entire area

that we were looking at.

[narrator] Detectives compare cell phone records

to other information they have on the case.

[Gregory] With the cell phone tracking,

it puts a timestamp on the locations.

Every time the phone

connects with the cell phone tower,

there's a time stamp with that.

So we were able to show

at this time Justin Schuback was at Ghigiarelli's restaurant.

At this time he was at a drug transaction with Pat Boyle,

which we corroborated with some video surveillance

that we had as well

of Pat Boyle walking to meet Justin Schuback.

[narrator] That video is the same one Stacy Lange

showed on television a year earlier.

[Stacy] The firstú clip that we have blurred

shows a man in shorts

walking by just afterú midnight on January 26th.

The video actually depicts Pat Boyle.

And confirms essentially that he met Justin Schuback that night

because he was owed money and he was given cash

and he noticed that Justin had wards of cash in his pockets

and was in a hurry.

[narrator] Investigators prepare to conduct a new search.

At this point, we narrowed it down to

a search area in Pagnotti Park area,

which is about... the search area is about 1200 acres,

which to put it in perspective

is a little over 900 football fields large,

which is a huge area.

So then we had to come up with a plan, well,

how are we going to search this, number one.

And how are we going to search this effectively?

We're only going to get one shot at this.

So we have to do it right the first time.

[Sara] The decision was made

in the days leading up to the search

that we would try to re-interview Justin Schuback.

Not like, hey, can you come down to headquarters?

What we did is we put a wire on detective Turner

and her and Trooper Greg Allen went to Justin Schuback's house.

We spoke to him about his whereabouts on the evening

of when we believe Robert Baron was killed.

We had him believe that we were there

trying to gather information on Robert Baron Jr.

But really, in fact, we were trying to determine

where he would say he was and he did, in fact,

tell us a completely different story

as to where he was

other than what his cellular analysis proved.

[Sara] At this point, we know where the cellular analysis

puts all of his movements at night.

He denies being in Pagnotti Park completely,

and he points to the other,

"No, I was getting high up on Corey Slop",

was the complete opposite direction

of other side of Pagnotti Park of his house.

That was a big admission for us.

The other huge admission is that he said,

"When you're when you're dope-sick like that,

you'll do anything, you'll even steal from your grandmother."

And that for us was another huge admission when it came to just

that he would have done anything in that moment

to get more dope.

[Gregory] I've been involved

in a lot of searches for remains

And there's many factors that come into it.

Number one, the terrain, number two, the climate.

And you have to think about it,

could Justin Schuback have buried the body.

Yes, absolutely.

That makes things ten times more difficult.

If we believe that the body was dug there and placed there,

how good of a job did he do digging it,

how deep did he go, are all factors.

And those factors, you don't know.

[Gregory] It would have been a big let down

if we didn't find him.

[reporter] New life in a six-year-old case

of a man missing from Old Forge.

Today investigators wereúback out searching for clues.

Live for us tonight, Courtney.

Stacy and Lisa, we are just outside

the entrance to Pagnotti Park.

That is in the Connell's Patch section of Old Forge.

One of two places that haveú been very active today

as several agencies have been out here

assisting in this search.

In the sky, ú a state police helicopter

circled above the area of the park

and Popple Bros. úCoal Company, a second location,

where crews spentú the day coming and going.

So many resources for clues

in the missing case of Robert Baron.

[Gregory] Prior to the search that morning,

I had went to the house of the family.

They had no idea the search was going on.

I kept that from them for obvious reasons.

I went to their house and I told them

that, hey, we're doing the search today.

We believe that he is inú the Pagnotti Park area.

We knew that there was goingúto be a large media presence.

Just based off of the amount

of law enforcement personnel that we had there

that the community was going to be talking.

So I wanted to give them a heads up that,

"Hey, this is what we're doing today."

And it was emotional for them

you know, that, hey, we could find our father today,

we could find my husband today.

We had probably 150 members

pretty much standing shoulder to shoulder,

walking through an area that was already pre-determined.

This is what we're going to search first.

When we first started searching,

there were, what appearedú to be bones everywhere.

I think I took my firstú five steps into the woods

and I found the remains of a deer.

But we had game commission officers with us,

and they said, "No, that's a deer, keep moving."

[Gregory] I was with one of the cadaver canine units.

He was approximately 15 feet in front of me,

and their procedure is they go ahead first.

Let the dogs do their work first.

Let the human searchers follow behind,

and that's what we did. He was directly in front of me.

We got about 40 yards.

I think it was 12 minutes or so into the search

and the dog alerted in front of me.

And his dog handler started to move

some of the ground leaf litter around.

And I'll never forget the face of the dog handler.

He looks up at me and he says "Greg", and he points down.

And I walk up to it.

And to me, this is a human femur laying on top of the ground.

There was other investigators around me

and we kind of just all looked at each other in awe,

saying, "We did it."

In 15 minutes of the search we did it.

[Michael] I was super surprised.

I remember telling my family

I'm probably gonnaú be gone for a few days,

but I think throughout that day,

in that same area, other smaller bones

were then located.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe

we found the remains that quickly

and that sadly they were there the whole time.

[Stacy] A major developmentú in the search for evidence

related to the disappearance of Robert Baron

in Old Forge today.

Breaking news here at five, ú just a short time ago,

the Lackawanna Countyú District Attorney's Office

says investigators did find human remains

during their search. Courtney.

Stacy, investigatorsú have wrapped up their search

here at Pagnotti Park,

where bones were discovered

and have since been takenú away to be tested for DNA.

[narrator] At the Pennsylvania State Police,

DNA Laboratory outside Pittsburgh,

the answer arrives.

The bones are Robert Baron Sr.'s,

and detectives say they know who did it.

The district attorney said, "All right,

type up the affidavit,

let's go arrest this guy."

So we planned a tactile approach,

the Lackawanna County detectives handled most of that.

So they pretty much basically just went to his house,

knocked on the door,

Justin Schuback was reluctant to open the door,

so the investigators, the tactical team,

made entry into the house

and took him into custody without incident.

I think the biggest community reaction

in the days that followedú his arrest was how did he...

How did he stay there and not say anything?

I have always been kind of baffled

in how he was able to live in that community for seven years

amid all that suspicion.

I mean, his name came up constantly.

Bob Sr.'s picture

and a poster begging the community for information

is still on the front of Ghigiarelli's.

He would have had to drive past it

every time he went down Main Street and Old Forge.

How do you do that and just keep quiet for so long?

That's just baffling

and I think that's really how the community felt.

I do think that he

probably thought he was getting away with it,

but I'm sure in the back of his mind,

you know, he always wondered

if it was going to catchú up to him at some point.

The most talked about criminalú cases in Lackawanna County

heads to trial.

Justin Schuback is being tried

for the murder of Old Forge businessman

Robert Baron.

A jury has been seated

and opening statementsú are now underway, Stacy.

Yeah, good afternoon, Rennie

more than seven years since Robert Baron

vanished fromúhis Old Forge pizza restaurant

and the trial forú his murder began today.

The district attorney's office really did present it

as this is the result of something

that really shattered a community

and it technically is a robbery gone wrong

but I think it really is more

about the effect drugs can have on a person and a community

is really more what this story is about.

The case was presented as why would Justin Schuback

be motivated to do this?

And that drugs is really the answer.

[narrator] A man who spent time in jail with Justin Schuback

comes forward and claims he knows what happened

the night of the murder.

We had a jailhouse informant, ú and the jailhouse informant

is probably one of theú most charismatic people

you would ever meet.

Mr. Schuback ended up confiding some of the details

of the assault to this informant.

He stated that his plan was to break in and steal money,

and wasn't expecting Mr. Baron to be there.

Mr. Schuback admitted that he had hit Mr. Baron

with a large metal object.

Beat Mr. Baron to death, you know, enough trauma

to cause his tooth to fall out,

to cause blood to be

from one end of the bar area to the other.

We believe him to have gone upstairs,

gotten this comforter that was missing and never recovered.

Wraps Mr. Baron's body inside the comforter,

dragging it out and actually putting Mr. Baron

in the passenger seat.

He cleaned up the crime scene, he moved his body.

He hid the body and he went back home and went to bed.

One of the biggest advantages that Justin Schuback had

was his friendship with Bobby Jr.

He had a familiarity with that restaurant.

He had previously gone in with Bobby

and stolen money out of his Dad's safe.

He knew how to go in and out of Ghigiarelli"s.

He knew that there was a ladder on the side

that he could crawl into the second floor apartment

and have access to the safes that were up there.

[Sheryl] He needed money. He was a drug addict.

I believe they kept $50 in the cash register drawer,

but it was a cash business.

So there was the safes upstairs that had cash in them.

We do know that Robert Baron Sr.

Was in the process of buying a vehicle.

So we believe that he did have

several thousand dollars in cash in there,

but we don't know the exact amount.

[narrator] Schuback's defence attorney

argues that the case is circumstantial.

There are no eyewitnesses who placed Justin Schuback

inside the pizza restaurant during the murder.

The defence has the job ofúsimply putting reasonable doubt

in the minds of the jury.

So it is the prosecutor that must present

step by step by step what occurred.

[Sara] There was nothing inside that restaurant

that we could tie Schuback to

when it came to fingerprints or DNA.

The only thing that we really found

that tied him to the crime that we were able to explain

was Justin Schuback always used this green backpack.

And there was rubber gloves in the backpack,

which allowed us to argue,

that's why there's no DNA in this restaurant

of Justin Schuback.

That's why there's no fingerprints left behind.

He was going there to rob it.

[Stacy] I did not necessarily believe

that he was going to be convicted

of first degree murder.

I thought they had really convincing evidence

that Justin Schuback moved the body.

They didn't have very convincing evidence

that Justin Schuback killed Robert Baron Sr.

So I thought maybe he was going to be convicted on

second degree murder, but that's what happened.

We just heard the verdict was just read here

at the Lackawanna County Courthouse.

The jury has found Justin Schuback guilty

of first degree murder and also guilty of burglary.

The jury reached that verdict around

1:50 this afternoon

after what had been ten hours of deliberation

over the course of two days.

When they said, you know, ú murder the first degree,

we find you guilty,

I just remember, you know, úgrabbing my trial partner like,

"All right, we did it." Like, this has been

seven years in the making,

and we finally did it like I said,

a guilty man had walked the streets freely for six years,

because an innocent man has life taken from him.

So I hope that at least gave the family some answers.

I hope they know that we never gave up,

and that we worked tirelessly on it.

[Stacy] I remember them getting very emotional.

I remember like kind of a wave of relief.

It's just like kind of like a physical release

of whatever tension they're holding.

I remember that feeling, that release of tension.

Remember some, you know, audible crying

when that verdict was read.

I think it's closure forúeverybody and the community also

that this has been foundú to come to a conclusion.

It's been a long time coming

and it's good that theyú finally got the verdict out

and the family can move on

and maybe get some peace from it all.

[narrator] Justin Schuback isú sentenced to life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

Justin Schuback walked in that restaurant saying,

"Mr. Baron, I'm dope sick.

I need 200 bucks. Can you help me out?"

He probably would have given it to him.

You know, it didn't have to end like this.

And I think that's what hurt the family most

is knowing the type of person that Mr. Baron was

and that that was how it ended.

[Gregory] In 2017, this was a very safe place to live.

You could leave your doors unlocked at night.

You didn't have to worry very much about, you know, intruders

or any type of violent crime like this.

So when this happened, it put the community

in some type of fear.

You know, it might not have been a fear every day,

but it was in the back of people's minds

for a very long time,

that there was somebody out there

capable of this brutal murder.