(WKBN) – Last week, we told you Boardman police finally closed a 50-year-old cold case: the murder of Brad Bellino. DNA evidence pointed to Joseph Hill, who later moved to California, where he died in 2019.

Carolyn Berardino, a freelance journalist, has been following this story for years and has written about it extensively.

She says she grew up in the same neighborhood where another child was abducted. She started looking into more cases of other local kids who were murdered to see if there was a connection.

Berardino says she didn’t suspect Hill because his name didn’t come up in her research.

“I talked to a next-door neighbor of Joseph Hill. He was still a kid when the Hills moved away to California in 1978. He remembers him as a… he used the words gentle and sweet,” she said.

Berardino says when she first wrote the article, she was afraid the case may have been forgotten and wanted to bring awareness to it.