18 Years for Christy

As people from Shamokin came home from work on December 21st, 1992 or waking up on the 22nd to their morning news, they found out one of their native daughters was murdered in Lancaster County.  Christy was working as an elementary school teacher in the Hempfield School District at the time.

Here is the article as it appeared in 1992 in the Lancaster New Era:

by John M. Hoober III and Janet Kelley



Rohrerstown teacher slain in suburb home



Christy Mirack was strangled in E. Lampeter



A Hempfield School District elementary teacher was found strangled to death this morning in her East Lampeter Township townhouse apartment, police officials said.



Christy Mirack, who is in her mid-20s, was murdered between 6 and 8 a.m. in here home at 2071 William Penn Way in the Greenfield Estates complex, police and county coroner Dr. Barry Walp said.



No arrests had been made as of 1 o’clock.



A representative of the school district, concerned because Mirack did not show up for work, discovered the body when he went to the apartment shortly after 9 a.m.



Authorities this morning confirmed the death as a homicide, but withheld releasing the victim’s identity until shortly before 1, when police were able to reach next of kin.



Walp said the cause of death appeared to be strangulation. He pronounced Mirack dead at 9:55 a.m., about a half-hour after police and emergency personnel learned of the death from the employer.



The coroner said an autopsy would be conducted Tuesday.



Neighbors said Miss Mirack shared a three-bedroom apartment with at least one other woman.



Walp said Mirack is an elementary school teacher in the Hempfield School District and school officials confirmed that a teacher by the name of Christy Mirack was employed at Rohrerstown Elementary School.



Neighors said the victim had lived in the apartment complex for about four years.



The school district employe who found the body arrived at the apartment at 9 a.m. The employe, identified as a man, found the door was ajar, neighbors said. Mirack’s body was in the living room. The man raced outside, ran to a neighbor and dialed 911.



East Lampeter police, Lancaster state police, an ambulance from Community Hospital of Lancaster and Walp were at the scene late this morning.



Most were summoned shortly before 9:30 a.m., county dispatchers said.



"We got a call today about a woman who did not show up for work," said East Lampeter Township police Sgt. Ronald Savage. "When we checked her apartment, we found she was dead. We are listing it as a suspicious death. It is definitely suspicious."



At 11 a.m., about 90 minutes after the initial call, an estimated 12 police officers were at the scene, talking to neighbors and processing the scene.



District Attorney Joseph C. Madenspacher and First Assistant District Attorney John A. Keneff also arrived.



Neighbors said they believed Mirack and at least one other woman lived in the two-story, three-bedroom townhouse "for almost three or four years."



"They seemed to be very professional and very hard workers. They would come home in professional clothes and go out in waitress uniforms," one neighbor said.



The initial call was for a "unconscious person" at the address, dispatchers said.



Lancaster County Control received the call at 9:22 a.m.



Today’s incident took place almost exactly a year after 16-year-old Laurie Show was stabbed to death in her home at the Oaks condominium complex, also located in East Lampeter Township.



Miss Show died Dec. 20. Two teen-age girls and their male accomplice were later tried and convicted of participating in the crime.



One of the young women who share the townhouse drove up to the home shortly before noon.



(Staff writers Cindy Stauffer and Joe Byrne also contributed to this report).

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