Apr 16, 2026 By Jen Garofalo 2 min read

More than a decade after charges were dismissed against a man accused of killing a 14-year-old Dunbar Township boy, state police have renewed their efforts to solve the case.

On May 2, 1974, John David Watson Jr. hopped on his bike to run an errand for his mother. When he didn’t return home, community members came together to search for him. The next morning, one of them found his body. The ninth-grade student had been shot in the back of the head.

Through PSP Tips, state police have offered $5,000 for information that helps to solve the crime.

In 2015, Fayette County prosecutors thought they had. A county grand jury recommended one of Watson’s childhood friends be charged with criminal homicide. Police based the arrest of Joseph Leos, then 58, of Mount Pleasant, on particles of gunshot residue that were on a coat he was wearing the night Watson went missing.

Officers investigating the boy’s disappearance in 1974 had seized the coat as well as a .22-caliber rifle. The bullet taken from Watson’s body was tested against the rifle, but the results were inconclusive, according to the charging documents filed against Leos in 2015.

But a little more than one month after Leos was charged, a district judge dismissed the case.

“Five particles of gunshot residue does not make a case. The testimony presented had gaping holes,” then-District Judge Mick Metros said at the time.

Watson’s unsolved death was one of many featured in the Herald-Standard’s cold case series in 2012.

In an interview at the time, his brother Thomas said finding out who killed his brother would fulfill a promise he made to his mother before she died in 1993.

“I want my mother to rest in peace,” he told a reporter.

Anyone with information about the case can contact state police in Uniontown at 724-439-7111 or PSP Tips Toll Free at 1-800-472-8477. To watch the video produced as part of the Herald-Standard’s cold case series, go to https://tinyurl.com/hyx3tr9p.