Police in New Jersey believe they have solved one of the longest running murder cases in the state's history: the disappearance of five Newark teenagers in 1978. After tracking leads for 32 years, two men were arrested March 22 and charged with herding the teens at gunpoint into an abandoned row house, tying them up and torching the building, setting a blaze so fierce police say the bodies were incinerated, destroying any evidence. Now prosecutors have a difficult task: prove the teens were murdered when their bodies were never found.
Murders without bodies were long considered one of the most complex challenges in the legal profession, but advances in technology have made the once-unthinkable prospect more common. The absence of the key piece of evidence - the corpse - poses unique problems for both prosecutors and defense attorneys, according to Thomas "Tad" DiBiase, a Washingtonbased lawyer who runs a website chronicling "no body" murders. He said the majority of such cases end in convictions or guilty pleas. "The body can tell you how the murder occurred," he said. "lt can tell you when the murder occurred, it can tell you where the murder occurred, so by taking away the
body you take away all those elements from a case that makes it enormosly difficult."
The new jersey case was initially treated as a missing person's case and no connection was made between the fire and the teens' disappearance. In the decades since, any clues have been all but obliterated. The site of the fire is now a housing complex and additional case files were reportedly lost in a courthouse flood.
1. The word their in paragraph one refers to....
a. The teens
b. The murderers
c. The police
d. The prosecutorrs
2. In paragraph 3, the word obliterated is closest in meaning to...
a. Eliminated
b. Preserved
c. Terminated
d. Scattered
3. What can be inferred from the passage about the New Jersey case?
a. The prosecutors have enough evidence.
b. The convicts need to find a good lawyer.
c. The case needs to be closed.
d. The murderers will never be put into trials.
4. What is the main idea of the passage?
a. The site of the murders is an important clue.
b. The weapon of the murders has a significant role.
c. The bodies were the key piece of evidence.
d. The prosecutors were the key elements of a case.
5. When was the murder of five Newark teenagers solved?
a. ln 1978.
b. ln 2000.
c. ln 2010.
d. In 2011
6. The author mentions all of the following about the New Jersey cases
EXCEPT ....
a. It was the longest running murder case in the US
b. The site of the fire is now a housing complex
c. The case files were lost in a courthouse flood
d. It was originally treated as a missing person's case