———————— SKYE HILL ————————
… I don’t even know why he or his friends came over? Like, I don’t know if there was somebody at my house that they knew they were stopping over to see them or…. And I wanna say that he was over more than just this one time, but I don’t … I wouldn’t say we were friends. It was more like come over and hang out in my basement. And he was one of those people.
Yeah, it was … It’s kind of like … So I remember stepping out on my front porch. And looking across the street and him and whoever he was with had gotten out of the car and … And Lloyd have been playing in the front yard, you know, and I like … I waved over to all of them and I was telling Lloyd to come in for whatever reason, and they called me over, like, “oh, hey, Skye, come over here.”
I was like, alright, so I, you know, grab Lloyd’s hand and we walk across the street and we’re chatting and talking and … And Lloyd’s just, like, in complete awe of Damien’s fingernails.
He’s just like … he was 4; 4 and a half? And uhm. Lloyd went through phases … so he had this pink dolly that he loved. His favorite pair of socks were pink, like … he was obsessed with anything girly at the time. And I mean, growing up in a … with a single mom, like, that’s all he knew.
I wasn’t particularly girly. I’m still not particularly girly, but he really just resonated with that. And for him to see a … Boy … with fingernail paint, polish on. You know, he was just like, “oh, wow.” He was like, “you have your fingernails painted. And boys don’t do that.”
And Damien was like, “boys do do that.”
And Lloyd’s like, “really?”
And Damien’s like, “I’ll paint your fingernails.”
And … and Lloyd was like, “oh, OK!”
So Damien reached in the car and he got this little thing of black nail polish out. And they sat on the curb, the street and Damien sat there and painted Lloyd’s fingernails on the curb. It was so adorable, just the whole conversation between the two of them. It was cute.
From what I remember of him, like even in high school, you know, it was all … that they had, like, that whole skater thing going and … I was not popular….
… Yes, me too! That’s what it was! I wanted to hang out with them! But she hung out with all of those cool kids like that, you know? And so, I remember seeing all of them hanging out together and thinking, you know, “I wish I was … like, not clumsy and….
———————– ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
From Your Daily Local and Two Moms Media in Warren, Pa., this is “Smoke: The Disappearance of Damien Sharp.” We’re your hosts, Brian Hagberg, and Stacey Gross.
Damien Sharp was a 22-year-old Army veteran, home for less than a year after serving in Bosnia, and living in Warren, Pa., when he went missing. By his high school graduation in 1998, Damien was well-recognizable among most of his friends. He was a goth kid and a wrestler. That juxtaposition, that contrast between roles and lifestyles, would play out after his return from Bosnia as well. At the end of 2001.
At just 5 feet 7 inches and 170 pounds, Damien was small, but his passion for controlled combat – particularly Brazilian jujitsu – made him a formidable sparring partner. But his reputation wasn’t just of someone “always primed for a fight,” as one person described him at the time.
Damien’s was also the official place to go when boyfriends were being foolish or you just needed a safe place to regroup.
On Saturday, May 25, 2002, Damien was dropped off by friends at the corner of Dahl and Prospect Streets, in the city of Warren, Pa. He was there to visit a recent addition to his diverse collection of local friends and associates. It was Memorial Day weekend, and Warren County – well-regarded as a place to kick off summer in the great outdoors – was ramping up for a lot of events. From backyard family picnics to a park-and-walk party winding through the Allegheny National Forest, there are any number of places that Damien could have gone that night, after he parted ways with the occupant of 332 Prospect St., Apt. 12, around 6 p.m.
Where he finally ended up, though, has been the biggest mystery in Warren County for the past 20 years.
Though he had plans to meet his brother, Steven and several other friends at his apartment – 19 Cedar St., on Warren’s east side that Saturday night – he never showed. And although numerous people say they had plans to meet Damien at that forest party, no one claims to have ever seen him there either.
Rick Brecht was a patrolman for the City of Warren Police Department in 2003. He inherited Damien’s case about a year after it started. He told the Times Observer – Warren’s local newspaper – at that time that, “we can track him up to the last hour he was seen. Then, it’s like the world just opened up and swallowed him.”
By that Monday, Damien’s brother, Steven – who’d been stopping by the apartment since Damien failed to show up on Saturday – said he knew something was wrong.
Eventually, people started calling the family, and some of them reached out to more family members until, eventually, they opened the apartment for police to search when it became clear, they said, that something was indeed wrong.
Finally, on June 3, over a week after Damien officially went missing, a report was filed at the city of Warren Police Department.
Around the end of 2020, I was looking for a new topic for a podcast.
Just before the pandemic, I started a podcast called “Two Moms Day Drinking,” and it came about for the same reasons that “Smoke” has.
I left my local newspaper, where I’d been a reporter since 2015. I took a job in local government. Not as anything fun, and I was crap at it.
I was a writer, with no story. If you’ve ever known or been friends with, loved or lived with, a writer you know that such a set of circumstances can’t be allowed to continue.
It just can’t.
I folded that original podcast by the fall of 2020. It relied heavily on one-to-one interviews, and I lived in what amounts to a broadband desert.
Yes, they do exist.
I did not have access to internet that could keep up with the likes of Zoom.
I’d changed jobs.
I was on the road more time than I was home.
As great as that podcast had been, it had run its course. But I was still hungry for stories, and there was one story that represented, for me, the top of my story wish list.
The story of Damien Sharp.
Damien graduated 4 years ahead of me, in 1998, from Warren Area High School, but I’d known of him since middle and maybe even elementary school. By the time I was a freshman and he was headed toward graduation, the Army, Bosnia, I could’ve described Damien to you well enough for you to have drawn a sketch of him.
Maybe.
I’d never spoken a word to him, but there was a whole archetype for Damien in my brain by that point.
He stood out.
Period.
If you saw Damien, you knew who hell he was.
He was short only 5’ 7’, but he was built. He spent his high school years alternating between wearing those gigantic black bondage pants from Hot Topic and chanting made up Satanic verses as he wandered the hallways, but then wrestling for the Warren Dragons. Not sure if you’ve ever seen a letterman jacket with bondage pants but it’s a whole look. Promise you that.
And I know less about sportsball than any topic on earth, so here’s Brian, to tell you what he can remember of Damien in high school.
———————— BRIAN HAGBERG ————————
Damien was years ahead of me at school, and I had known who he was since it at least sixth grade.
You know, stories about Damien were plentiful, often involving some sort of satanic element, given his typical all black attire. I didn’t have any personal interactions with him, though the few times we did speak, he was always pleasant and personable.
I mean, it led me to believe that perhaps some of the aura surrounding him was intentionally cultivated, by him, to create a reputation larger than maybe his physical stature. Y
You know I’ll never forget the first question a friend asked after he saw me talking to Damien once. He said, “he worships the devil you know. Aren’t you afraid he’s gonna put a spell or a curse on you?”
My response to him was simply, “have you ever actually spoken to him?”
Of course, the answer was no.
And you know, a multi-sport athlete in high school myself, I wasn’t a wrestler and didn’t really have the opportunity to see Damien in that arena. But having been good friends with a number of wrestlers and having covered the sport for more than a decade, I can say with some authority that it takes a certain breed to be a wrestler. You know, you’ve got to have a willingness for physicality and at least a little touch of crazy. And I mean that absolutely the most positive way I can. To put your body through the gauntlet of a wrestling season.
To be honest, you know, once Damien graduated, I don’t think we were ever in the same place at the same time again. We just, we traveled in different circles. You know, he was reported missing just a week or two before I moved down to Pittsburgh and you know, we were miles removed from the situation.
But I remember discussing his disappearance with my group of friends down there, you know, and that was where I first heard the drug deal gone bad rumor. The first rumor I was told from someone who claimed to be “in the know” about where Damien was, was that he had been wrapped in chicken wire and dumped near the Kinzua Dam.
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ————–
If Brian and I were going to make any headway at any of this, we’d have to get past the image that Damien projected, and the one we’d created for ourselves, given our biases and experiences in high school.
All either of us really knew for sure about the guy was that he wore all black, he was quiet, and he was rumored to be into Satanism.
Or black magic. Or something.
As if any of us in high school even understood what that meant, but okay.
Brian and I knew that couldn’t be all there was to Damien, because he was also on the wrestling team.
He was also someone friend.
He had to be, right?
Someone’s friend?
We’d heard talk of a best friend in the comments of the family’s “Find Damien” Facebook page, but exact names were hard to come by at this point in our investigation. If at that point, you could even call it an investigation
It was about a week before he went missing that Damien injured his knee at Masterskater indoor skate park.
On Friday, May 24, Damien had a party at his house with a bunch of friends.
Several people were there at Damien’s Cedar St. apartment, and among them was Dave, one of his closest friends from childhood. Dave and Damien had a lot in common, so I reached out to him last September when Brian and I were just getting our thoughts together on how to approach a project of this scope, with no X marking any spots, at all, as to where best to begin.
Dave and Damien met in 1994, and both freshmen. Dave’s family had just moved to Beech St., at the edge of Warren’s west side. That’s less than a 10-minute walk from one another, and if you grew up in the late ‘80s and ‘90s in anything like a small town – 10 grand or less in the city – you know what you were doing as a high school freshman on any spring, summer or fall night.
Here’s Brian again.
———————— BRIAN HAGBERG ————————
I grew up in two distinctly different parts of Warren County.
For the first 10 years of my life, we lived on East 5th Ave., just a couple of blocks down from Warren Area High School. There were about a half a dozen or so boys right in that two-block radius extending from Redwood up to Prospect St.
And again, that two blocks on East 5th Ave. in Warren is not like two blocks on 5th Ave. in New York City. We’re talking corner to corner, Redwood to Prospect, it’s only about 1/10 of a mile.
Anyway, we were constantly together, you know; we were playing in somebody’s yard, roaming around the neighborhood, riding our bikes down to the card shop on Conewango Ave. Catching crayfish in the stream next to The Run – and if you’re not from Warren County, we’ll try to put some photos up, to show you exactly what The Run is, but that was a rite of passage. It ran down, there was a little tunnel, and if you were brave enough to get your bike in there and ride through the tunnel down to Beaty playground you were the man, as it were.
At any rate, it was it was the mid-to-late ‘80s and we were pretty much free to roam wherever we wanted to. And I’m sure there were certain rules that we had to follow, but I honestly can’t remember any of them.
In the summer, you know, with bikes at our disposal, we were just everywhere. The best way I can describe it, if you’ve ever seen the movie “Stand By Me,” that’s pretty much how it was for us, you know, minus the overnight trip to find a dead body.
And then I spent some time also up in Scandia. Which is just your typical very, very, very small rural town. There’s not even a four-way stop sign in the town. It’s one main road, Scandia Road, runs through the middle and then you’ve got a bunch of dirt roads that go off to the side.
You know my closest friend in that area was a quarter of a mile away. We still pretty much biked everywhere we could when we could. And again, it wasn’t uncommon for us to be riding our bikes up and down Scandia Road and people would pass us and not give it a second thought. It was just the way it was at that time. Nobody thought anything of a group of 10-to-12-year-olds just roaming around with no adult supervision for basically all day long.
You know the main hangout spot was the old Scandia School, formerly a you know, one of the last standing one room schoolhouses in the country. We’d go to the playground there or hang out over at the Scandia Store. Back in those days it was a functioning gas station slash convenience store slash movie rental store slash basically, whatever you could kind of get at that point from a grocery standpoint, but that was basically where we hung out and that’s…that’s how we grew up.
We were just we were outside playing and nobody gave it a second thought for us to be out there wandering alone for hours upon hours at a time.
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
Like Brian, I had a bifurcated childhood in Warren County too.
Mine started out in a place a lot like Scandia for him. In fact, I spent the better part of my teenage years riding horses up and down Scandia Road, but we actually lived at the top of Mohawk Ave., on a farm. My parents rented the farmhouse, and my dad would help with things like fall butchering, or summer haying.
I remember he had really bad allergies, but he would go and hay after work and come home looking miserable and now as an adult with allergies, I feel your pain dad.
Around 14, my parents and I moved to my grandfather’s house in North Warren, when he went to a nursing home. At that point, my childhood looked a lot like Brians. And according to Dave, his and Damiens.
North Warren is her residential neighborhood about two miles long, running parallel to Rt. 62, which takes you north to the New York State border. I’d get home from school there and, like Brian, I’d be roaming those two miles until the sun went down, often well past dark on any given school night.
One interesting feature of North Warren is the state hospital. That, like a lot of things in Warren County that make for some rad haunting history, is outside the scope of this podcast to tell you about , but if you’re interested in learning more about it, we’ll provide links to good resources for you in the show notes.
What you need to know about that place though, is that it’s basically an enormous campus, and this one had a tunnel that ran under Route 62 onto the hospital grounds. But it had been out of use for approximately a million years, if you asked me back then. That was the place to ride your bike as a kid because I don’t care how old you are, you always catch a little buzz knowing there are cars zooming overtop of you, and that the only thing preventing your absolute annihilation is the mystery of physics.
So rad.
The point is this: Damien’s childhood looked a hell of a lot like ours. Whether he looked like us or not. So when Brian and I decided to work together on this podcast last winter, we did it because we agreed: Damien honestly could have been either one of us.
What happened to Damien when he went missing? It might have ended differently for Brian, or for me, or for a lot of other kids in Warren County, depending on whether they, too, wore a shock value wardrobe, or walked a rubber chicken down the road like a dog.
Midroll
Damien’s case remains open with the City of Warren Police Department. Journalists can do a lot in these situations, but police have more resources than we can dream of. Detective Tiffany Dyke is the criminal investigator heading Damien’s case up, and she’s ready to hear from you. She told me. Call Tiffany at (814) 723-2700, or email her at t-d-y-k-e@police.cityofwarrenpa.gov. If you’re scared of cops, fine. Be that way. Call Warren County Crimestoppers instead, and if your information helps lead Tiffany to remains, Crimestoppers is gonna give you two grand. So. That would be cool, yes? Third option is and will remain, until Damien’s found, Stacey at Two Moms Media. Message her on Facebook – @letsfinddamien.
ACT 1 Part 2
Whether we grew up at the tops of the hills that dot the outer edges of Warren County, or in the city itself – Damien on the west side, Brian on the east, or in one of the ‘berbier municipalities, like North Warren – we all knew the 899 square miles that contained us well enough.
Summers at Kinzua Beach.
Having contests with friends to see who could wedge themselves into the smallest hole in a glacial rock deposit at Rimrock, or the Jakes Rocks overlook.
Fishing, camping, hiking, canoe trips down the Allegheny River.
Damien would have understood all these things, on a cellular level, as an essential part of the place where we live and grew up. Just as Brian and I do. If you’re not from Warren County, you can visit the show notes for links to great resources about some of the places you’ll hear us discussing. You can also check out our YouTube channel for a couple of narrated tours through areas significant to Damien’s story.
But before Brian and I even started collecting interviews with friends and family members, we reached out to Dave Sherman
Dave was the Executive Director of the Warren County Visitors Bureau last spring, and his job was to be Warren County’s biggest advocate; to explain to everyone why they should come here. So we couldn’t think of someone with a better aerial view of this county to describe it to you than him. And you’ve heard a lot of place names so far. So, let’s do a quick roundup, and we’ll also break down the basic story for you in broad terms right here too.
Damien lived at 19 Cedar St., in the City of Warren on the east side. There are about 9,000 people in the city, which is the county seat.
Damien had a party at his apartment the night before he went missing, and that was on Friday, May 24th, 2002.
The morning after that party, Damien’s friends since fifth grade, Danica, picked him up for a high ride.
Danica, Damien, and maybe a couple other people went on this ride, which was a regular thing: whoever had a car would pick up whoever had some weed (and whoever was hanging out with them), and together they’d ride out to what’s known around Warren as the Allegheny Reservoir.
Created by one of the largest dams east of the Mississippi River, the Kinzua Dam, the reservoir is about 6 miles east of Warren by Route 59, but it’s within a part of the county that includes the 500,000-acre total Allegheny National Forest, or ANF.
The ANF is federal land, and the history of the federal government’s use of that land is a tragically fascinating history, but beyond the scope of this podcast to discuss. If you want to learn more about the history of the Seneca Nation, who lived here long before any federal government, you need to start with the documentary “Lake of Betrayal.” You can find links to that documentary in the show notes.
Back in town, Masterskater was an indoor skate park that operated on 2nd Ave. Damien had just taken up skateboarding, and it was while skateboarding – within about a week of going missing – that he injured his knee doing it.
It’s the reason a key feature of Damien’s early story was the fact that he was using aluminum crutches the night he disappeared.
His brother, Steven Sharp Jr., who we’ll call just “Stephen” throughout this series, worked there.
Damien visited Steven there the afternoon of his disappearance.
Afterwards, Damien headed over to Prospect Street.
And that’s the last place anyone says they saw him alive. Up to this year, that is, when we interviewed a source brand new to the investigation.
It was at 332 Prospect St., Apt. 12, and on the street outside where he and the occupant of that apartment parted ways, we’re told.
That’s also about a 10-minute walk from Damien’s apartment or the skate park.
We’ll also refer to this place as the “Prospect Mansions,” or just “The Mansions.”
Everyone agrees, though. Damien wasn’t walking to Prospect Street that day. If he was, they say, it would have been a burden. He was struggling on that knee. Somehow, though, they say he was able to climb an exterior metal staircase to visit a new friend who lived there. While he was there, this person told us last January, Damien invited him to a party he said he was going to, out Brown Run Road.
Brown Run, the Upper Reservoir, Forest Road 160 and 160-D; all those party spots are in the hills and the forestland above the Kinzua Dam, and the reservoir area.
Steven says that up until that night, they’d been planning to have a keg party in the woods of Heart’s Content. Heart’s Content is about 25 miles from the reservoir in a whole other direction. It’s another wild space in Warren County that’s huge for tourism, but it’s got a flavor and a vibe all its own.
Rather than rolling hills and deep valleys, cut by glaciers and dotted with the boulders they deposited on their way through, Heart’s Content is more of a hiking and camping paradise. It’s where you go for solitude and peace. Jake’s Rocks, the Reservoir, Brown Run, on the other hand?
Those are the places you go for postcard photos and good times.
If it feels like a lot, visit the show notes for links to a more visual one-sheet guide to the area.
And, if you ever get the chance, we know we’re introducing you to this place through the story of a likely homicide that occurred here.
It is one part of this place. But for the past 38 years, I’ve been rooting more and more deeply here for a reason: it’s beautiful, and it’s home.
I can’t recommend you come visit enough. I promise you. If you want that tiny little ant in a big old chasm of a universe experience, visit Jake’s Rocks, or any of these other places.
You will not regret it.
Midroll
Do you have a question or comment about this case, or our coverage of it? Visit our Anchor site, and click the “message” button to leave it for us in a voice recording. We may use your recording on an upcoming Q and A episode, or other places throughout upcoming episodes. Do it. Peer pressure.
So, we sat down with Dave, to put it all into a little more context. First, we asked him for a basic overview of the county itself.
———————— DAVE SHERMAN – AGING, BEAUTIFUL COUNTY ————————
It’s an aging county, it’s a beautiful county. The Allegheny River was the 2015 Pennsylvania River of the Year; the Conewango Creek was the 2017 Pennsylvania River of the year. And if you’ve ever paddled it, you know, it’s a nice calm paddle, typically, down the creek. Whereas, the river can be a little more adventurous. But we were very pleased to have the defending champs in our county two years running.
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
If you’re still struggling with the geography, think of Pennsylvania like a little log cabin with a chimney in one corner. Warren County is basically on the eastern corner of that chimney. Above us is the NY state border; to the west, Cleaveland; south, Pittsburgh; and east, Philadelphia.
———————— DAVE SHERMAN ————————
Northeastern Ohio, Cleveland specifically, knows exactly where we’re at. Buffalo and Toronto. They like to come south to golf, Blueberry, Jackson and Cable Hollow. They love it here, and especially with the expenses in Canada to golf in Toronto, you can … four of you can hop in a vehicle, be here in a few hours, right? Once the border opens … and probably spend the same amount of money as you would maybe on around in one of the Toronto golf courses. So the the Buffalo, Toronto crowd, Western New York comes down to see us to, to golf and recreate. Pittsburgh comes up north to hunt and fish in a tradition that’s probably 100 years old. with hunters and fishermen so it’s interesting I’ve said that …
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
If you caught Dave’s comment about “when the border opens?” That’s in reference to the travel restrictions throughout the world during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. We interviewed Dave at the tail end of that ordeal, in the summer of 2021. Just to situate you a little more into the amount of time we’ll be discussing in this series, imagine this:
Before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, United States and Canadian citizens passed pretty freely and regularly through that international border for travel, for business, and just because they could damn well could.
That may have been a uniquely American reason, but whatever.
I stand behind it.
After September 11, 2001, international travel restrictions began to grow until, starting June 1, 2009, you needed a passport to go propose to your girlfriend on the “Canada Side” of Niagara Falls.
Crazy, eh?
It was a virus rather than an ideology that most recently inflamed the travel restrictions experience. But just stop for a second, right here, and soak in the fact that Damien has been missing for 20 years.
Twenty. Years. What has changed in your life in the past 20 years?
I’ve: been to college, twice; addicted to opiates; arrested; put on probation light; been arrested again; spent 30 days in the Warren County Jail (give or take…I probably got a day or two for being quiet); I’ve been married. I’ve had two kids. I’ve been divorced.
In that order, so ten bonus points to Ravenclaw, kids.
Not that that was due to the fact that I lived my life with an abundance of caution, or anything. It has been…a wild ride.
Down a cliff.
In a dumpster.
Which is on fire.
I figured out how to basically steer the dumpster enough to avoid hurting anyone and, luckily, 90% of the trip has been in a downpour, so it’s really just smoldering at this point.
But Sweet God.
To say that the changes to just my life, alone, have been profound would be the most outrageous of understatements.
I’ve been, like, 16 different people in the past 20 years.
And the world itself is so deeply unrecognizable from the one I lived out the faded, hazy days of high school (and most of College, Round 1), in.
That incarcerated intermission, in retrospect, probably did me a ton of good.
It’s all fine now.
Look.
I’m not the only one. Brian? He’s a real adult, and he went through some changes too. Check it out.
———————— BRIAN HAGBERG ————————
So much has changed for me since 2002. As I mentioned before, I moved to Pittsburgh shortly after Damien disappeared. Then I moved back and then I moved again and again. And again and, well, there were a lot of moves. Anyway. I met and then married my wife of now 16 years I attended university. And then another. And then another, and then finally graduated in 2009, became a military spouse. Then we moved again, this time to Colorado. For five years, I became a father Times 3. We moved back from Colorado. Got a job? Got laid off. and now I own my own business and if you had asked me 20 years ago to predict my future I would have predicted exactly zero of those
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
Let’s get our bearings just a little bit. We’d love to give you Dave’s entire interview, but it’s almost an hour long, and it’s not all going to move this enormous chunk of a story we’ve bitten off forward if you listen to it all right now.
We want you to hear it, though. So first we’re gonna get you his knowledge of the most important places – the ANF, Heart’s Content, and the city. Then, during the break, we’ll encourage you to subscribe to the show, so you can hear Dave’s full review of this beautiful place we call home – or, if you’re not from Warren…
Still this beautiful place we call home.
Even if you are from here, this full interview is worth a listen. Brian and I have both remarked that we feel like we’ve learned more about this place in the past year than we’ve known our entire lives as its residents.
———————— DAVE SHERMAN ————————
I believe technically we’re on the Allegheny Plateau, which means we’re on the fringe of the Appalachian Mountains. Now, the Pittsburghers will tell you they’re coming up to the mountains, whereas the Warren County residents will go. Yeah, I don’t know. And the people from Colorado go, these are not. These are big hills in some areas like you can get lost and speaking of getting last hearts content, it seems every year somebody does get lost up there. Potter County is famous for star gazing at Cherry Springs. You can get every bit the same star gazing and hearts content. There’s no light up there. There’s no, I mean, I’ve talked to folks who’ve been up there at night, in the heart of the woods. And you better know where you’re going. You better know where you’re going in the daylight. Hunters will tell you that they’ve gotten lost. I know one specifically who spent the night with his dog in hearts content, I mean just acre after acre… I believe there is a one-mile loop and I believe there’s a three-mile loop, give or take that are well marked. Other than that, some of the comments we’ve received is it all looks the same. Which is really troubling and I’m sure the sweat starts quickly if you think you’re in one direction and suddenly you realize you’re not and the hiker’s motto of make sure somebody knows where you’re going really holds true at heart’s content. I could probably find the acreage for you if you need it, but it’s vast, it’s thick, and it’s remote. If you wanted to leave something or somebody up there, it wouldn’t be hard … at their own risk … well in some areas, Rimrock for instance, you know at a certain point you can see the elevation, Heart’s Content The rimrocks, for instance. You know, at a certain you can see the elevation. again a lot of hearts content is the same. So you think you’re headed west and you’re going south, you could wind up in Sheffield.
If you’re coming from the east, from the Bradford side, and that bridge is lit up when you go across that bridge, if t’s cloudy or raining, you don’t know where the sky ends and the water begins. It is remote there as well, again, at night. It’s black. You don’t see any. You don’t see any street lights out there. There isn’t any commerce out there. Good luck, you know, I mean, it’s really cool coming down that hill to the bridge, but again, that time of year, you should have more activity with it being may you know it’s warm enough. Yes. Oh yes, absolutely. Holiday weekend kind of kicks off the summer even here. But it wouldn’t be hard with all those acres up there to find an offshoot, and we’re talking 20 years ago, the trails at Jakes Rocks did not exist. Jakes Rocks did that. He’s especially in that time frame was more. Hey, let’s grab a tan and find spot. Sure.
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
Here’s Brian, to flesh out this particular place with a memory he has of camping there, weirdly, two nights before Damien went missing and a few months before moving to Pittsburgh
————————BRIAN HAGBERG————————
Pittsburgh. When we talk about Jakes Rocks before the mountain bike trails were put in the trails at Jakes Rocks a really a lot of people would go up there for camping and it was more or less just grab your tent and pick a spot and let’s go and some friends. And I actually were up camping at Jakes Rocks the Thursday before Memorial Day. In 2002, we spent the night on Thursday and left on Friday morning. And one of the forest workers, as we were getting up that morning on Friday, came through and they were basically clearing us out because they had so many reserve camping spots for Memorial Day weekend. So for him to have been taken up there at some point or something that various to have happened in that area. there would have been most likely a lot of people up there because they were so many reserved camping spots at jakes rocks at time.
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
It’s memories like these that always come up the first time I reach out to a person to ask if they’ll help me tell Damien’s story and they, reluctantly, agree.
They don’t always agree, is what I’m telling you, but when they do? They do it with reluctance.
A number of Damien’s friends – some of the ones who saw Damien that day – were not interested in participating in this podcast. Some would talk to me, but only on background, to help me understand the whole Warren vibe at the time, or specifically, what Damien was all about.
Like as a person.
We’re going to be getting really deep into who Damien was as a person in the next episode, but let’s take a break, and when we come back, we’ll give you the basic timeline of Damien’s last day, compiled directly from the people who saw and interacted with him. Then, we’ll start branching out into the finer details in upcoming episodes.
At this point, we need to give you some basic rules about speculation.
We aren’t naming suspects. And we are not saying that the entire contents of this podcast are fact. When you’re trying to untangle a 20-year mystery, you’ve got to get comfortable with some speculation. How you handle that speculation is everything.
This doesn’t just go for journalists. You. The public. When you’re telling stories, you’re creating folklore. And it matters. The information police have to work with? If you’re out there clouding it up with things you haven’t verified for yourself? You need to stop. We don’t endorse gossip. We don’t endorse slander.
We’ve taken great care throughout this podcast to make sure our speculation is clearly labeled, and that we’re telling you constantly that we don’t endorse people running around slinging nonsense about this case.
This isn’t just a story. This is Damien’s story. Damien’s a real person, and so are the people who loved him. And whoever hurt him, they’re a person too. They have a family. They might have children. We need to remain aware of that. Especially because Warren is a small place, and we’re dealing with real lives.
One of our biggest concerns in creating this podcast was that it would simply start the rumor mill right back up. That was the last thing we wanted. We were trying to shut it down.
When we started the Facebook page for this podcast, last August, I was an anxious mess for weeks. Ultimately, the flood of comments and messages naming names and throwing speculation around like monkey poo never came.
No comments came, in fact. Almost no one would speak with me in those first few days. And weeks. And months. And I started to realize something: Damien’s story has become an urban legend.
Believe it or not, there are actual people who devote their lives to collecting and studying folklore. They didn’t just stop after they collected Jakob and Willhelm Grimm’s tales in the Black Forest. Modern folklore consists of a lot of different things, but the names folklore, mythology, and urban legend? They don’t have anything to do with the truth – or lack thereof – in any given story.
The facts that a story circulates, that it varies and changes over time, and the community it involves is motivated to sustain and perpetuate it. Those are what define urban legends. So yes. Wharf rats and men with hook hands are urban legends.
But Damien Sharp is too.
From his image in high school to the perpetually cloudy situation surrounding his disappearance, Damien Sharp feels like one of those people about whom big stories are going to be told.
In 2012, Damien’s family started working social media to try and amplify his story, and to get information about where to find his remains. That was a decade after they’d already worked every other angle they could. A video interview of Janeane Shanahan was posted on their YouTube channel. We’ve provided links to that in the show notes. Over the years, she’s done other interviews and podcasts, and we’ll be showing you those too.
In this 2012 video, though, Janeane described the day her son was born. She had some complications, she said, and had to be taken to the ICU. The son she’d planned to name Daniel Eric was named, instead, by his father. Steven Sharp Sr. – “Skip,” as friends called him – named him Damien Mark Sharp on August 6, 1979.
It almost feels like an important moment. And here we go with speculation. It’s hard for me to not see this big ass gnarly world with a writer’s brain. I’ve always wondered. The name. Damien. With all its implications and associations.
I think back to what Brian said earlier about Damien’s image being cultivated, by him, to create an image larger than his actual stature. And I wonder…had Damien lived live as Daniel Eric, would he have become the goth kid who’s haunted my memories since high school?
We can’t know. All we can do is speculate.
But we’re going to do it responsibly, and we ask you to do the same.
Coming up in the next episode, we’re going to sit down with Damein’s aunt, Dana Kibbey.
Dana was around for the initial investigation. She was one of the first people in his apartment after the family became aware that something was wrong. When I decided for sure I was going to do this, I started making a list of the people I’d need to reach out to.
When I reached out to Janeane and didn’t hear back, I started moving down that list. Next in line was Janeane’s daughter – Damien’s sister – Jamie. Jamie let me know that, unfortunately, her mom had experienced some health issues in the recent years and wouldn’t be able to discuss Damien’s case with me.
It was a bit of a blow, mostly because I still hadn’t acquired a taste for cold calling family members of missing individuals to – at least it felt like – pry into their business. Janeane wasn’t available and Jamie didn’t live with Damien throughout childhood, so she really didn’t feel she could provide much. “You probably know more about it than me.”
Looked like I was back to the drawing board in that arena.
So, I sat back a long time and just quietly researched. Quietly asked questions of official sources. Quietly, quietly, read those affidavits. Lurked on the state’s docket system, taking in what I had, testing out different names and potential scenarios against the officials records I could access, crafting little baby theories and testing them for substance. All the while, checking it all against Janeane, in her available media statements of all flavors.
And finally, around last fall, I started reaching out to the two next-closest family members: Damien’s brother, Steven, and his aunt, Dana.
I spoke to both of them, finally, in any kind of coherent way around August.
I can’t thank either of them enough for rolling with my ridiculous, crazy texts, phone calls, and questions since then. In the next episode – as I’d hoped would be the case way back at this time last year – Dana’s gonna give you so much information about Damien as a kid, and as a teenager, and as an adult, that the smoky, hazy hint of a person you remember from high school – or that you’re developing an impression of right now – will come roaring into all three dimensions by the end.
Here’s a quick preview.
———————— DANA KIBBEY————————
He’s … he is… he was a good person. Silly weird. The nicest asshole I’ve ever met, you know? He would do shit to piss with my kids. He pissed with Thomas, which is so funny now. Like, you know, I have video of him and Thomas wearing hammer pants, you know, the sweatpants that, you know have the pattern on and that came way down to your knees. And you know Damian doing all that stuff. And Damien, anybody that knew to and knew that he had this voice was very different … when he was a baby. Because he just squeaked. But you know he just squeaked. So we called him squeaky boy. And as an adult, he hated it And we still did it. But when nobody was around, you know, ’cause, he’d get pissed, you know, he was Squeaky Boy, that’s just, you know. And I remember one time running around they lived in a trailer and chasing him around the trailer. Yeah, I’m chasing him around, messing with him and he was probably about two and I hit some post sticking out of the ground. I broke my baby toe. I mean, I’m down on the ground. He’s laughing so hard he’s just squeaking. He can’t even get his breath and he’s just squeaking. He sounded like a little pig; you know? And just laughing at me, you know? So again, you know, kind of hurt, but he’s just squeaking; squeaky boy, you know? But he just wanted to be accepted you know he just wanted to be loved.
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
Damien’s mom – Dana’s sister – Janeane was outspoken for his case from early on in his disappearance, through the day she had him declared presumably deceased, on “October 22, 2018, at 1:30 p.m. in the Main Courtroom of the Warren County Courthouse,” according to an Oct. 8, legal notice in the Times Observer.
There, on that date and at that time, this notice says, “evidence will be heard concerning the alleged absence of said missing individual and the circumstances and duration thereof. The missing individual, if alive, or any other individual having evidence that the missing individual is alive, is required to produce and present to the Court evidence that the missing individual is still in life.”
It’s basically a speak now or forever hold your peace kind of moment, I guess.
I interviewed Dana for this podcast in one sitting a few weeks ago, but we’ve spoken in person and on the phone several times since last fall.
This real, on-air interview, though, was really a cool, cool thing. We met at a local coffee shop, and as soon as she sat down, she just started telling me stories about Damien, but also what it was like: being the folks at the center of the biggest story in our small town.
Here’s some of what she had to say on that.
————————DANA———————–
…And then, the rumors are he took off and went to Florida and all that kind of shit, so for me to reach out to, I remember there, it was probably about two or three weeks into it, right around two weeks, somebody – and I don’t know who it was honestly – said to me, “do you think you’ll ever find him?”
And I…I mean, you could have blown me over. I never once, in the two weeks’ time – which is a million moments in my head – ever thought for a second that it wasn’t any minute.
I mean, if I heard a knock at the door – because the understanding was that the police were to get ahold of me. So we, as a family, could go to Janine. And Skip. So they wouldn’t be alone when they found out, you know.
So, I heard a siren, I thought, “they’re looking for me,” you know, “slow down so they can catch up because they’re, you know, they probably seen me pass,” which I mean, this is really how things were in my head at that time. So the first time anybody said, “you think you’ll ever find him?”
I was dumbfounded. I would have never in a million years thought we would be here. Going on 20 years, you know? It just…
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
I’ve been asked so many times, “why?”
“Why does this matter?”
Not, “why does it matter,” but like, “why does it matter,” to me?
Do I have some personal connection to Damien?
Nope.
Missing person in my family.
Negative.
Soulless harpy journalist looking for an innocent victim to further victimize through exploitation of his legacy, narrative, and living relatives?
Jesus. Where have we met? But no. Sorry to disappoint.
…
Did I have the hots for Damien back in the day?
I can say that I haven’t spoken to one single woman who didn’t acknowledge that Damien was kind of catnip, especially to a particular quiet sort of girl.
But that’s just social physics, man. I’m not unique in that respect, to be sure to be sure.
Compared with all known available options to me in Warren County, at that time, as a high school student?
100 percent in the top ten list of attractive guys I recall from the time.
Mainly, though, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one here either, because he was mostly a mystery, even then.
That, and he would have driven my parents, maybe, but for sure my grandparents, out of their minds.
That was an important trait in a partner in the 90’s.
I’m not going to apologize for it.
…
Anyhow, I had suspicions then that Damien and I shared a lot of the same challenges, and might even find that we shared a lot of the same interests and values, if we ever wound up speaking to one another.
I always got a sense that the persona he crafted for himself, as Brian said, had more to do with weirding people out and making sure he didn’t waste too much of his own energy on people who weren’t comfortable at his level.
It looked like offense, but it was really just protection. And it’s maybe not the most adaptive coping mechanism, but in many ways, it’s brave as hell.
Shit. Brene Brown is living my best life right now doing Ted Talks about the importance of living authentically, and with deep thought invested into your own psychological makeup, as well as that of others and the world at large.
And no matter how many of those damn TedTalks I listen to, at 38, I still care way, way too much what other people think for a woman who hasn’t been actively okay with hurting others since she gave up the Percocet and found Jesus (legally prescribed psychotropic medication) in jail.
Damien broke through my awareness so strongly in school, I think, because of the lack of concern he appeared to have over what other people thought. Not only did he seem, to me, outrageously comfortable with controversy, he didn’t seem a tad bashful about causing it either.
While I never saw him go out of his way to cause a problem, I respected that he didn’t have a reputation for being squeamish about handling problems others had with him, just for being himself.
In another episode, you’re going to hear from Damien’s friend Danica, who met him when she moved to Warren in fifth grade. She told me that these assessments, while understandable for the perspective from which came – that of a socially paralyzed and already quite anxious 14-year-old kid – was understandable, but not actually entirely on the mark.
Not news to me, as an adult, but I needed to hear someone who knew him confirm it.
That’s been one of the best parts of this project. Getting a glimpse at my own ability to read and assess others. We don’t often get such concentrated opportunities at feedback on that, but it’s a good skill to seek feedback on for anyone, I think.
As I dug into his actual – as opposed to his legendary – life, I discovered that Damien and I shared more than a few similarities in our character arcs.
The uncertainty over, but desire for, acceptance?
Check.
The conflicted relationship with family? Oh yes. Recognize that.
The predisposition to be defensive? To admit people into our lives based more on our own assessments of their characters than the aesthetic of their words?
I almost wonder how much of my own current aspiration toward growth in all those areas, even when it’s the hardest possible choice to make, has been quietly simmering on a flame at least partly fueled by Damien’s memory, even after all these years.
I think it’s entirely possible that Damien has motivated a lot of the person I am today, without my ever having consciously realized it.
I think it’s important to recognize that, while we tell our kids that high school is just the beginning, the truth is that the core of who we are as people is forged in the fires of our school age years. From kindergarten up. Well before we’re even agonizing over the cruel determinism of standardized testing, or the social implications of wearing plaid with floral.
For example.
Who we become after that is based on who we became all that time.
And, you guys, we never actually stop becoming who we are if we’re doing it right.
You’re always developing. Every day.
Whether you want to or not.
Even if I wasn’t able to manifest it then, I recognized the strength of personality it took to stand up to bullies when the fight wasn’t even his own, or to do what made him happy before what made his peers happy, for what it was:
Unique, and enviable.
And, Dana will describe in the next episode, what I recognize most of all is that, no matter what he looked like, Damien was a lot of things all rolled into one complex as hell person. Though he may not have struck a chord with the families of his wrestling teammates, or the parents of his friends, or the people who could have helped police find him 20 years ago – the ones with knowledge of what happened to him – Damien could have been pretty much anybody who graduated within that decade between 1995 and 2005 in Warren County.
In fact, Dana puts this way better than I ever could, and I think that’s what I want to leave you with for this chapter.
————————DANA – RUMORS/IMPORTANCE/PODCAST———————–
…and that’s what’s so important about this podcast. Because when we stop talking about Damien, we stop the hope of ever finding out the truth. You know, Damien’s dad is gone now. He passed five years after Damien in a tragic trucking accident.
And Damien’s mother is in a bad place, physically right now, she’s had some medical issues, and is homebound, and has been for a few years now. And everything she understands, I’m not sure. Um. But. You know, he still has sisters and brothers and aunts and friends.
And even if it’s not for clarification for us. Just justice.
And if it could happen this easily and everybody just turn their head…when it happens to you, you want everybody to pay attention. You want everybody to know about it, and as long as we’re talking about it, something good’s gonna come out. Something is going, and I believe that 100%. I hope it’s in my lifetime. I hope it’s in my lifetime that it comes out, you know, because as.
As different is Damien was, that was Squeaky Boy, you know? He was that beautiful little 2-year-old you’re looking at now; that somebody, you know, listening to this, looking at, you know this…
That’s…that’s Squeaky Boy, you know.
He’s. Not silly. Weird, he was, you know, an athlete that’s doing well and changing everybody’s perception of who he is.
You know, to meet Damien was kind of like Eminem. Like, I hated Eminem, but I didn’t hate him. I don’t hate anybody. But like, I didn’t like Eminem, like, you know, all that crap. And then you kind of see the movie and, you know, and, you know, and that’s kinda like being kind of look at him at the guy. He’s just right, Rapper. But then you find, you know….
———————— ———————— ———————— ———————— ——–
“Smoke” is a production of Two Moms Media and Your Daily Local.
Created, written, and told by Stacey Gross.
Executive Producers are Stacey Gross and Brian Hagberg.
Our theme song is “Ditty 6,” written and produced by Bob Gross.
Voice acting by Frank Williams and Adam McCoy.
Audio production, transcription, and cover art by Stacey Gross.
Our guests in this episode were Skye Hill, Dave Sherman, and Dana Kibbey.
Thanks to Aaron Mee, at Lilly Broadcasting, for covering the investigation, Aaron Uber at the Warren County Prothonotary’s office, and The Professor.
Check out the show notes for links to our website, sources we used, and a full transcript of each episode.
Visit us on social media @letsfinddamien.
If you like this show, tell everyone.
Remember to follow the show wherever you’re listening, rate, and review. It helps us out a ton.
Smoke: The Disappearance of Damien Sharp 