Why a Man Who Killed Teen Over Marijuana Only Served 2 Years in Prison

On August 21, 1985, David, who was just 13, was reported missing after failing to return from a bike ride. His beloved five-speed was located beneath a railroad bridge just blocks from his home. David’s body was found four months after that, on December 15, in a wooded thicket not far from his Pennsylvania home.  

David’s remains were so severely decomposed, the Schuylkill Haven teen’s cause of death was originally attributed as “undetermined,” with one anthropologist  suggesting he had an undiagnosed case of diabetes.  

But it would take more than two decades for investigators to deem David’s death a homicide—and to identify the person who knocked the characteristically “quiet” and “trusting” boy unconscious before leaving him for dead. 

In 2008, on the 23rd anniversary of David’s disappearance, authorities arrested Joseph Geiger at his Pottsville residence and charged him with third-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, abuse of corpse and tampering with evidence. When David disappeared, Geiger was 20.  

After the court-ordered exhumation of David’s remains in 2008, and through newly developed leads and advanced scientific methods, detectives determined Geiger—who was 43 at the time of his arrest—met up with David and John Fry, Jr., 14, on August 21, 1985, to drink booze and smoke marijuana in an abandoned train caboose, located at an old railroad yard nearby. But the good time didn’t last: Geiger confronted David that afternoon, accusing the boy of stealing some of the pot plants he’d been illegally growing in an area of woods lining the Schuylkill River. 

“From our discussions with people in the community, we learned that David wasn’t the only person stealing plants from Geiger,” attorney Robert Betnar, the retired Pennsylvania State Police corporal who restarted the entire investigation from scratch in 2007, explains to A&E + Investigation, noting that Geiger had vowed to friends he would “kill” the pot thief, once identified. “But he was the only one who paid for it with his life.” 

A 2022 episode of Cold Case Files delved into David’s death and the long road to Geiger’s arrest and conviction. 

When Geiger socked David in the face, the teen fell backwards. Reed’s head smacked against a metal wall in the caboose, causing fractures to his skull. In 2009, Assistant District Attorney A.J. Serina argued David may have survived had Geiger sought help for the boy immediately. 

Dr. Anthony Falsetti, a forensic anthropologist who teaches at the University of Maryland, handled the second forensic examination of David’s remains in 2008, and tells A&E Crime + Investigation justice was probably delayed in this case because of that initial diabetes determination. 

“I didn’t understand how anyone could take that route,” Falsetti confides. “I am just completely baffled by that diagnosis, and I think that’s what really clouded this case, more than anything else.” 

Falsetti claims most medical examiners aren’t sufficiently trained to diagnose injuries to the hard tissues of the body. “In some defense of the first medical examiner, that’s just not what they do, and that’s not their specialty,” Falsetti offers. “A forensic anthropologist does have that specialty and more experience looking at bone, which is why every medical examiner should have a forensic anthropologist on staff.” 

According to police, David was still breathing when Geiger ordered Fry to head home. Geiger then dragged David’s unconscious body only a few hundred yards into the woods, where he concealed him with felled branches and brush. Officials were never able to determine how long it took for Reed to die. 

Falsetti further notes it would be impossible to know whether David might have survived the skull fractures had he received immediate medical attention: “It would depend on what kind of subdural hematoma it was, and I can’t tell that from bone. The survivability of such injuries really varies.” 

In the four months between when David disappeared and when his remains were recovered, Geiger joined search teams looking for the boy, who’d long expressed a desire to one day work as a jet pilot. Geiger was also the one who led police to David’s corpse, telling them at the time his two dogs had, for months, been returning home from the woods in neighboring Cressona carrying bones. Geiger told cops he thought nothing of it until his pets came back with a human skull.  

For these reasons, both the detectives—and David’s family—did not consider Geiger a potential suspect, Betnar explains. 

But as he conducted fresh interviews, Betnar says several friends recalled Geiger alluding to his potential involvement in David’s death on more than a handful of occasions over the years. In fact, Geiger, while allegedly high on cocaine at a party, even opened up about the incident to a friend, saying, “If you ever want to murder somebody, do it in Schuylkill County because you can get away with it,” according to Betnar. The friend said Geiger even mentioned David by name during their conversation. 

Betnar eventually tracked down Fry, who claimed he was unaware David had actually died until after learning his body had been found. Fry, who is now 56, told Betnar he never went to police to tell them what he knew, fearing possible reprisal from Geiger. But Fry’s account of the caboose confrontation, the stunning punch and David’s stumble backwards matched all of the forensic findings.  

Despite trying to shift the blame for David’s death onto Fry, Geiger eventually pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, simple assault, evidence tampering and abuse of corpse in February 2009. Prosecutors dropped Geiger’s third-degree murder charge in exchange for his guilty plea. David’s family accepted the plea because they didn’t want to risk acquittal, 

A judge sentenced Geiger to one to two years in prison, and he served two. 

“This was a manslaughter case, and in 1985, that’s what the punishment was,” Betnar explains of the state statute. Two years, he says, “was actually higher than the standard range of sentencing for that charge, if you can believe it. And aside from a DUI, Geiger didn’t have a significant criminal history.” 

Betnar notes that ultimately, “No amount of time would ever be enough for what happened to David Reed.”