Stranger Abduction or Murder: What Happened to Nicole Bryner?

Losing a child is one of the worst things that can happen to a family or just about anyone. That ordeal sadly occurred for the family of little Nicole Lynn Bryner when she was reported missing on March 11th 1982 from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was never seen or heard from again and nearly 38 years after it all started, Nicole remains missing.

Nicole disappears

Nicole was reported missing by her mother, Melody Childs Thomas, on March 11th 1982 from The Giant Eagle Supermarket which is located on 23rd Street and Jane Street on the south side of Pittsburgh. She claimed that Nicole was sitting on the bottom of a shopping cart and she turned around for a brief moment to get something from the meat counter and when she turned back she noticed that Nicole had disappeared.

Melody Childs Thomas in 1982

Giant Eagle Supermarket

She stated she thought that Nicole wandered down the aisle to look at the cookies as this is what she had been asking for since her and her mother entered the store and Melody went to the other side to catch her but she was nowhere to be found. Melody said she became very concerned and asked store employees to help search for her daughter. Melody claimed her daughter was abducted.

Who took Nikki?

Authorities initially believed that Nicole had been abducted in a custody dispute between Melody and Nicole’s father, Michael Bryner. Michael was working as a remodeler with his father in Corpus Christi, Texas when Nicole was reported missing. He was questioned and cleared in the initial stages of the investigation. He flew from Texas to Pittsburgh to help search for his daughter. Investigators also looked at Nicole’s family members and cleared them of involvement in her disappearance. Her father wanted to gain custody of Nicole after she was recovered and vowed to stay in Pittsburgh until his daughter was found.

Michael Bryner photographed after his daughter’s disappearance (Photo was published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 03/15/1982)

Her mother and her boyfriend, Timothy Widman, were also looked at in the onset of the case. They were subjected to questioning and lie detector tests. Authorities and investigators were a little put off by Nicole’s mother’s statements because no one remembered seeing Nicole at the supermarket on the day that she disappeared and no one saw anything suspicious. They passed the tests and were originally not considered suspects.

Extensive searches revealed no trace of the child. Apparently several days after Nicole’s disappearance, her mother received a letter which was purportedly from the young girls abductor(s). The letter stated that “Nikki was dead and buried”. Handwriting analysis found that it was possible Melody wrote the letter herself but she maintained her innocence in Nicole’s case.

Nicole’s disappearance struck fear and worry in parents around Pennsylvania because her case indicated a stranger abduction. In a 1983 newspaper marking the one year anniversary of Nicole’s disappearance, a mother, Denise Cummings, who was actually at the Giant Eagle Supermarket with her child a few days prior to Nicole’s disappearance said “After that, I imagine a lot of people started to watch their kids a lot closer. When we shop, one of us has to stay with the cart and her,” said Cummings. “We Never Stray.”

The Sightings

Despite the fact that almost no one recalled seeing Nicole at the Giant Eagle Supermarket on the day she disappeared, there were some sightings of her after her disappearance. In one of the sightings, a man who was making and selling pretzels at a stand near the exit of the store reported that he had seen a child matching Nicole’s description staring at him. He said the girl was alone near the exit, he said she simply vanished after that.

An off duty school security guard stated she had seen the child walking with an unidentified woman away from the supermarket after she was reported missing. The woman was described as being middle aged aged, staining at 5 feet 4 inches, her hair was blonde and cut just below her ears, and she was wearing a gray parka jacket. Her identity has been established and she was not involved in the case. The security guard stated she initially did not come forward because she thought nothing of it and was unaware of Nicole’s disappearance at the time.

In March of 1985, a Bakersfield, CA man called police to say he believed he had recognized Nicole at a Bakersfield shopping center accompanied by a man. The man who reported the sighting stated he had recognized Nicole from a milk carton and called the police after he went home and looked at the carton. By the time police arrived, the man and the girl were gone. Authorities stated the man was driving a green 1979 Chrysler with Texas license plates. The man was quoted as being “convinced as a human being can be” that he indeed saw Nicole who would’ve been six years old by the time the sighting took place. Authorities in Kern County issued a bulletin describing the car that the man had and the car which Nicole might be driven in. Despite this, authorities haven’t called the sighting credible as many people have given authorities claims that they’ve seen Nicole and the photo the man saw on the milk carton was taken of Nicole prior to her 1982 disappearance. The man and his car were never located and authorities had nothing to prove he was involved in Nicole’s disappearance.

Hope is all that remains

By 1984, hope is all that lingered in Nicole’s family. Her loved ones did continue to hold onto hope that Nicole had been alive. They believed that a stranger who was concerned about Nicole’s living condition took the child and raised her in a better environment. Her case was getting harder and harder to solve as the years passed. Authorities and investigators remained hopeful that they would learn what happened to the small toddler whose disappearance caused fear and sadness throughout the region and nation.

Nicole’s photograph appeared in thousands of newspaper ads for missing children and on the side of millions of milk cartons. Her case also received much media attention and many tips came in to the Pittsburgh Police Department.

Nicole pictured on a milk carton along with Kelly Juanita Staples who disappeared in 1980 and remains missing

Nicole’s case was briefly brought back to life in February of 1984 when a man named David Romanelli was charged with sexually abusing and killing 12 year old Richard Grochowski on the South Side and a block away from the Giant Eagle Supermarket that Nicole vanished from almost two years earlier. Romanelli was questioned regarding Nicole’s case but authorities had no evidence to link him to her disappearance and it’s unclear what he said in the questioning. A news article marking the 2 year anniversary of Nikki’s disappearance detailed this briefly.

David Romanelli in an undated photo

Authorities stated that while they wouldn’t want to believe that the toddler was deceased, they were in between the possibilities that Nicole was alive and that Nicole was deceased.

The confession

In 1986, roughly 4 years after Nicole had disappeared without a trace, Timothy Widman confessed to accidentally killing Nicole in March of 1982. He stated that he was on a drug binge for several days and he was sleeping on the couch of the apartment he shared with Nicole and her mother in Pittsburgh. He stated that he was awoken by Nicole biting his toe and in response he backhanded Nicole in the face and she fell and hit her head on the ground. She fell into a lapse of a semi conscious state. He awoke Nicole’s mother, Melody and she took the girl to bed with her. She was completely unaware of just how injured Nicole was. A few hours later they realized that Nicole had died from her injuries. Widman would go onto state that he and Melody drove Nicole’s body to a wooded lot in Brookline and buried her body in a green garbage bag.

Timothy Widman is photographed leaving the woods where Nicole Bryner’s remains may be buried (photo from the Pittsburgh press 05/22/1986)

Widman went on to state that Nicole’s mother assisted him with the burial and came up with the idea to report Nicole missing to cover up her death. Widman was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Nicole Bryner’s presumed death. Nicole’s mother had apparently moved to Texas in the years after her disappearance and remarried illegally. Nicole’s mother and father had separated in November of 1981 but she did not get a legal divorce from him. She was arrested in Texas in 1986 at her job and was charged with hindering prosecution and filling out a false police report. Melody maintained her innocence and never deviated from her story of Nicole being taken from the supermarket. She stated that she needed the public’s help in finding her daughter and she feared that police would stop looking for Nicole.

Melody Childs Thomas in court (photo from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/17/1986)

The charges against Melody were dropped because Widman refused to testify against her for her part in Nicole’s disappearance. She was still charged with false swearing and bigamy since she remarried illegally and was still married to Nicole’s father at the time. She was given a four year probation sentence. She pleaded no contest to the charges since she did not deny the evidence. She thought that since her and Michael Bryner had been separated for 3 years when she filed for divorce that it had been finalized.

The charges against Timothy Widman were also dropped because in order to prove intentional homicide or manslaughter, a body needed to be present. Authorities and investigators searched more then several times for Nicole’s remains in the area that was indicated by Widman but her remains were not found and therefore he could not be charged with Nicole’s death. The law changed in 1988.

In this photo, detective Robert McCabe is instructing public works using a backhoe in the search for Nicole’s remains to dig along a waterline in Brookline (photo from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/30/1986)

Melody was desperate to get back to Texas so she could continue to search for Nicole. She had a son when she remarried. Melody Childs Thomas passed away at a Texas hospital at age 41 after she underwent back surgery in 2001. She was never recharged in connection to her daughter’s disappearance.

The charges return

On September 27th 2006, nearly 2 decades after the original charges were thrown out, Timothy Widman was once again charged with killing Nicole. This time he was charged with criminal homicide. His original trial and charges were thrown out because Nicole’s body and any evidence that could prove a crime were not present. After the case was reopened and new witness statements that alleged Nicole and her mother were abused by Widman before Nicole’s disappearance came out, investigators decided to pursue charges against him for Nicole’s presumed murder.

Timothy Widman in an undated police photograph

Widman cooperated with authorities and in May of 2007, he admitted to Nicole’s homicide and was charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He was to serve a prison sentence that consisted of 2 to 4 years. This was said to have upset Nicole’s remaining relatives because they felt that this was not a long enough sentence for Widman. They still felt that justice had not been served for little Nikki.

Widman passed away on March 2nd 2011 at age 56. He apologized to Nicole’s living relatives before his death.

Aftermath

Nicole’s case was closed by the Pittsburgh Police Department in 2008 and is considered solved. She has never been found despite much publicity and searches.

If alive today, Nicole would be 40 years old. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Nicole Lynn Bryner then you are asked to please call the Pittsburgh Police Department at 412-255-2888 or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.

For more information on Nicole’s case you can visit The Charley Project, The Doe Network, For The Lost, or Stories of the Unsolved.