State police say body found in Aliquippa identified as woman who went missing in 2022

ALIQUIPPA ― Investigators have announced they have confirmed the identity of a body that was discovered in an abandoned city building last week.

According to state police, the human remains were first found on April 18 during an investigation of an abandoned building along Aliquippa's Fifth Avenue. Police said dental record checks helped identify the body as 24-year-old Ri'Kiah Griffie, a city resident who was first reported as missing on Oct. 21, 2022.

On May 4, 2023, The Times reported that detectives were offering a cash reward for any information on Griffie's whereabouts after searching for the woman for months. Police had investigated several potential leads before offering the reward, but none of these original investigations revealed where Griffie had gone after her family had last contacted her on Oct. 11, 2022.

"There were multiple leads, regarding people who claimed to have seen her either in Pittsburgh, Ohio or around Aliquippa and Beaver Falls," former Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier told The Times this May. "There were allegations as to her being harmed, those were all third- or fourth-hand accounts and all those leads were followed up by Aliquippa police and the county detectives. They've done a great job in this case, but all those leads have been run to ground and none of them were substantiated."

State police said Griffie's body was found under debris in an abandoned building at 100 Fifth Ave., which is only a block away from her last known location at the Towne Tower Apartments and several blocks away from the Aliquippa Police Department. Family members said at the time of her disappearance Griffie was staying with her boyfriend.

At this time, an exact time and date of death have now been given, but reporters for KDKA indicated the body was in an "advanced state of decomposition" when found. The investigation into Griffie's cause of death was ongoing as of Tuesday morning.

Several local media outlets are reporting that the tip about the body's location came from an anonymous source, but The Times had not been able to independently verify these claims as of Tuesday morning.