Pennsylvania prosecutors announced this week that David S. Heck, 50, of Brazil, Indiana, has been charged with murder, rape, and kidnapping in the 2002 killing of 20 year old Sabrina Mae Kahler of Erie. Her body has never been found. Attorney General Dave Sunday and Erie County District Attorney Elizabeth Hirz said the charges followed a presentment returned this week by the 54th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury.
Pennsylvania State Police filed the case on Monday, September 21, 2026. According to local court reporting, Heck faces first degree, second degree, and third degree murder counts, along with felony rape and kidnapping charges. The case was docketed with Springfield Township District Judge Jeff Gadley. Heck was taken into custody late Monday night at his home in Indiana.
Officials said Tuesday that he was being returned to Erie County, where the Office of Attorney General and the Erie County District Attorney’s Office will prosecute the case together. Who Sabrina Kahler was Sabrina Mae Kahler was born June 20, 1982. She graduated from East High School in 2001, where she was in special education classes. She lived with her mother, Susan Burg, and her boyfriend, Christopher Lee, at 1203 East 3rd Street in Erie.
Family and friends called her Bri. Her mother later described her as kind, accepting, and very naive. District Attorney Hirz said this week that Kahler was “kind, gentle and according to her sister, she gave wonderful hugs.” The last day she was seen Kahler was last known to be alive on June 24, 2002.
According to court records and official statements, her mother left for work that morning while Kahler was still asleep. Burg later said she called home around 11 a.m., asked her daughter to do laundry, and heard Kahler say she loved her. Prosecutors say Heck, then 26 and a cousin of Kahler’s boyfriend, arrived unexpectedly at the East 3rd Street home and asked Kahler if she wanted to go swimming. Kahler was home alone.
Investigators say the two had gone swimming before with family, and Kahler agreed. Lee later said he returned home after noon and found a note saying she had gone swimming with Heck and would be back by 4 p.m. According to the attorney general’s office, Heck drove Kahler about 25 miles west to Eagley Park, a swimming area along the Lake Erie shoreline in Springfield Township. There, investigators say, Heck became involved in a confrontation with his former girlfriend and some of her friends.
Heck was on probation and had been charged days earlier in a separate assault case involving his ex girlfriend. Officials say he and Kahler then went to the Tasty Twist ice cream stand on Old Lake Road, where Heck called police about the park confrontation. A state trooper responded and saw both Heck and Kahler there.
Heck later told investigators he drove Kahler back toward Erie, dropped her at the West Erie Plaza, and gave her $10 to see the movie Lilo and Stitch at the former Plaza Cinemas and to pay for a ride home. Police said they never found evidence that she arrived at the plaza. Authorities now allege that account was false. What investigators originally learned From the first days of the investigation, Heck was the last person known to have been with Kahler.
Friends and family searched for her and then reported her missing. Investigators interviewed Heck, searched wooded areas around Eagley Park and the Lake Erie shoreline, and later expanded the hunt across western Erie County. Officials have said they never believed his story that he left her at the theater. The attorney general’s office said that in the days after Kahler vanished, Heck avoided people who asked about her.
Police ultimately found him hiding under blankets at a friend’s home. He was later jailed on a parole violation and other unrelated cases. Investigators continued to treat him as a suspect, but prosecutors have said they lacked enough evidence at the time to charge him in Kahler’s disappearance. A court declared Kahler deceased in 2009.
Her remains were still missing. Rewards were offered over the years, age progression images were released, and Erie police and Pennsylvania State Police kept the case open. What changed after more than two decades The charging announcement this week did not cite DNA or other newly disclosed laboratory results as the turning point. Authorities instead pointed to a renewed review by the attorney general’s Cold Case Section, cooperation with Erie County investigators and Pennsylvania State Police, and testimony before the statewide grand jury.
Sunday’s office said the Cold Case Section was formed in January 2026 and is led by Senior Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Schorn, a former Bucks County district attorney. Kahler’s case was referred to the attorney general and then presented to the grand jury. Schorn and Hirz will prosecute.
Sunday said the grand jury heard testimony from numerous witnesses, including two men who had previously been reluctant to come forward: Douglas Heim, described as a friend of Heck, and Terry Kellerman, described as Heck’s former brother in law. Officials say both men were with Heck in the hours after Kahler was killed.
According to the attorney general’s office, their testimony and other evidence produced this account of June 24, 2002: After leaving Tasty Twist, Heck drove Kahler to the Fairview Gravel Pits, a heavily wooded area with bodies of water in Fairview Township. Witnesses reported seeing Kahler in Heck’s Chevy Blazer not far from that location. Prosecutors allege Heck raped and killed her there.
A fisherman reported hearing a woman’s “blood curdling scream,” then seeing a man matching Heck’s photograph from a later television news broadcast walk out of the woods alone and make brief conversation. Sunday said the fisherman had been at the gravel pits with his daughter. Years later, according to prosecutors, Heck told a cellmate that he raped and killed a girl at the Fairview Gravel Pits and that she screamed.
Local reporting said the cellmate came forward years after that conversation, after learning the statement involved a missing person. Prosecutors allege that after the killing, Heck went to a bowling alley and recruited Heim to help move Kahler’s body. According to the attorney general’s office, the body was taken to Elk Creek Access and buried there. Heim testified before the grand jury that he helped move and bury her.
Kellerman testified that Heck made claims of killing a girl. Elk Creek Access is a flood prone area that officials say has changed substantially in 24 years. Police searches at and around that location have continued and have not recovered Kahler’s remains. Sunday said a “totality of evidence,” including the grand jury testimony, led investigators to one conclusion: that Heck raped and murdered Kahler 24 years ago.
He called the charges a historic development that still falls short of bringing her home. “This is a historical development that brings some answers for Sabrina’s loved ones and the Erie community, but it is not a day of celebration as we have not yet brought Sabrina home,” Sunday said. “Efforts will continue to answer that one remaining question of where is she?” Hirz said the case has never been forgotten in Erie County.
“This case has represented more than an unsolved homicide. The homicide of a young woman leaves a lasting mark on the community,” she said. What happens next Heck remains charged, not convicted. The case now moves into the criminal courts.
Because he was taken into custody in Indiana, officials said he was being returned to Pennsylvania to face the Erie County charges. After his return, the prosecution is expected to proceed before the local district court where the complaint was filed, then through the ordinary stages of a homicide case if the charges are held for trial. The Office of Attorney General and the Erie County District Attorney’s Office will jointly handle the prosecution.
Investigators have said the search for Kahler’s body will continue at and around Elk Creek Access. Sunday credited investigators who worked the case across two decades, including Erie police and state police personnel who kept returning to the file. Hirz said a cold case is never cold to the family waiting for answers. Authorities have not publicly released the full grand jury presentment or a complete inventory of physical evidence.
They have not said whether forensic testing, including DNA, played any role in the new charges. The publicly disclosed case against Heck rests on the grand jury presentment, witness accounts, Heck’s alleged statements, and the investigative record built since June 24, 2002.
