LUZERNE COUNTY, Pa. — A $5,000 reward is on the table for tips that might heat up a Luzerne County homicide investigation that went cold more than five decades ago.
The cash reward put up by Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers seeks to close the investigation of Ilonka Cann’s disappearance in Huntington Township in May 1970, the organization said.
Cann, who was 20 at the time, vanished late that month and has not been heard nor seen from again, state police said.
She was the wife of Charles Cann Jr., who worked as a teacher at Berwick Junior High School. He told investigators he last saw her as he left for work at 7:20 a.m. on May 26, 1970.
When he returned home at 3:30 p.m., Ilonka Cann was gone, and their 15-month-old son was alone and crying in his crib.
State police said this weekend Charles Cann Jr. may have traveled to the area of Hackettstown, New Jersey, where his parents lived, around the time of his wife's disappearance.
The state police said the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are suspicious and they are treating the investigation as a homicide.
The investigation went cold but never closed.
In July 2022, the state police drained two ponds and excavated an island on the Cann’s property. It was not clear if they found anything. Divers searched the ponds decades earlier and found no sign of her.
If alive, Cann would be 73 years old.
She was last seen by her husband at their home on Cann Road. At that time, first responders, including a dive team from Scranton, searched the property and a pond for Cann, but no sign of her was found.
Anyone with information is asked to contact either the Wilkes-Barre barracks at 570-822-5400, Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers at 1-800-4PA-TIPS or online.
