The FBI spent decades searching for a mobster wanted in a cop killing. Then they found his secret ro

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When investigators picked through the tan split level house on Maplecrest Drive, a textbook suburban street in Dartmouth, Mass., 60 miles south of Boston, they found something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Inside a closet, there was a secret door. Through the door, stood a small room. In the room, they found a walking cane.

The search last year shot momentum back into the long-stalled hunt for Donald Eugene Webb. A dog-loving jewel thief with roots in New England’s mafia circles, Webb was wanted in connection with the 1980 murder of a small town Pennsylvania police chief, the longest cold case involving a slain officer in U.S. history.

Late last week, local and federal authorities were back at the Maplecrest address, a home owned by Webb’s ex-wife. This time police dug through the backyard, eventually uncovering human remains, according to the Boston Globe.

On Friday, the FBI announced the body was Webb’s. The identification puts investigators closer to understanding how Webb was able to stay hidden for nearly four decades, even while on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list for a record-setting 25 years.

“For almost 37 years, the family of Chief Adams, and the citizens of Saxonburg have been awaiting news of Donald Eugene Webb’s whereabouts,” Harold H. Shaw, the head of the FBI’s Boston office, said in a statement on Friday. “Although it’s unfortunate Mr. Webb will never be brought to justice to pay for his crimes, we’re hopeful the family can find some closure in knowing that this alleged murderer has been located.”

Webb was, according his FBI wanted poster, a “career criminal and master of assumed identities.” A former butcher, car salesman, and vending machine repairman, Webb had also spent time in the Navy before being booted out with a dishonorable discharge, MassLive reported. He operated mainly as a jewel thief up and down the East Coast, part of a group of thieves known as the Fall River Gang, according to the Herald News. The outfit allegedly knocked over jewelry stores, then fenced the goods through the Patriarca crime family, the Providence, R.I.-based mafia running criminal business in the Northeast at the time.

Webb was a flashy personality, according to the FBI, known as a “lover of dogs” and as “a big tipper.” He also evidently had a sense of humor: his own name — “Don” — was tattooed onto the web of his right hand. DonWebb — get it?

Investigators have long-speculated Webb was casing potential heist targets when he was piloting a white Mercury Cougar through Saxonburg, Pa. on December 4, 1980. Around 3 p.m., Webb was pulled over in the small town northeast of Pittsburgh by Gregory Adams, the town’s police chief.

Although he was only 31 at the time, with a wife and two sons at home both under two-years old, Adams was actually in Saxonburg to avoid the kind of threat Webb represented. Raised in western Pennsylvania, Adams had worked a police officer in Washington D.C. until the murder of his partner during a traffic stop pushed him to swap urban crime fighting for small town police work in 1973, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

When Adams encountered Webb in Saxonburg, the hustler had an open arrest warrant in New York for attempted burglary. Whatever prompted the encounter, at some point the men struggled in the parking lot of a store. Adams was badly pistol-whipped over the face.

He was then shot with his own revolver twice in the chest. A nearby resident reported hearing gunfire from two weapons. Two blood types were found at the scene. Adams died while an ambulance rushed him to a hospital. Investigators later determined the police chief and suspect had fired at one another. The shooter left behind a .25 handgun and had also ripped the radio out of Adams’ patrol car before fleeing.