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\n\tA joint police task force is ramping up efforts to solve the oldest missing teens case in America \u2013 Brooklyn\u2019s 15-year-old Bonnie Bickwit and her boyfriend Mitchel Weiser, 16, who vanished 53 years ago this week on their way to a historic rock concert in upstate New York.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe task force, created as a result of a Rolling Stone<\/em> investigation<\/a> and led by the Sullivan County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the New York State Police, recently conducted an excavation at an abandoned power company site in upstate Steuben County searching for remains of the teens.<\/p>\n \n\tInvestigators are also pursuing a new tip from a person claiming to have information about Bonnie and Mitchel\u2019s travels after they started hitchhiking to the Summer Jam rock concert 150 miles away on the morning of July 27, 1973. Details are not being released so as to not compromise the investigation.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the summer of 1973, Bonnie had been working in child care at Camp Wel-Met, a popular summer camp for New York-area teens located in Sullivan County in New York\u2019s Catskills region, while Mitchel was a photographer\u2019s assistant in Brooklyn. They disappeared on July 27 or 28.<\/p>\n \n\tThe excavation on June 19 was conducted at an undeveloped, wooded field owned by the New York State Power & Gas company located in Wayne, NY, a small, rural town in the Finger Lakes region.\u00a0 It sits about 17 miles from the Watkins Glen International Racetrack \u2013 site of the historic 1973 Summer Jam, featuring rock legends the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and The Band. The concert attracted more than 600,000 fans \u2013 making it the biggest music concert of its time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOnly two people never returned home from Summer Jam:\u00a0 Mitchel and Bonnie, who were students at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn response to Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2018s 2023 investigation, New York Governor Kathy Hochul directed<\/a> the New York State Police and relevant law enforcement agencies to assist the Sullivan County Sheriff\u2019s Office to \u201cuncover new leads or overlooked information that will help solve this case and give their families and friends the answers they deserve.\u201d (In 2024, the duo\u2019s loved ones blasted law-enforcement officials<\/a> for failing to carry out Hochul\u2019s directive, including not conducting basic interviews with potential persons of interest and witnesses.)<\/p>\n