Then 31 years old, she had lived a rocky existence. After relocating to Pennsylvania, Patricia met the 6-foot-2-inch Andrew in a restaurant. Many of these are circumstantial, so investigators were grateful for their DNA match from the hair. I found it necessary to document each time an episode featured one of these. All this culminated in Caleb Fairleys April 1996 conviction fortwo counts of murder, aggravated assault, theft, and abuse of a corpse. Marcus, I respect your opinion and understand why you and others feel the way you do. During the investigation, police took hair samples from several individuals, including Andrew Katrinak, but none matched the headrest hairs. But if Andrew wanted to find his wife and his son, why on Earth did he wait until 10:30pm before notifying authorities? When Rorrer was initially granted the right to do post conviction testing, the first thing she wanted tested was the butt. The Innocence Project has declined to take her case. While he said there was no animosity between them, he claimed Rorrer may have snapped three days earlier when she called him, at which point his wife told her to leave them alone and abruptly hung upthe telephone.Rorrer said she was almost 500 miles away in North Carolina on the day of the disappearance. Police identified the pair as Joann and Alex Katrinak. Rorrer, who had a five-year relationship with Katrinak that ended in 1989, testified that she and Katrinak remained good friends after the breakup, writing letters occasionally and calling each other. Required fields are marked *. They theorize that Andrew Katrinak framed Patricia and that the hostile phone call between Patricia and Joann actually took place not on Dec. 12 as Andrew said but rather on Dec. 7. Her defense was essentially that she and Andrew Katrinak had remained friendly, so she wouldn't want to hurt him. So tragic. Aside from the hair, there was almost zero forensic evidence. The article also notes that most inmates earn around 19 cent an hour at their jobs and must pay $5 each time they need medical attention or medicine. He disposed of the little girls body in Valley Forge National Park, where hikers soon discovered it. But I remember them finding that poor baby in Valley Forge Park. The investigation that led to her identification and then turned up enough evidence to arrest and convict Patricia Rorrer was interesting. After Joann Katrinak, the wife of Patricias former flame, turned up dead along with her infant son, prosecutors suspected Patricia. memorial page for Joann Marie O'Connor Katrinak (11 Oct 1968-15 Dec 1994), Find a Grave . (Shopping Spree,Forensic Files). At 17, Patricia dropped out of high school and married landscaper Gary Gabard. Wouldn't he have tried to call his mother recall it was with her Joann had planned to go Christmas shopping. Region. Rorrer had never actually met Katrinak. Watch enough true crime shows and you're bound to hear one of these gems. Mal told Keith Morrison that Patricias dance teacher originally confirmed her alibi that she was in class on the day of the murder, then changed his mind. Your email address will not be published. He washed off the foundation at their request, uncoveringscratch marks that looked as though they came from someonesfingernails. Also according to other reports, husband had connections inside police (speculation). Mrs. Katrinak had been shot in the face and beaten, and Alex is believed to have died from suffocation and exposure.Ms. Lisa Manderach, two weeksshy of her 30th birthday, worked full time as a fork-lift operatorin a food warehouse and also had an entrepreneurial streak. He gave an audio interview to the Wrong Man investigators when they made a surprise visit to his house, but he declined to appear on camera. Frankly, Im astonished anyone would question her guilt (except those who can make money by writing books doing so)! And dance instructor William Jarrett couldnt remember whether she attended his dance class at the club the night of Joanns disappearance. Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. Katrinak, Andrew J.Andrew Joseph Katrinak, 88, of Bethlehem, died on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at Blough Healthcare Center in Bethlehem. (We didnt get into the specifics.). The prosecution alleged that Patricia called the Katrinaks house from a pay phone in Pennsylvania. Patricia defaulted on her mortgage and then returned to North Carolina, where she eventually moved in with a boyfriend named Brian Ward. Please research the Katrinak case a little when you have some time. He had worked as a semi-pro boxer in Las Vegas in his youth and later settled . Today, they are married and live in Colorado. The media love the femme fatale., FBI lab blunder. BETHLEHEM, PA. BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) _ A woman was arrested in North Carolina on Tuesday and charged in the 1994 slaying of her ex-boyfriend's wife and infant son in Pennsylvania.Patricia L. Rorrer was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of kidnapping in the deaths of Joann Katrinak, 26, and her 3 1/2-month-old son, Alex.Pennsylvania police, with the help of authorities in North Carolina, arrested Ms. Rorrer, 33, in Linwood, N.C. She was jailed without bail pending a court hearing Wednesday to face extradition.Mrs. Because it was parallel parked in a tight spot something his daughter was unable to do he concluded his daughter could not have put it there.While there was no trace of violence, police would find six hairs on the passenger headrest of the Corolla. At 10:40 p.m. he calls 911 to report his family missing. Watch Forensic Files: Season 5, Episode 3A Woman Scorned. It's not often there's a laundry list of clear signals, but it's fun to iterate them when there are so many. But Patricia had moved from Pennsylvania years ago, and she'd started her own family in North Carolina. North America. Burke said the prosecution brought no one from North Carolina to testify that Rorrer wasn't home for several days..McIntyre said Rorrer tried to conceal her guilt by concocting phony alibis, which shows consciousness of guilt. ), And in another bombshell, Joanns good friend Karen Devine said Joann planned to leave Andrew after the holidays. Im not trying to throw shade at either one of them, but I do find it odd that when police asked Andy if he knew of anyone who lived in the area, he thought of an ex-girlfriend he hadnt been with in over 5 years, but failed to mention his friend, with whom he had much more frequent contact. PUBLISHED: April 13, 1995 at 4:00 a.m. | UPDATED: October 3, 2021 at 11:51 p.m. Andrew Katrinak buried his wife and infant son yesterday, four months after he began a frantic, nationwide search . The forensic reports indicate that there was a significant amount of blood and tissue clinging to this fingernail, which would have been an excellent source of nuclear DNA testing. Rorrer was an easy target due to all the circumstantial evidence. Her husband, Andrew, was surprised to not find his wife and child at home after arriving there after work. Murder Suspect Breaks Down As Detectives Tell Of Her Arrest: `I'm Sorry For Doing This To You,' Patricia Rorrer Allegedly Told Her Infant Daughter.February 18, 1998by DEBBIE GARLICKI The Morning Call. Someone had shot Joann in the face with a .22-caliber pistol, then beaten her about the head hitting her 19 times in all with a blunt object. Theremaining three were sent to the FBI.A subsequent report states the FBIcould not test the hairs because they werecontaminated by someone who touchedthem during the collection process,rendering them scientifically worthless.Despite those reports, state police without recording the chain of custody inany record that has been revealed incourt said they sent all of the evidenceback to the FBI for more testing.While three of the six hairs weredestroyed in previous tests and twoearlier reports revealed no roots fortesting could be found in the others, nowa FBI analyst not only discovered roots totest on the hair samples, but also latermatched them to Rorrer.The new DNA tests, combined withwhat prosecutors said was evidence thatshe was trying to conjure up an alibi Rorrer said she was simply trying todocument her movements in NorthCarolina that day ended with her arrestin the double murder.It was the first time she would facecriminal charges. Andrew languished for weeks and then months as investigators failed to suppl any explanation for his wife's and son's mysterious disappearance. In addition to the Facebook page, there are Reddit threads on her case. The nail was not consistent with Joann or Rorrer with regard to size and grooming. If it could reasonably have affected the outcome a retrial is necessary. They moved into her house in Salisbury County, staying together for about two years. The state of the bodies suggested the victims had likely been killed the day very they were abducted. Before getting into the most recent information on Fairley, heres a recap of the episode along with some additional facts culled from internet sources: Quick jaunt. Frank D. Anderson-Josephine Kiely bert H. Dabbs William M. Yale Andrew Katrinak. She said she had no animosity toward the Katrinaks and she had never met the dead woman. It was after that round of testing that Rorrer insisted the cigarette butt be tested for DNA, as she was convinced it would exonerate her. Some issues there, but I aver nothing that seems to undercut/override evidence against her. Supposedly it was the relationship to this trail and Patricia's managing of the Silver Shadow Farms horse stable just a mile away that first brought Rorrer to detectives' attention. Lisa Agostinelli Manderachlost her life because the aforementioned Dungeons and Dragonsenthusiast, one Caleb Fairley, age 21, reportedly considered her the embodiment of beauty hed been wantingto seize. . It is currently unknown if the Patricia's case was one of these. In 1991, she returned to North Carolina after the relationship with Katrinak was over and she had defaulted on a mortgage loan.She briefly held a job as a saleswoman for a Salisbury, N.C., car dealership, where she is remembered as an outgoing, friendly person. There were no love letters, cards, gifts, or any other indication that she still had a romantic interest in him. But fortunately the murder createdplenty of forensic evidence that made for a stronger case against Fairley. If Patricia drove it back from the murder scene after she shot Joann and then beat her to death, luminal would have lit up the interior. Juries are imperfect: what is stretched circumstantial evidence for you (or me) was evidently not so for that jury. ", "Due to the fact that she sustained one gunshot wound to the face, and then approximately 19 blows to the head led us to believe that the gun probably had jammed. Testimony began with her birth in January 1964 in Phillipsburg, N.J.She told jurors about the jobs she held, the men she dated, her involvement with horses, their training and competitions, and the different places she lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.Rorrer, dressed in a black suit and white blouse tied at the neck, cried once when she testified about being beaten by a former boyfriend in 1991. Christopher Coble and Sgt. On a secret recording, Patricia asked Jarrett to vouch for her attendance or she might go to the electric char. You couldnt fire a second shot. For next week, Im researching a bit about Dungeons andDragons and whether any game aficionado or the nature of the pastime itself hasbeen linked to other major crimes. Later, they both worked 12-hour graveyard shifts at a textile factory. With 400 (and 6) episodes, this progress bar indicates my progress toward finishing all of them. Ex-boyfriend Walter Blalock said that Patricia wanted him to be more like Andrew. And fire hydrant of a man. She worked at restaurants and later sold insurance and real estate and worked at a car dealership in Reading.She met Katrinak in May 1984, she said, when he was a regular at a restaurant where she worked.They dated, lived together and bought a home in Salisbury Township. I would say that its only since the advent of forensic porn that wholly circumstantial cases are disparaged. I hope her spouse and family find peace. Dedication. Shes just extremely happy with Andy, her brother, Michael OConnor, told the media. While very far from conclusive, she also made some startling remarks at arrest, such as her not killing Alex (and only Alex). Andrew Katrinak was suspected because he failed two polygraph tests when asked if he had lied to police and hid evidence.If it wasnt for the DNA, I wouldhave had a hard time saying guilty. GEORGE JAMES GATANISJUROR, DISCUSSING AFTER THE RORRER TRIAL THE FACTORS THAT LED TO HIS DECISION.27During the investigation, police took hair samples from several individuals, including Andrew Katrinak, but none matched the headrest hairs. The couple had known each other since Lisa was 10 and Jimmy was friends with her brothers. It seems Patricia's own daughter and baby Alex Katrinak were very close in age. "Yes," Rorrer replied very quietly.Pfeiffer said Rorrer is testifying freely and voluntarily.Jurors, who have heard nearly 100 witnesses, will be asked by the prosecution to give Rorrer the death penalty if they find her guilty of first-degree murder.McIntyre earlier said that Rorrer's alleged lies and contradictory statements to police show "consciousness of guilt. 7 Unnerving Facts About the Lindberghs and the Kidnapping, The Lindbergh Kidnapping: Forensic Files Lost Episode, Dawn Fehring: A Missionary Dies Too Young, Daniel and Cynthia McDonnell: Good Cop, Bad Wife. Andrew Katrinak speaking after his wife's alleged murderer is convicted. Despite previous testimony that said all of the hair was destroyed or untestable, the latest test results revealed a hair discovered on the drivers side seatback of the car matched Rorrer. It all gave jurors a lot to think about but only for six hours. He allegedly pressured one of those friends,Christopher Lefler, to perjure himself bycorroborating the dance alibi in court; Lefler refused. The missing items included Joann's purse, car, both her and Alex's winter jackets, and the diaper bag. Lieutenant Christopher Coble and Sergeant Suzanne Pearson would later testify that Patricia cried and apologized to 18-month-old Nicole, telling the baby, Im sorry for doing this to you and lamenting to the officers that she would never see little Nicole again. Coble later told Rorrer that her mother was on the way and that she could get dressed. The guy was banging at the door and yelling open this door. And then, he yelled something like What do you mean its not my kid? Traupman said in a sworn statement.A neighbor of the Katrinaks told police she saw Joann Katrinak that afternoon, clad in a black, furry jacket that matched Traupmans description. Police found her 1988 Firebird in the shopping plazas parking lot and located a witness who remembered seeing Lisa in Your Kidz & Mine. Pennsylvania prison inmate is asking for new D-N-A tests in a 13-year-old murder case. Posted: June 22, 2022 Dance defense. Join Facebook to connect with Andrew Katrinak and others you may know. The second round of testing came back as a 100% match, raising the question of a mistake. "Investigators allege Rorrer "in a fit of irrational rage" drove from Linwood, N.C., to Catasauqua, to abduct Joann Katrinak and her baby, Alex, at gunpoint. Testimony from Walter Blalock contradicted Patricias claim that she never had a gun. Why would somebody tell you, theyre going to fry me, if they didnt do it? Jarrett told Wrong Man. Tests show the hairs are definitely a woman's..Rorrer is a cunning woman who almost committed the perfect crime and thought she had outsmarted police, McIntyre said. Search is on. USA. I dont have any reason to believe that Fairley might have been in the Catasauqua area in December of 1994. They married in 1992. Ideally we would achieve certainty; practically we must settle for the exclusion of all reasonable doubt: problematic cos its circular. Patricia demonstrated a consistent habit of long-distance calls from home, then had an obvious gap while claiming she. Until WCJN has thought that the hair was planted but the FBI has just released a report detailing unscientific and fraudulent analysis of hair samples in criminal cases. Fairleytook Lisas body to a wooded spotin an industrial area near his health club. How about the phone line being cut? He wanted to move to Colorado and she was against it.. On December 12, 1994, Joann answered a phone call from a woman shed never met, Patricia Rorrer, her husbands onetime girlfriend. They noted houses near the murder scene would have heard a gunshot in December, when no farm equipment is making noise, and question why the murderer didnt just kill Joann inside her house instead of risking being seen in public in her car. We found out that he was a real pervert, all kinds of sexual devices and various perverted stuff, District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. told Forensic Files rather triumphantly. But she continued to call him occasionally.Three days before she vanished, Mrs. Katrinak angrily told Ms. Rorrer over the phone to stop calling her house, according to a police affidavit.DNA analysis showed that hair samples Ms. Rorrer submitted matched six found in the headrest of Mrs. Katrinak's car and two found near the bodies. Still, no good leads materialized. Microscopic analyses, mitochondrial DNA testing and nuclear DNA testing showed hairs found at the crime scene and in Joann Katrinak's car matched Rorrer's hairs and DNA in her blood. Next thing you know, a muscle bound nerd does something dreadful. "The Case of the Severed Hand" examines a case where a waterlogged hand leads to a defiled corpse and a practitioner of black magic. There was a piece of a fingernail found attached to Joanns chest. A closer examination of the hairs showed traces of dried blood. More hairs there. The police considered the possibility that Joann ran away, a theory disputed by her family. "Do you understand?" Media galore. But were it not for Rorrer, yes, Id look at Fairley. Oddly, the test results on the DNA from the cigarette butt was the deciding factor for me: thats when I KNEW the evidence had been compromised. They broke up in 1993. Counsel for the 52-year-old woman convicted in 1998 argues evidence handling calls for new attention, reports say. This was one of. When Rorrer was granted the right to do post conviction DNA testing on the nail, it was discovered that the nail had been cleaned of the blood and tissue, rendering it essentially useless for further testing. Her family moved to North Carolina in 1978 but returned to the area in 1984. ", "An unusual feature about the gun, he [Rorrers ex-boyfriend] stated was the fact that you fire one shot out of the gun, and the gun would jam. Then, despite her multiple alibis, she has an inexplicable five-day gap in this pattern. Rorrer, he said, bought one with his autograph and cheered him on "to go get the bad guys. December 15th, 1994. As for the murder weapon, police didnt find a .22 caliber pistol on Patricias property, but an ex-boyfriend claimed that she owned one and it would always jam after one shot. Andrew Katrinak hugs a friend as he emerges from the courthouse after Patricia Rorrer, his former girlfriend, was sentenced to life in prison, March 9, 1998, for the murder of his wife and child 2 . ", "I can remember till this day, seeing that infant being lifted off the abdomen of his mother. The killer was Patricia Rorrer, the jealous ex-girlfriend of Joann's husband, Andrew. Barry Grube, one of the few, if not only, police officers sympathetic to Patricias cause, noted that Andrew didnt seem particularly frantic while authorities searched desperately for his wife and son. One final thought about those hairs: they were described as dirty blond and approximately 8 inches in length. Memorials. December 15th, 1994. I also communicated with Patricia via email to get her input on some matters. They had a son, Alex Martin, in August of 1994. Lets consider these statements Rorrer is alleged to have made in the presence of a police officer. The missing items included Joann's purse, car, both her and Alex's winter jackets, and the diaper bag. Are we to believe that Rorrer was still in such a rage 8 days later that she hopped into her van (with a bad universal joint), drove 500+ miles and killed a woman and baby she had never met, without anyone either seeing her in PA or missing her from NC? Thanks for writing in its the first Ive heard about another mother and child murdered in that area. In 1998, Caleb Fairleys parents settled a lawsuit filed by Lisas mother and Jimmy Manderach for $1.6 million. According to Pennsylvania State Police, Rorrer met Andrew Katrinak, the husband and father of the victims, in 1986. The 26-year-old was recently married, and this would be four-month-old Alex's first Christmas. It houses 2,114 inmates but has bed capacity for just 1,826. After a very early failed marriage, the 24-year-old Joann scored a new husband in Andrew Katrinak, 38, whom she met at a club. Patricias professional life included short-lived gigs as a Century 21 real estate agent and an Oldsmobile salesperson. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4438028/com-v-rorrer-p/. Traupman claimed that when he reported the dispute, trooper Robert V. Egan III got mad and practically kicked him out of his office. She was always looking for a fight, Gary Gabard told the Morning Call, which noted that he was a head shorter than Patricia. When Andrew returned from work several hours later, Joann's car wasn't in its normal spot in the alley behind their house, but otherwise everything looked ordinary. But the public needs to know what our system does or doesnt do.Bridget DiCosmo graduated from St. Johns University in Queens, N.Y., in 2003. He said she did own a firearm, with its serial numbers filed off. A year later, she started calling again. She is petitioning for DNA testing on the nail fragment that was found on the victims body. But, Id like to offer you a challenge. The Irish-Italian girl had full, fluffy dark hair, olive skin, and a pretty face. She was also accused of breaking into barns, stealing horses, and underfeeding the ones she owned. Today, more than two years later, that woman awaited extradition from North Carolina to face charges she kidnapped and killed her ex-boyfriend's family in December 1994.Authorities said Tuesday it took two years to build a tight forensic case against Patricia L. Rorrer, 33, partly through blond hairs found in Mrs. Katrinak's car a day after she disappeared.``We wanted to make sure that the hairs found at the scene were also consistent with the hairs found at the car,'' said Lehigh County District Attorney Robert Steinberg. She made an effort to look perfectly groomed even when she took out the trash, according to her mother, who appeared on Forensic Files.

Geert Vanden Bossche Mass Vaccination In A Pandemic, Breaking News Dinwiddie Va, Articles A