A Marriage Takes More than One Wrong Turn
(“Seeds for Doubt,” Forensic Files)
Peter Wlasiuk changed the story he told police about how his wife ended up at the bottom of a lake in Guilford, New York.
A spouse with a revised narrative is always highly suspect in a death investigation, and there was no shortage of other negative indicators.
At Peter’s subsequent trial, the prosecution called 50 witnesses and the jury took less than four hours to convict the tavern owner of murdering Patty Wlasiuk.
So when I first plugged “Peter Wlasiuk” into Google, it surprised me to see that advocacy for his innocence has begun springing up all over the internet.
Why are people championing a guy who tried to collect on his wife’s insurance policy less than nine hours after she died?
For this week, I looked for some answers, but first here’s a recap of the 2004 Forensic Files episode “Seeds for Doubt,” along with extra information from internet research:
Patty Schoonmaker came into the world on February 19, 1967, in Lakenheath, England. As a small child, she moved with her family to Sidney, New York. She grew up to become a registered nurse who worked at The Hospital at Sidney.
Peter Wlasiuk, born on February 9, 1969, spent his early life in New Jersey. After high school, he joined the army and later worked as a driver of the giant trucks that transport new cars, according to the Press and Sun-Bulletin.
The mullet-wearing guy and petite gal first met when Peter was visiting relatives in Sidney. He moved to the area and the pair eloped in Las Vegas in 1996. She brought a son, William Schoonmaker, from a previous relationship into the marriage.
The couple went on to have three daughters, Ashlee, Jolynn, and Rebecca.
In 1997, the Wlasiuks paid $82,000 for a house with a backyard swimming pool at 633 New Virginia Road.
Although Forensic Files made it sound as though Peter was the sole owner of the Angel Inn bar, he and Patty actually bought the business together.
The Guilford Center building that housed the tavern dated back to 1806. Peter installed knotty-pine cabinets in the establishment, which had a dance floor and hosted bands.
According to a Press and Sun-Bulletin account, Peter and Patty both liked to flirt with bar patrons but also seemed to have fun together. Tavern goers would later recall how “generous and happily married they were.”
In fact, in February 2002, just a few weeks before Patty died, Peter went out of his way to find a new state-of-the-art stethoscope and blood-pressure device to give her at a surprise birthday celebration he staged at the inn.
Little did Patty know that just a few weeks later, the party would be over for good.
On April 3, 2002, when Patty got home at 11 p.m. after her late shift at the hospital, she found the children gone, according to Peter. Each spouse thought the other was picking them up at the babysitter’s house, he explained.
On their way to retrieve the kids, Patty tried to flick a cigarette ash out of the window when suddenly a deer appeared, Peter said.
She swerved to avoid it and plunged the 1996 GMC truck into Guilford Lake, Peter told police. He said that he escaped and made a failed attempt to help Patty, then ran to the home of Thomas and Jessica Becker of Norwich for help. Thomas called 911.
While waiting for the rescue workers, Thomas Becker, his friend Steven Schweichler, and Peter drove out to the lake, where the white truck was visible about 35 feet from shore. Thomas dashed home and returned with a wetsuit, swim fins, and a rowboat, then paddled out to the vehicle, but it had traveled deeper into the chilly water, according to an Oneonta Daily Star account. He couldn’t reach Patty.
Professional divers ultimately pulled her from the cold lake and took her to the same hospital where she had worked for 17 years. Her colleagues couldn’t revive her.
When explaining what happened that night, Peter was quick to volunteer that Patty’s one flaw was that she drank too much.
True, Patty had racked up some DWI violations. But her blood alcohol content on the night she died tested at o.4 percent to .055 percent, below the legal limit.
And police had additional reasons to investigate further.
The truck took an unusual path into water, through one of the only spots without a guardrail or other obstruction. There were no skid marks to suggest the driver slammed on the brakes. When they pulled the truck out of the water, they saw that the door Peter claimed to have used as an exit was locked. (Peter had alternately told police he climbed out through an open window.)
And curiously, in Patty’s hair and on her clothes, there were seedpods known as burdock despite that it didn’t grow near the lake. Investigators found some near the Wlasiuks’ house. There was a burdock plant with a broken branch and strands of Patty’s hair on it. Peter had some burdock on his shoes.
Patty had scrapes and petechial hemorrhages on her body, although Broome County pathologist James Terzian at first signed off on drowning as the cause of death.
But the case took a prurient turn thanks to some entries in Patty’s diary. She had written about three-way sex that she and Peter had with babysitter Joyce Worden.
Patty worried that Joyce had replaced her as the object of Peter’s affections.
And, as earlier mentioned, Peter was in a hurry to collect on Patty’s life insurance. By 2002, the Wlasiuks owed about $70,000 on their mortgage and $86,000 on a business loan they took out to buy the Angel Inn, according to an AP account.
Police believe that on the night of April 3, 2002, Peter left the kids with the babysitter so he could kill Patty at home. After she had one or more alcoholic drinks, he murdered her outside the house, where she picked up the burdocks in her hair and he got them on his shoes. The petechial hemorrhages — as Forensic Files fans know well —suggested death by strangulation.
Then, he placed her in the truck, drove to the lake, steered the vehicle toward the water, and jumped out while it was still on dry land.
The motive? Peter wanted Joyce as his new girlfriend, sole custody of the kids, and the life insurance money to pay down his debts.
On April 8, 2002, police arrested Peter and held him without bail.
The trial kicked off just a few months later. Patty’s mother, Joyce Cardozo, attended every day along with her adult children, Laurie and Manny, and grandson William Schoonover.
For the court case, Peter amended his original story: Patty was drunk — he could smell alcohol on her breath, he told Reasonable Doubt — so he asked her to pull over, which made her so angry that she intentionally drove into the lake and refused to exit the sinking car. He made up the deer tale out of concern for his wife’s reputation, he claimed.
“The whole story is I was protecting Patty,” Peter said on the witness stand — he didn’t want the police to know she drank and drove.
The defense, led by lawyer Frederick Neroni, hired a scuba diver who said he discovered burdock in the lake.
Joyce Worden, the babysitter who participated in the sex trios and allegedly became Peter’s girlfriend, “shocked the courtroom” by testifying that Patty had initiated the three-way arrangement. But Joyce admitted she’d had sex with Peter alone as well.
She refuted reports that Peter abused his wife. According to an account from the Press & Sun-Bulletin:
“Worden contradicted earlier testimony that Peter Wlasiuk had kicked his wife so hard he left the imprint of his cowboy boot in her chest. Worden said Peter Wlasiuk actually lost his balance and stepped on his wife’s chest after his wife kicked him in the genitals.”
Peter said that prosecution witnesses fabricated the wife-beating stories after “the media pounded me.”
During testimony from a rescue squad member who tried to revive Patty, Peter dabbed his eyes.
Peter’s mother, Gail Wlasiuk, testified that Patty drank a lot and she once found 20 jumbo Budweiser cans in a gully near the couple’s house.
Gail said that Peter had called about the life insurance pronto because she urged him to do so.
Among the dozens of witnesses District Attorney Joseph McBride called for the prosecution was Patty’s supervisor, Patricia Howard, who said that Patty “came to work perky but went home to horror” and that colleagues encouraged her to leave the marriage. But Patty said she still loved Pete.
Patty’s coworker Patricia Cretien-Grant testified that Patty said Peter held a gun to her head during an argument.
Jessica Becker told the court that when Peter showed up at her house seeking help, his hair was dry despite that he supposedly had just been submerged in the lake.
The prosecution also trotted out heavy hitter Dr. Michael Baden, an O.J. Simpson trial vet. He testified that Patty had no water in her lungs and someone had likely choked her before she entered the lake.
Broome County pathologist James Terzian ultimately concurred that she had died from asphyxiation.
The prosecution also held that wet burdock wouldn’t stick to hair or clothing — she must have picked them up before she plunged into the water.
Accident reconstruction expert Andrew Frate said that the car didn’t sustain enough damage to support Peter’s claim that Patty hightailed it into the lake.
A bar patron named Brenda Golden told the court that Peter had once said he knew how to kill someone and make it look like an accident. (Neroni countered that Peter was just bragging.)
Rescue worker Marlene Martin testified she believed that Peter feigned hypothermia on the night of the accident. He was sitting still until he saw her, then started shaking and speaking in a stuttering voice, she said.
The prosecution pressed the theory that an argument Peter said arose from Patty’s drinking had more to do with Peter cheating on her with Joyce Worden.
The jury delivered a guilty verdict after deliberating for two and a half to four hours (accounts vary on the time).
Many in the courtroom hugged and shook hands, including law officers and Patty’s nursing colleagues.
“I’m still pretty rocky,” Joyce Cardozo told the Press and Sun Bulletin. “I didn’t suspect Peter until after they actually arrested him. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Peter got 25 years to life in prison.
Chenango County Judge W. Howard Sullivan appointed Joyce Cardozo as administrator of Patty’s $284,000 estate.
As far as the children the Wlasiuks shared, a 2002 newspaper item advertised a “benefit for the children of Patty Wlasiuk” at the East Park Supper Club with food, soda, raffles, and door prizes for $10 a person.
A 2008 Press and Sun Bulletin story reported that the girls lived with Peter’s father, Thomas Wlasiuk. According to information available on social media today, Ashlee recently got engaged, Jolene works at a preschool, and Rebecca is or was in the military.
No reports about Patricia’s son, William Schoonover, came up online (or none that I could verify pertained to the right William Schoonover — there are a few men out there with the same name.)
Meanwhile, his mother’s killer is still fighting for exoneration and release.
During his interview with Forensic Files, Peter Wlasiuk said he couldn’t get justice because he wasn’t wealthy. But he managed to get his conviction voided at least twice amid claims he didn’t receive a fair trial.
Both times, he was found guilty again.
An Albany appeals court rejected Peter’s 2016 appeal, which alleged the prosecution’s narrative was “pure speculation.”
One judge referred to Peter as a “sick and evil man” who “society should be protected from.”
So, who or what is the driving force behind those advocating to free Peter Wlasiuk today?
Well, there’s no mention of any major organization such as the Innocence Project taking up his cause. The key seems to be that the imprisoned Peter scored himself a new wife, Heather — I wasn’t able to find her maiden name — who originally came from Milton, Delaware.
Now known as Heather Wlasiuk, she had taken criminal justice classes at Sussex Tech High School and Delaware Tech Community College and became interested in Pete’s case after reading about it on social media, according to Heather’s interview with Forevermedia in February 2021.
She sent him a birthday card in Attica in 2015 and offered help as an innocence advocate. He proposed a year later and they married in 2019.
Heather and Peter’s other supporters believe that Patty died of drowning, but CPR released some of the water from her lungs.
Plus, the crime took place in an election year with a lot of “tough-on-crime spiel,” Heather said during the interview. “The DA is now a state supreme court judge, so it’s all about advances and putting somebody in jail.” She also feels the trial should have had a change of venue because Patty had influential relatives in town — a cousin who worked in the DA’s office and a mother with a high-level position at the local hospital.
Heather, who has a monotone low-key voice — not what you might expect from a rabble-rousing crusader for justice — got a legal team together for Peter and started the Operation #FREEPETE fundraising page as well as Twitter and Instagram accounts and a YouTube channel to advocate for his innocence.
In 2021, Heather told the Cape Gazette that Peter was the victim of 300 Brady Violations — incidences of the law withholding information that might help the defendant prove innocence.
The nonprofit Center for Factual Innocence has also taken up Peter’s cause and added “Pete Wlasiuk” to the hood of a racecar with an image of a justice logo and the names of 14 others who the organization believes were wrongly convicted.
Oh, and Peter’s camp also points to true crime shows’ desire for ratings as part of the problem. Heather says that a group of people are planning a class-action suit against either Forensic Files or Reasonable Doubt — Peter appeared on both, but Heather wouldn’t say which was the offending series — because of unfair portrayals of suspects.
Despite his wife’s efforts, as of this writing, Peter M. Wlasiuk is inmate #03B0130 at the Greene Correctional Facility, aka, Coxsackie, where COVID concerns have kept him and Heather from visiting as much as they’d like and they have to stay six feet apart when they see each other. The New York Department of Corrections gives his parole hearing date as sometime in November 2026 and parole eligibility date as March 26, 2027.
“It’s difficult, not for the meek or the weak,” Heather said of marrying an incarcerated individual, but “I’m going to do life with him no matter where he is.”
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
I have to be honest. These are among the Forensic Files episodes in which I was not 100% sure the person was guilty. I am still not sure as there are many weird parts from the defense side, but there are also some weird ones from the accusation side. Cannot wait to hear what y’all think.
Really Omena? You are not sure because of which points. Listen, look and absorb carefully at all of the evidence. HE IS GUILTY. Scumbag!
I am not saying he is innocent. I am saying that, from all the information available to me right now, the case was not built good enough to be 100% sure.
I hope you are calling him a scumbag and not me me. 🙂
He cannot take legal action against reasonable doubt show….we all signed legal papers. Nice try.
The legal standard is not, of course, 100% surety (whatever that looks like…) but conviction of guilt ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ For the benefit of the jury in the Crown Court (here in UK), this is usually expressed as requiring them to be ‘satisfied so that you are sure’ of guilt. This is unofficially described as the 99% test. The identical standard applies in US. The exact formulation of reasonable doubt has never been determined.
Courts are often reluctant to define Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt as a percentage probability. A jury may be given specific instruction as to the precise meaning of the term in their jurisdiction (but not in UK and US). It is generally considered to be a very high standard but one that is achievable by the prosecution.
Chief Justice Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made this observation about the reasonable doubt standard in 1850:
“[W]hat is reasonable doubt? It is a term often used, probably pretty well understood, but not easily defined. It is not mere possible doubt; because every thing relating to human affairs, and depending on moral evidence, is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. It is that state of the case, which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge. The burden of proof is upon the prosecutor. All the presumptions of law independent of evidence are in favor of innocence; and every person is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty. If upon such proof there is reasonable doubt remaining, the accused is entitled to the benefit of it by an acquittal. For it is not sufficient to establish a probability, though a strong one arising from the doctrine of chances, that the fact charged is more likely to be true than the contrary; but the evidence must establish the truth of the fact to a reasonable and moral certainty; a certainty that convinces and directs the understanding, and satisfies the reason and judgment, of those who are bound to act conscientiously upon it. This we take to be proof beyond reasonable doubt.”
In the US Supreme Court case of Victor v. Nebraska, the court held a similar jury instruction on reasonable doubt unconstitutional:
” `[A reasonable doubt] is one that is founded upon a real tangible substantial basis and not upon mere caprice and conjecture. *It must be such doubt as would give rise to a grave uncertainty*, raised in your mind by reasons of the unsatisfactory character of the evidence or lack thereof. A reasonable doubt is not a mere possible doubt. *It is an actual substantial doubt.* It is a doubt that a reasonable man can seriously entertain. What is required is not an absolute or mathematical certainty, but a *moral certainty.* ”
The court held that the portions of the instruction in bold rendered it unconstitutional. The court has never fully approved an instruction.
I guess *my* understanding of criminal guilt is my answer to the question ‘are you sure (X is guilty)?’ If I cannot assert surety I cannot assert guilt. However, I distinguish surety from certainty (however semantically questionable): I may be sure but not certain. To me being sure falls slightly short of being certain but is sufficient to meet to criminal threshold.
How could Heather be with Peter in 2015? I was his lead advocate and his girlfriend from 2012 to 2018…..I was on reasonable doubt….I no longer support this man. His case wouldn’t have even been fought for if it were not for the 7 years of tearing his case apart by me and Karen Torley.
I just don’t feel he is proving his “innocence.” If I were innocent but found guilty. My rage would show. I don’t care if I’m tv or in courtroom. You would hear me loud and clear. He is looking for sympathy and supporters. I wanted to find him innocence based on his actions. I think the whole “no deer in area” may of been bs. All wildlife go to water. Finding those burrs tho on bottom of lake was stretching it. Her hair was found on a stalk in yard. I’m sure he dragged her after killing her. Changing his story didn’t look good either. They had a toxic relationship. Her co workers are believable. We all talk at work. Sometimes we confide to our co workers because family and friends may not believe the spouse is abusive. So you look for support. Thankfully she confided so truth comes out. He was found guilty 3 times. The evidence is too strong against him. I could have believed the story because my ex would have done something like that in his fits of alcoholic rages. But if she had been drinking why did he not drive? Why didn’t he just go get kids while she home? And all those kids in one truck while Mom supposedly had too much? Come on. He killed her at home and staged it. One thing I understand looks bad is asking for life insurance after a death. How you gonna pay for funeral? Although it looks bad. I feel some ppl need the money for funeral. I have buried family and it’s costly and they want most down right away and rest shortly after. I can understand why asking for an insurance policy looks bad but I also can understand in some situations why it’s asked. Unless there is clearly money in bank then I don’t feel that should be put against anyone. But he’s guilty. And if he don’t admit it and feel bad for doing it, he will never get out.
Missing — certain expert evidence about the burdocks. Being wet does not prevent them from “sticking,” as they are not sticky like glue but have little curved hooks that hook on, and and in fact work in the same way as Velcro. It also said in the programme that where this took place was an ideal area for them to grow. And the expert was asked if she could have got the burdocks on her under the water — “Yes”.
Didn’t realize they had little hooks–it’s been so long since I’ve seen one. Thanks much for writing in (my late father was a plant physiologist — he would have enjoyed joining in on the convo).