This week, instead of recapping an episode of Forensic Files, I’d like to explain a bit about the series itself and the genre it inhabits.
Forensic Files executive producer Paul Dowling
Despite that the show has been around for 20 years and is broadcast in 142 countries, a lot of prospective viewers mistakenly lump it in with other TV fare related to crime.
Forensic Files is a straight-up true-crime series as opposed to the wholly fictional crime dramas (such as CSI ) that dominate network TV.
It also differs from made-for-TV movies (Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes) that are based on real crimes but also may take dramatic license by making up dialogue and creating composite characters.
Classifying. True-crime shows feature interviews with the real-life investigators and lawyers who worked on the cases and friends and family members of the victims.
These series can’t pack in every element of the story, but they don’t fabricate any either. On the Case with Paula Zahn, 48 Hours Mystery, and certain Dateline NBC shows fall into this category.
Forensic Files belongs to the same genre, but there’s no Erin Moriarty or Keith Morrison hosting the show or appearing on camera during interviews.
Each 30-minute Forensic Files episode is a mini documentary told in a whodunit format with off-camera narration by Peter Thomas. It includes some re-creations of events, but they’re labeled as such and don’t take liberties.
Nothing tawdry. And the producers of Forensic Files have taken pains to make the shows tasteful. You won’t see any interviewees melt down and become hysterical on camera.
And the producers never make viewers wince through oversexualized reenactments with low production values.
“There’s something in TV called ‘permission to watch,'” Forensic Files executive producer Paul Dowling explained an interview with True Crime Truant. “We provide a show you can leave on if your 8-year-old daughter and her friends come in the room.”
If you’ve never seen Forensic Files, you probably haven’t been looking too hard. You can find it somewhere on any given day.
Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Roku, Apple TV, HLN (which has regular marathon showings), and the Escape channel are a few of the outlets that carry the show. And most of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube.
Media critic Robert Thompson is a Forensic Files fan
There are 400 episodes of Forensic Files produced from 1996 to 2011. The show is not going away anytime soon, in part because the producers avoided crimes involving celebrities.
“Most viewers don’t know what the cases are, so the Forensic Files episodes don’t get boring,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
And speaking of gripping content, here’s some exciting news: Next week’s post will be a Q&A drawn from an in-depth interview that Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling gave to True Crime Truant.
Dowling divulges some behind-the-scenes secrets and discusses his relationship with the great and unpretentious voice-over artist Peter Thomas.
Cautionary words. And he offers some safety tips that I’ve never heard — advice that can help you remain a fan of true-crime shows rather than the subject of one.
A Showboating Ax Murderer
(“Family Ties,” Forensic Files)
Last week’s post recapped “Family Ties,” the Forensic Files episode about Christopher Porco, whose flights of fancy and financial misdeeds compelled him to plot the murders of his parents.
Long before the tragedy: Joan and Peter Porco with their sons, Christopher on the left, in the 1980s
A jury convicted Christopher, an academically derelict University of Rochester student from Bethlehem, New York, of attacking Joan and Peter Porco with an ax as they slept on November 15, 2004. The tall, nice-looking 21-year-old had hoped to bail himself out of his financial problems and cadge some disposable income via his mother and father’s life insurance payout.
But, ironically, the lack of diligence that sullied Christopher’s scholarly pursuits also hindered his get-rich-quick plan. His father did not die immediately but rather lived for a few hours after the assault, and his mother survived her wounds and is alive today.
Strange functionality. This week, I’d like to focus on three of the intriguing aspects of the case. First and foremost, the medical one.
After being struck 16 times with an ax and lying unconscious as his son sneaked away from the suburban charnel house, Peter Porco arose from bed, put on clothing, ambled downstairs to get breakfast, went outside to retrieve the newspaper, realized he’d locked himself out, found a spare key in its hiding place, let himself back inside, and died of blood loss.
As Forensic Files explained it, an injury can damage the brain’s neocortex, which controls reasoning, but leave intact the underlying paleocortex, which guides second-nature habits.
“The neocortex is especially vulnerable to external injury,” according to the Handbook of Affective Sciences (Oxford University Press, 2003). “Wounds or other injury may sometimes destroy a [neo]cortical region without damaging deeper brain structures.”
In other words, Peter Porco’s fleeting transformation into a real-world ghost was haunting but not particularly mysterious.
The book also noted that the neocortex “segregates functions especially well across spatial regions” and that “lesions to the neocortex are more likely to be localized to a single region than are subcortical regions.”
I think all of that means it’s possible Peter Porco had a little help from the reasoning part of his mind post-trauma, but the subsection that enables people to self-identify as injured and in need of help was destroyed.
TV movie. On to the gossipy part of the saga. The Lifetime channel made a movie based on the crimes, Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story, in 2013. It starred Lolita Davidovich as Joan Porco and Eric McCormack as “Detective Sullivan” — presumably a composite character representing police who worked on the case.
Up-and-coming actor Matt Barr played Christopher Porco in the Lifetime movie about the case
I was surprised to read that Romeo Killer portrayed Christopher Porco as a charming ladies man with lots of friends. The Forensic Files and 48 Hours Mystery episodes about the case didn’t play up that angle.
The movie got passing marks from reviewers, but the reader comment section was where the really interesting critiquing was going on.
Of the 40 comments posted to writer Nellie Andreeva’s Deadline Hollywood review of the movie, more than a dozen came from readers who identified themselves as neighbors or classmates of Christopher Porco — and disputed the notion of his popularity. A couple typical ones:
Leah Blodget: “Romeo? He was not. I grew up in the ‘small town of Delmar, NY’ and the guy was a clown.”
Josh: “I live [in] Delmar and go to Bethlehem High School [and] teachers who had him said he was insane. Mrs. Porco still lives here and she’s so nice. I feel bad for her that this whole thing is being brought back up.”
Benny1311: “I was a year above Porco in school. I had some classes with him and knew one of his girlfriends well. And I must say [she] along with most of his classmates, believe him to be guilty. Chris has a small group of peer supporters – all female – many younger- who seem to have had ‘relations’ with him. His frat brothers and male friends do not back him.”
So, apparently he did have at least some girlfriends but wasn’t necessarily a full-on JFK (Jr. or Sr.) with the ladies.
Where is he now? Finally, I looked around for the latest news on Christopher Porco’s efforts to get out of jail via a new trial or overturned conviction.
He noted that there were no lights on Brockley Street, where the Porcos lived, casting some doubt on a neighbor’s account of spotting Christopher’s yellow Jeep in the driveway the night of the ax attack.
The behavior of the Porco’s dog, which the prosecution had used as evidence, was also disputed in the appeal. Police had theorized that no neighbors heard Barrister bark that night because the killer was someone (presumably Christopher) that the Labrador retriever already knew.
Kindlon, however, argued that Barrister was known for not barking at visitors, whether friends or strangers.
Sarah Fischer, a Fairfield University senior who was Christopher Porco’s girlfriend, testified at the trial.
The lawyer also noted that Peter Porco sometimes deactivated the burglar alarm when letting the dog out at night and then forgot to turn it back on — another challenge to the prosecution’s assertion that Christopher punched in the code the night of the murder and attempted murder.
Another contention — one that makes sense — was that Joan Porco’s alleged nod in answer to the question of whether or not it was Christopher who had attacked her was unreliable evidence because of her severe brain injuries.
But jurors interviewed by 48 Hours Mystery said that they had dismissed the testimony about the nod for precisely that reason and had instead relied on the prosecution’s crime timeline as proof of guilt.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Christopher’s case in 2012. He also lost an appeal in 2014, when an appellate court rejected claims that he was denied effective assistance of appellate counsel. (In fact, a number of reader comments posted to the aforementioned website articles blasted Terence Kindlon and Laurie Shanks for defending Christopher so vigorously in court.)
As of this writing, Christopher, 33, is prisoner #O6A6686 at New York state’s Clinton Correctional Facility, commonly known as Dannemora. He’ll be eligible for parole in the year 2052.
That’s all for this week. Until next Thursday, cheers.—RR
A College Kid Turns Homicidal
“Family Ties” (Forensic Files)
This week, it’s back to Forensic Files, with “Family Ties” (no relation to the 1980s sitcom of the same name).
Christopher Porco
The episode was produced in 2009, toward the end of Forensic Files’ run, and delves into the ax attack on Joan and Peter Porco, a couple from Bethlehem, New York.
The story is something of a middle-class version of the Menendez brothers saga.
Flights of fancy. In the case of the Porcos, there was only one bad son, Christopher, a 21-year-old University of Rochester student. His brother, Jonathan, 23, was on a nuclear submarine at the time of the crime and not implicated.
In the years leading up to the assault on his mother and father, Christopher Porco had told his school friends tall tales about having a wealthy family with extensive real estate holdings and vacation homes. He also committed a number of financial crimes against his parents.
He used ill-gotten loans to pay for a $16,450 yellow Jeep Wrangler and whatever other accoutrements one needs to impersonate a scion of landed gentry.
And he neglected to tell his parents that the university had suspended him because of poor grades and he had wasted his $30,000 in tuition money. He needed another $30,000 once Rochester let him back in.
A way out. All in all, Christopher was in the hole for at least $50,000 — a lot of debt, but not insurmountable.
Instead of working out a plan to repay his parents, he tried to avoid them, then decided to kill them. He had his eye on their $1 million life insurance payout, authorities believe.
The victims as a young couple: Joan Porco, a school speech pathologist, and her husband, Peter, a lawyer, were married for 30 years
Here’s a recap of the Forensic Files episode plus some additional facts about the Porco case drawn from Crime Library, 48 Hours, and Albany’s Times Union newspaper.
On November 15, 2004, law clerk Peter Porco, 52, didn’t show up for work, so his colleague Michael Hart stopped by his house on Brockley Drive to check on him.
Peering in the front-door window, Hart saw Peter’s body sprawled on the floor amid a huge amount of blood.
The authorities would later determine Porco had been struck with an ax 16 times.
Apparent burglary. The police found Joan Porco, 54, in the bedroom. Like her husband, she had been hit with an ax, but only three times. The assault had broken her jaw, destroyed one of her eyes, and penetrated her skull deeply enough to expose her brain.
But she was alive and conscious.
Before paramedics took her to the hospital, Detective Christopher Bowdish questioned her about the attacker. In the presence of Bowdish as well as paramedics on the scene, she nodded yes when asked whether it was her younger son.
Police found that someone had smashed the house’s burglar alarm, snipped the phone line, and opened a window and cut a hole in the screen.
The crime scene in Bethlehem, New York
A newspaper reporter first informed Chris Porco about the murder, and he rushed home from Rochester to see his mother in Albany Medical Center, where she had undergone 12 hours of surgery. He told police he was sleeping in the lounge of his dormitory, Munro House, during the time of the attacks.
Mob link. Investigators had a few leads on other suspects. One, an unhappy litigant in a custody case, had vowed revenge against Peter. But the man had a good alibi.
There was also a theory involving organized crime. Perhaps a former loan shark named Frank “Frankie the Fireman” Porco — a great uncle of Peter’s — had been considering ratting out his mob associates, and they killed Peter as a warning not to.
But Frankie was in jail specifically because he refused to cooperate, so that theory evaporated.
Investigators discovered more-compelling evidence against Christopher Porco.
For one, someone had burglarized the Porco’s house in 2002 and 2003, and Christopher was the No. 1 suspect. He used eBay to sell computer equipment stolen from his parents and a veterinary hospital where he worked part time.
Surveillance cameras. Investigators found surveillance video of a yellow Jeep that supported their contention that Christopher traveled 232 miles from Rochester to the Porco’s house the night of the attack, assaulted his mother and father with an ax, and high-tailed it back to Rochester.
Police couldn’t find any New York State Thruway E-ZPass data on the yellow Jeep, but toll booth attendants at the cash-only lanes said they thought they remembered seeing the car with Christopher in the driver’s seat.
Police found Christopher’s E-ZPass on the floor of his Jeep. He removed it to avoid leaving a digital record on the night of the crime, authorities believe
The video evidence came from the university. It had footage of the yellow Jeep leaving and returning to campus at an interval that fit a realistic timeline for commission of the crime:
• 10:30 p.m. Jeep left Rochester campus • 2:14 a.m. Burglar alarm deactivated at parents’ home • 4:59 a.m. Phone line cut (this was 2004, when land lines were relevant) • 8:30 a.m. Jeep returned to campus
Police believe Christopher cut the hole in the window to make it look like a burglary. Nothing was stolen from the house.
Windfall expected. Jonathan Porco, an officer in the U.S. Navy, said that his brother was one of a handful of people who knew the alarm’s four-digit deactivation code. Christopher smashed the alarm box in a failed attempt to mask the fact that someone had punched the correct code in, investigators theorized.
There was more: Christopher had sought financial advice shortly before the ax attack. He told an investment professional he was coming into some money, investigators discovered.
And of course, they found the evidence about those loans that Christopher had taken out fraudulently — using his parents as cosigners without their knowledge.
Investigators also thought Christopher chose an ax as his weapon in the belief it would divert all suspicion to his mob-involved relative “Frankie the Fireman.”
Buddies no help. The trial took place in July of 2006 with Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael P. McDermott leading the prosecution and lawyers Terence Kindlon and Laurie Shanks defending the accused.
The prosecution had no forensic evidence, except for a New York Thruway ticket that allegedly carried Christopher’s mitochondrial DNA. Investigators theorized he wore scrubs from the veterinary office during the assault and then destroyed or hid them.
A colleague testified that Christopher had experience cleaning up after surgical procedures.
Nine of Christopher’s fraternity brothers refuted his story that he was asleep in the lounge at Rochester, and a neighbor driving by the Porco’s house claimed he glimpsed the Jeep in the driveway on the night of the attacks. Still, there were no eyewitnesses placing Christopher directly at the crime scene inside the house.
Here’s the heart-breaking aspect of the trial: Joan Porco stood by her son through everything. She accompanied him to court and testified for the defense.
Mother’s love. She told the jury she didn’t recall implicating Christopher the night of the attack and that her child would never commit a heinous crime like the one that killed her husband and disfigured her.
She maintained that while Christopher’s financial misdeeds angered her and Peter, they all loved one another and wanted to work on their relationship.
In fact, after Christopher’s 2005 indictment for second-degree murder and attempted murder, Joan had scraped together $250,000 for his bail. The two walked to court with their arms linked.
Joan Porco, seen here offering support to Christopher at the trial in 2006, remembered nothing about the attack. She declined to be interviewed for a “48 Hours” report on the case
None of that helped. A jury quickly convicted Christopher on the strength of the timeline the prosecution constructed.
He got 50 years to life and is at the Clinton Correction Facility in Dannemora, New York.
That’s all for this week’s post, but I’d like to continue next Thursday with a look at some of the other interesting parts of the Christopher Porco drama, including the way his doomed father “woke up” after the attack, the conflicting tales about whether Christopher deserved the “Romeo Killer” nickname a made-for-TV movie gave him, and his recent efforts to exit his maximum-security residence.
We Americans sure do like women who kill. That is, we like to watch them and read about them.
To market tawdry books based on real crimes, publishers used romanticized drawings, like this one of Belle Gunness in the early 1900s. See below for a photo
It’s not just a recent phenomenon. A century before Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias delivered ratings for HLN, the story of Belle Gunness, a Norwegian-American who killed her suitors, husbands, and even her own offspring, sold fanciful paperbacks for enterprising publishers.
Genuine evil. Forensic Files has brought us many a memorable modern-day murderess, including Stacey Castor, who poisoned her husband and then tried to blame the crime on her daughter. And Sharon Zachary, who beat to death the old man she was paid to take care of; she was in his will and couldn’t wait. Sixteen-year-old Idaho resident Sarah Johnson, who shot her parents to silence their objections over her relationship with an older boy, was another memorable one.
And Dante Sutorius, the newlywed who seemed charming until she got greedy and executed her husband for life insurance money, made a colorful subject for “A Second Shot at Love.”
Not that the media coverage these types of crimes receive has ever fooled viewers into thinking that women are going berserk out there, mowing down anyone standing in the way of their ambitions. Most homicides are committed by men. But I got curious about exactly how the numbers break down by gender.
Below, the results of a little research.
Relative trouble. Only 20 percent of people who killed family members were female, according to the most recent (2005) numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Narrowing it down to spouse murderers, women committed just 17 percent of those crimes. Of those Americans who killed a boyfriend or girlfriend, women were slightly more heavily represented, at 25 percent. Most spouse murderers — of either gender — were over 35 years of age. (Maybe it takes a while to build up homicidal fury.)
Men committed 90 percent of murders overall — that is, any homicides, regardless of whether the victim was a stranger, acquaintance, friend, love interest, or spouse.
Getting quantitative. Recent statistics on male vs. female convictions for spouse homicide were hard to come by, but a 1995 BJS study of cases in the 75 most heavily populated U.S. counties reported that women were five times more likely to beat murder raps. Juries acquitted 31 percent of wives, but only 6 percent of husbands.
Brawny Indiana farmer Belle Gunness, seen here with her children, got away with dozens of murders from 1884 until authorities caught on in 1908
Please leave a comment if you find any other interesting homicide stats or have a theory about why women commit way fewer murders (and are more likely to escape conviction when they do) than men. — RR
Q&A with an Advocate for Trauma Victims (“Tourist Trap,” Forensic Files)
Amid the violence of the Miami tourist-robbery epidemic, Helga Luest’s case stands out as something of an anomaly. As recapped in the November 10th blog post, Luest and her mother faced attackers in stereo, one on either side of their car.
Helga Luest in 2016
The unusual part was that Stanley Cornet and his accomplice seemed caught up in brutality for brutality’s sake. “We offered to give them everything to leave us alone,” Luest recalls, “but they said they were going to kill us.” The pair either forgot, or never intended, to steal anything from the women.
Instead, Cornet and an unidentified associate pummeled them. Cornet bit down on Luest’s arm, piercing the muscle.
Luest subsequently appeared on “Tourist Trap,” the Forensic Files episode that told the story of the early-1990s South Florida crime wave that shocked the world. At the time, nightly newscasts were reporting story after story about brazen thieves ambushing travelers in daylight, smashing the windows of their rental cars, and occasionally killing those who resisted and some who didn’t.
Today, Luest lives in the Washington, D.C., area and is a senior manager at research and consulting firm Abt Associates. “Tourist Trap,” filmed in 2003, briefly mentioned the other work she started, as an advocate for people living with the effects of trauma.
To catch up on her work on behalf of victims since then, I spoke to Luest last month. She also discussed the Florida robbery epidemic, the assault by Cornet, and her efforts to ensure he stays tucked away in prison forever. Edited excerpts of our conversation follow.
One theory said that assailants made the South Florida robberies so violent to make victims afraid to revisit the crimes by working with investigators, testifying, etc. Do you think that’s valid? I know that in my case, the nature and intensity of the violence was largely due to the assailants’ being on drugs.
But yes, tourists were specifically targeted because they were less likely to come back to prosecute. The theory was that tourists were targeted because they would be so traumatized that they would go back home and stay there.
How much time was there between the attack on you and your mother and the jailing of Stanley Cornet? It was a matter of a week or two weeks because he was apprehended while attacking a police officer’s mother — whom Cornet was robbing and assaulting [including a biting]. It’s very unusual for a victim to be bitten during a crime, so that made the link to our robbery stronger. They flew me to Florida to do an in-person ID of photographs, and I identified Stanley Cornet.
So the fact that the police caught him in the commission of another crime helped to speed along your case? Yes, if not, it would have been just my word against his. With the bite mark evidence, it was more difficult for him to claim he didn’t do this and to be believed by the jury.
You were originally a TV producer. How did the attack change your career path? My career changed completely. Because of my physical injuries, I could no longer carry gear in the field when I was producing news stories — so I knew I had to make a change. I came to see my life’s work as helping to prevent violence wherever possible and making sure victims have the support they need to heal and live well again.
What happened gives me insight into the nature and impact of trauma and how trauma affects whole health. When someone is traumatized, the effects are not just physical and mental but also spiritual and economic. It can lead to workplace presenteeism [difficulty focusing because of the trauma, so your productivity is affected].
I believe the final stage of the healing process is when you can take the dark cloud of what happened to you and make it something positive. I’m serving on the Governor’s Family Violence Council in Maryland. I use my experience to try to better inform programs and use what I know as a survivor to inform and help other people. What was once a senseless incident that happened to me became something I could turn into actions with a positive purpose.
I manage two groups, on Linkedin and Facebook. The Facebook “Trauma Informed” group has more than 1,300 members (with 3 to 5 new members daily) and is more conversation-oriented. It includes people from as far away as China and Australia. The LinkedIn group has more than 700 members.
What’s the first thing you should do if you’re the victim of a crime?First and foremost, is safety — get with people who can support you. If it’s a rape, go to the hospital. If it’s something else traumatic, report it. More people regret not reporting a crime than reporting it.
How long does it take to overcome the effects of trauma? Everyone heals differently. Sometimes after a year a two, it can seem that everything is back to normal, but then a life change — like getting married, losing a parent, starting a new job, having an illness — can unearth pieces of healing that you weren’t ready to explore earlier. People heal along their lifespans and in their own time and in their own way.
Is counseling generally effective? I believe counseling can be good, but victims also benefit from connecting with other trauma victims and those who can relate to their experience.
How do victims find one another? When I was attacked, there really weren’t any groups for crime victims.
Now with social media, it’s easier. Sometimes a victim can use a different name to protect privacy. We now have a deeper understanding of the nature of trauma. I see more state and grass-roots level opportunities to have discussions on crime and trauma in the community, so that heightens awareness.
Does it take longer for children to recover? It can be different for kids and adults. Kaiser and the CDC did an Adverse Childhood Experiences study some years ago. We know from the study that, although one event can have a big effect, children can be resilient. But if it’s happening again and again, it can ultimately affect a person’s life span.
How can children heal from trauma? They need at least one supportive and safe person and a safe space to heal. The research has really informed what’s being done with schools. For example, 15 years ago, if a child wouldn’t sit in her chair, it was because she’s a bad child. Now, we’re not asking about what’s wrong with this kid but rather what’s happening with this kid and what are they trying to tell me. If things are volatile at home, it makes sense that school would be a place a child would let it out. This is where we would see the school-to-prison pipeline. Now we’re in a different place and can use trauma-informed approaches to help and provide interventions.
What’s the most common effect of trauma on victims?The feeling that so much is out of their control. When an assailant is caught, he has Miranda Rights. But you as a victim don’t have a right to a speedy trial. No one tells you how long the process is or when VINE (Victim Information and Notification Everyday) is going to contact you. It really is a long-term commitment.
The forensic dental expert lost the photo of the bite wounds I sustained [from Stanley Cornet]. And I called every week for years to ask where the photos were, if they’d been found. Also, Cornet’s cap came off in the attack, and I gave it to police but it was never registered into evidence. I’m wondering: Will this ever go to trial? Will this ever be over? These are things you would never know until you have experienced it.
Forensic Files also didn’t show that Cornet found a loophole in the prosecution process. In 2001, I got a call from VINE notifying me that he was transferred back to Miami for a hearing. They resentenced the case, so I went back down to Florida and testified again.
Stanley Cornet sat there and smiled at me during proceedings — now, for a second time — as he heard what I went through physically and emotionally. The court saw that he was not remorseful. This judge sentenced him to life in jail without parole.
Your mother didn’t appear on Forensic Files. How did she contend with the aftermath of the robbery? My mother didn’t testify or come back to Florida to see the case investigated or prosecuted. Every survivor has a different process of dealing with that kind of thing. It happens along the survivor’s own timeline and in their own way — and it’s important to understand and respect that.
So she didn’t want to relive it? Yes, it was hard for my parents to even hear about what happened to me.
Do you still have physical effects from the beating? Yes. I don’t have feeling on one side of my face. I’ve had chronic back issues, although now I’m back to running — and now I’m running marathons. I also have scars, but I’ve become more comfortable with them as part of my body.
I’m a big fan Forensic Files. Did you have a good experience with the show?I felt that they did an accurate portrayal. It was difficult for me to see the reenactments. The producer and crew were very respectful, though, and I appreciated their including information about the nonprofit I founded. [Luest now works with Trauma Informed.]
Do you feel incidents that cause trauma are on the downswing?As we’re changing administrations, the US is in an unusual place where violence and threats of violence are increasing. I work with the National Bullying Prevention Initiative and have been tuned into news reports of increased bullying and hate crimes in school. The NEA recently said these incidents are rising. We’re seeing more bullying in schools. We need to set the right example, build empathy, and pay attention to what can cause kids lifelong problems.♠
A Fairy Tale Flames Out for Darryl Sutorius (“A Second Shot at Love,” Forensic Files)
I grew up with a step-grandmother who bossed around my passive grandfather: “Shut up, Ben.” “No one was talking to you, Ben.” She said a few unforgivable things to us kids, too.
Della “Dante” Sutorius
But, I must say, Grandma Jeanne was Maria von Trappe compared with Della “Dante” Britteon, who Forensic Files fans know from “A Second Shot at Love.”
Smitten. The episode begins in 1994 with the story of Darryl Sutorius, a divorced surgeon whose interpersonal skills could have used some rehab. He had a bad temper and tended to dish out demeaning verbal abuse, his first wife, Janet, said in her Forensic Files interview.
The lonely 6-foot-3-inch-tall doctor was none-too-charismatic to his colleagues either and, as such, probably didn’t attract much in the way of romantic interest via his career.
So, in 1994, Dr. Sutorius, 54, joined a dating service called Great Expectations that matched him up with Dante, a pretty, petite 44-year-old with a magnetic personality. She said she owned a day care center and had a degree from UCLA.
The heavyset cardiac and thoracic specialist was enchanted by Dante. He bought her a $5,000 ring, and they wed after a few months.
The marriage lasted less than a year, during which she used the poor man like a Powerball lottery ticket.
Getting greedy. She lived in a large, expensive house on Symmesridge Lane in the Symmes Township area of Cincinnati and enjoyed spa visits and a Lexus and three fur coats, all without the inconvenience of having a job. But that wasn’t enough.
Dante, it seemed, wanted everything. The doctor’s generosity toward his four children from his first marriage vexed her into fits of indignation and nastiness.
When she found out that Dr. Sutorius planned to pay for his daughter Deborah’s wedding, she got so mad it scared him into wearing a bulletproof vest. (At some point, Dante had bought a .38-caliber double action revolver at Target World and taken a shooting lesson.)
Toward the end, Dr. Sutorius was sleeping in the basement, talking to a lawyer about cutting Dante out of his will and divorcing, and asking his family members not to give any personal information to Dante.
Darryl Sutorius, M.D., was known for being disagreeable to work with, but his colleagues respected his skills as a surgeon
By this time, he had found out at least a portion of the truth about the size-2 with fluffy blondish hair. She’d been married five times (more than what she had told him), never graduated from college or high school, used various aliases, and had threatened, tried to kill, or otherwise left previous husbands far worse off than the way she found them.
Losing formula. But the revelations came too late. When Dr. Sutorius, who was chief of thoracic surgery at Bethesda North Hospital, didn’t show up for work on February 19, 1996, his co-workers called 911.
Dante told the authorities who came to the house that she hadn’t seen her husband for days. Then she went down to the basement to look for him and “Oh, my God. He’s shot himself!”
The doctor had been depressed, so it wasn’t difficult to believe he had taken his own life, until investigators started studying the evidence.
As so with many other Forensic Files cases, the blood splatter and gunshot wound were in the wrong places to support the contention of suicide.
Jury’s in. Investigators believed Dante sneaked up behind her husband and shot him, then used his lifeless fingers to fire the gun into the couch so police would find gunpowder residue on his hands.
At the subsequent murder trial, the court heard evidence about how much Dante had to gain (a $1 million life insurance payout) via her husband’s death versus how little she would reap ($1,000 to $2,000 a month) from a divorce.
The jury saw through Dante’s charm and benign-looking physical appearance and convicted her of aggravated murder after deliberating for four hours on June 7, 1996.
More salacious biographical information about the slight-figured killer came out in the press. According to a Cincinnati magazine story by Linda Vaccariello, Dante (born Della Fay Hall) had become pregnant at age 19 and given the father custody of the resulting daughter, who later ended up in foster care. At one time, Dante claimed to have slept with talk-show host and former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer.
The newlyweds in happier days.
Exes’ convention. If anyone harbored doubts about Dante’s guilt, the unctuous interview she gave to Forensic Files surely chased them away.
Some of her ex-husbands met for the first time at the murder trial. Her third spouse, graphic artist Grant Bassett, told AP reporter Terry Kinney that Dante “was very striking … eye-catching. I thought I was getting into a pretty lady, very meek. Lo and behold, Tasmanian devil.”
Olga Mello, Dante’s own mother, reportedly suspected her daughter’s guilt from the beginning and had alerted police.
Dante received a sentence of 24 years and died of natural causes in Marysville Women’s Prison in Ohio on Nov. 20, 2010, at age 60.
The saga seems worthy of a made-for-TV movie, although I don’t believe one has been made. But Dateline NBC dedicated a feature, “The Doctor’s Wife,” to the story. And writer Aphrodite Jones detailed Dante’s crimes in Della’s Web (Gallery Books, 2011).
My aforementioned step-grandmother lived into her 90s. We didn’t have much contact with her after my grandfather died in his sleep at age 87. No signs of foul play, just a lot of nagging beforehand. — RR
A Crime Wave Rages and Recedes (“Tourist Trap,” Forensic Files)
The whole world pretty much already knew how bad the smash-and-grab tourist robbery epidemic in Miami, Florida, had become by the time of Helga Luest’s 1993 ordeal — the subject of the Forensic Files episode “Tourist Trap.”
Two years earlier, another attack had made international headlines when thieves shot and robbed two British visitors, John and Rose Hayward; fortunately, they survived.
Helga Luest
And that was only one of the six southern Florida tourist robberies taking place within a single 24-hour period in 1991. Between 1992 and 1993, the continuing horror show claimed the lives of nine visitors, including Barbara Jensen Miller, 39, who died when a vehicle driven by escaping thieves ran over her in front of her mother and two children. Shortly before a would-be thief clamped onto Luest’s arm with his jaw as she hit the gas pedal and sped away in a rental car, a German man had died at the hands of an assailant on Miami’s Dolphin Expressway.
Futile prep. Uwe-Wilhelm Rakebrand recognized a bump-and-rob attempt and, as law enforcement recommended, he continued driving, refusing to stop his Alamo rental vehicle.
Instead of giving up, the teen-aged thieves pulled their truck alongside Rakebrand’s red Toyota Corolla. Patsy Jones fired a .30-caliber sawed-off rifle into the front seat, killing the 33-year-old agricultural engineer.
Newspapers reported on the irony of the murder occurring just moments after Rakebrand’s wife had finished reading off a list of tourism safety tips from the Greater Miami Visitors and Convention Bureau.
At the time, I remember thinking that instead of printing out pamphlets, the city should concentrate on arresting robbers and keeping them incarcerated.
Conspicuous. Likewise, there was a push for companies to remove stickers and license plates that identified their vehicles as rental cars. Again, that seemed like a weak remedy: Even with those deterrents, wasn’t there still the same population of thieves out there who would simply find other ways to intimidate and rob?
As an Alamo spokesperson told the LA Times in 1991, “It’s not as though tourists are not spottable in unmarked cars. They have a lot of luggage, they dress differently than you or I, they carry maps and cameras.” She also asserted that thieves were identifying tourists at rental car lots and following them.
Even those who didn’t conspicuously look like tourists couldn’t help but be tailed once thieves saw them leave rental car facilities. As the New York Timesreported the day after the Rakebrand crime:
The police said Mr. Rakebrand had not demonstrated any of the behavior that typically draws the attention of criminals to tourists. He was driving at a normal speed, not slowly as if bewildered, and his valuables had been placed out of sight. The police said his car had no emblems or special license plates identifying it as a rental vehicle.
I’ll revisit that issue in a moment, but first the story of Helga Luest as told in “Tourist Trap.”
Sheer brutality. There’s plenty of irony in her tale as well. Luest worked as a producer for German TV.
She was assigned to cover the Sunshine State crime woes and even produced a segment about tourist safety for German television. Coincidentally, Luest and her mother, who both lived in the U.S. on the East Coast, had made arrangements for a vacation to the Florida Keys before the crime wave hit. They decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.
Unfortunately, forewarned wasn’t entirely forearmed. The women got lost near Miami International Airport and pulled onto a side street to turn around. Two assailants suddenly materialized and blocked their rental car.
One of the attackers kicked through the driver’s side window, reached in, disabled the horn, shifted the gear to park, and began punching Luest while the other yelled threats at her mother.
Repeat performance. Luest fought back and, as mentioned, one of the men — later identified as 23-year-old Stanley Cornet — bit down on her arm and managed to hang on for a few moments as she raced from the scene.
The assault left Luest with a dislocated jaw, injuries to her back and neck, and a large bite wound. She retained a lack of feeling on one side of her face, according to her interview on Forensic Files.
The 5-foot-6-inch Cornet apparently bounced off the pavement without major injuries, because he felt well enough four days later to bite and attempt to rob another motorist. The victim’s son, a Miami police officer, intervened and took Cornet into custody.
A forensic odontologist made a cast of Cornet’s teeth and determined a match to Luest’s bite wound.
Mystery accomplice. Unlike many other tourist robbery victims, Luest was willing to travel back to Miami to assist with the investigation and legal actions against her assailant.
(The physical distance between the victims’ homelands and south Florida wasn’t the only detriment to prosecution during the crime wave. Thieves hoped that the dramatic and brutal nature of the smash-and-grab jobs would leave their prey too shaken up or scared to testify, according to the 2006 book Crime Scenes: Revealing the Science Behind the Evidence by Paul Roland.)
Cornet, who had prior convictions, ended up receiving life in prison. Honor among thieves does occasionally exist, it seems, because he never gave up the name of his accomplice in the Luest attack.
Stanley Cornet is serving his life sentence in Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, Florida
The Forensic Files episode concludes by noting that the south Florida tourist-robbery wave ended after companies stopped marking rental cars as such and police increased their vigilance around rental parking lots.
Finally, results. I did a little research and found that southern Florida’s efforts to protect travelers were more extensive than what the show detailed. The state and Broward County put up additional lighting and signs to help tourists avoid getting lost. The rental car agencies began playing audio messages about safety on their PA systems.
Rewards were offered to members of the public who helped the police apprehend robbers.
Most important, law enforcement invested half a million dollars in a multi-jurisdiction task force to prevent crimes against tourists — and did, in fact, make hundreds of arrests within a few months.
In 1994, tourist robberies in Dade County dropped 58 percent from the previous year.
An upcoming post will offer an update on Helga Luest, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area and has become an advocate for people suffering from the effects of trauma.
Pennsylvania House, Big House, Then What? (“Capitol Crimes,” Forensic Files)
Thomas W. Druce panicked and made a decision so ill-advised that it meant trading his job as a Pennsylvania legislator for a 42-cent-an-hour gig on the grounds crew of Laurel Highlands State Prison.
Laurel Highlands State Prison is no Alcatraz. The minimum-security facility serves as home to many elderly, disabled, and chronically ill convicts. Druce was assigned there ostensibly because the institution needed younger, healthier inmates to take on manual labor
Last week’s post examined the roles racism and classism played in the privileged treatment and light sentence Druce received for the hit-and-run accident that left Kenneth Cains alone and dying next to a Harrisburg street on July 27, 1999.
Druce, who for four terms represented the 44th District in Central Bucks County — and enjoyed a $57,367 annual base salary, per diem expenses, and a government-paid car — managed to evade justice at first by hiding the evidence of the accident, then by having lawyers stall his prison check-in date until April 2004. (He had pleaded guilty in 2000.)
So what ever happened to him and others featured on “Capitol Crimes,” the Forensic Files episode about Druce’s crimes? Three epilogues:
• Thomas Druce was released in 2006. “It’s a tragedy all the way around,” Druce’s mentor, former Bucks County Commissioner Andrew Warren was quoted as saying in a Morning Call story by Pervaiz Shallwani. “And now it’s probably best everyone start anew.”
Druce actually had already begun something of a new chapter, even before he reported to jail in 2004, according to his LinkedIn profile. He launched PoliticsPA.com in 2001.
Rare shot of Thomas Druce with facial hair
Although he’s no longer associated with the website, PoliticsPA.com still exists, under new ownership, as a “one-stop shop for political junkies in every part of the state” and has attracted ads from the likes of Uber and the University of Pennsylvania.
It’s not clear whether Druce ever owned the site in full or profited from it in any way.
The website wasn’t his first post-crime venture: He also founded a public-policy consulting business, Phoenix Strategy Group, before heading to his minimum-security digs.
Again, whether he derived net gains from the business (and who ran it) during his time behind razor wire is unclear.
A 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer story by Stephanie Doster and Amy Worden noted that Druce already had “a job lined up with Hershey public-relations firm Hallowell & Branstetter” after his release but that “he could have difficulty getting to work because his driver’s license had been suspended.” Druce’s LinkedIn profile makes no mention of that position.
In another Philadelphia Inquirer story, published the day after Druce’s March 2006 release from prison, Worden described the disgraced politician as having “$15 in his checking account” and being “$100,000 in debt.”
His wife, Amy Schreiber-Druce, a former ballet teacher, had already filed for divorce and found a job working for a political caucus, according to the article.
The 2006 Philly Inquirer story also noted that the house in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, that the couple and their three sons had shared still belonged to the family at the time of his release. Hence, it’s unlikely Schreiber-Druce ended up moving into the boardinghouse room vacated by Kenneth Cains after her husband went to state prison.
According to Thomas Druce’s LinkedIn profile, he worked at Phoenix Strategy Group from 2001 to the present, which would — curiously — encompass his days in Laurel Highland.
His LinkedIn profile also says that, starting in 2013, he worked in business development for Grace Electronics, “a small-business manufacturing and engineering company supporting the defense and aerospace industry partnering with Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the United States Navy to the Phoenix Strategy Group.”
Aside from the information on the social-media networking website, very little record of Druce’s doings after his release can be found on the internet.
Louis Cains, the victim’s brother, lived in Harrisburg and worked at Ames Tru-Temper
• Louis Cains, the brother of hit-and-run victim Kenneth Cains, died in 2013 at the age of 60. An obituary notes that, in addition to Kenneth, two other siblings preceded him in death.
He lived long enough to hear Thomas Druce apologize for failing to stop after hitting Kenneth, and see Druce hit with a $100,000 civil fine for his crimes.
Cains, a longtime employee at a garden and lawn equipment manufacturer, left a wife of 26 years, a daughter, and three surviving siblings.
• Ed Marsico, the District Attorney who prosecuted Druce, still serves in that capacity in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and is going strong a decade after his appearance on Forensic Files.
Recent headlines include Marsico’s investigation of a synthetic marijuana influx that caused widespread overdosing in the area.
Ed Marsico has worked in the Dauphin County DA’s office since 1988
In 2015, his office investigated police officer Lisa Mearkle, who shot a man lying face down on the ground after he fled a traffic stop in Harrisburg. A jury acquitted her on all charges related to David Kassick’s death.
Sadly, Marsico saw his own son, Connor, a 19-year-old football player at Millersville University, plead guilty to simple assault in connection with the robbery and beating of a 22-year-old man. Connor received 24 months of probation in 2015.
Adversity notwithstanding, Ed Marsico is Dauphin County’s longest-serving DA. In celebration, commissioners designated an Edward M. Marsico Jr. Day in 2014.
When a Mover and Shaker Hits and Runs “Capitol Crimes,” Forensic Files
Last week’s post looked at the car accident that killed a former Marine and damaged the political career of the driver.
Thomas Druce walking to court in 2004
Pennyslvania lawmaker Thomas W. Druce plowed his SUV into Kenneth Cains on a Harrisburg street and then sped off into the night on July 27, 1999.
The original charges against Druce, then 38, included homicide by vehicle — a third-degree felony with a mandatory minimum of three years — in addition to lesser charges such as tampering with evidence and insurance fraud. Forensic Files covered the case in the absorbing episode Capital Crimes.
Struggling vet. But Druce got a plea deal that eliminated the vehicular homicide charge. Along with a tongue-lashing about how Druce “lacked character” and “betrayed the public trust,” Judge Joseph H. Kleinfelter handed him a two- to four-year sentence in 2000. He ended up serving just two years before winning parole.
Thus a well-to-do, influential white man paid a small price for fleeing the scene of an accident that killed a poor, down-on-his-luck black man.
Cains, 42, was a Vietnam veteran with a severe drinking problem. He lived in a rooming house in a dodgy section of Harrisburg and had no spouse or children.
Druce had a wife, Amy Schreiber Druce, to cry for him during court proceedings as well as three small sons at home. His family and friends paid $600,000 to bail him out of jail (while awaiting sentencing) in time for Christmas in 2000.
Defer, defer. Druce even had the top Pennsylvania government official in his corner. “This story is a tragedy,” then-Governor Tom Ridge said. “I have known Tom Druce to be a man of honor, integrity, kindness, and compassion. Like others who know him, I have been shocked by this news, and I have hoped that it is untrue.”
A young Kenneth Cains during his service in the Marine Corps
Once sentenced, Druce filed various motions that delayed his imprisonment for four years, during which time he went “on vacation at the Jersey Shore, visited New York and Washington, attended parties and sporting events, and traveled to Harrisburg, where he worked as a political consultant,” a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial noted.
For this week’s post, I’d like to concentrate on how race and class factored into the Druce affair.
With the scenario reversed, a car driven by a Kenneth Cains striking a Thomas Druce — his suit-and-tie clad body hitting the side-view mirror, then bouncing off the windshield and landing beside the road — you can bet Cains’ sentence would have dwarfed the two years Druce got.
According to research gathered by the ACLU for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2014, black male defendants receive longer sentences than whites arrested for the same offenses and with comparable criminal histories.
NAACP weighs in. The ACLU report noted a differential of 20 percent, but I can’t help but envision a much, much more severe punishment than what Druce received. And Cains would have been denounced as an “animal,” to be sure.
As a 2001 Morning Call editorial noted:
“If anything, Mr. Druce, who is white, has received preferential treatment from the moment his car hit his African-American victim, as Paula Hess, executive director of the Harrisburg branch of the NAACP, has asserted. Eight weeks behind bars [prior to sentencing], followed by electronic monitoring — is that the price Mr. Cains would have paid if he had been the driver in a fatal hit-and-run?”
Consider another relevant scenario: an affluent African American office holder committing a hit and run against a heavily intoxicated, socially insignificant poor white man. I tend to think the driver would use his financial wherewithal to wring every ounce of leniency possible, just as Druce did.
In the real crime, classism seemed to play a larger role than racism.
Surviving members of Kenneth Cains’ family, including brother Louis Cains Jr. and sister Delores Williams, who said Kenneth was a beloved uncle to her daughters.
Kid gloves. In his Forensic Files appearance, Louis Cains Jr., the brother of victim Kenneth Cains, expressed frustration over the consequences for Druce — but he didn’t pinpoint race.
“Louis Cains Jr. has criticized the courts for giving Druce what he viewed as special treatment during his drawn-out appeal, but said at a news conference Thursday that he was satisfied with the outcome. ‘I knew in my heart he was going to have to do that time,’ the 51-year-old manufacturing worker said.”
Indeed, Pennsylvania Rep. Thaddeus Kirland, chairman of the legislative black caucus, pointed to class rather than race in decrying Druce’s short sentence and subsequent parole.
“Poor folk end up in jail, sometimes for the rest of their life for such a crime,” Kirland said, as reported by Tom Infield in a 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer story.
Not a fan. Likewise, Rep. Bill DeWeese, Druce’s colleague in the Pennsylvania House, implicated economic status. “If the down-and-out U.S. Marine had run helter-skelter over an Oxford-cloth, striped-tie, preppy legislator, that poor old salt would have been in the slammer until the cows came home,” DeWeese was quoted as saying in the 2006 PhiladelphiaInquirer article.
Incidentally, DeWeese himself ended up on the wrong side of the law a few years later. In 2012, he earned himself a two- to five-year sentence for misuse of state resources for campaign purposes.
And why did DeWeese get a longer sentence for finance-related misbehavior than Druce did for a fatal hit and run?
Rep. Bill DeWeese said Thomas Druce got off too easy
Perhaps ageism, or just plain age. Druce, the younger, fresher rising star may have been judged more worthy of redemption than DeWeese, who was past 60 and presumably had more years to accumulate enemies in the state capital.
Next week’s post will provide an epilogue for Thomas Druce as well as some of those interviewed on Forensic Files. Until then, cheers. — RR
The last four posts told the story of Mark Winger, whose crimes fascinated the public because of their unlikelihood and the intricate planning they entailed.
Thomas W. Druce before his fall from grace.
The actions of hit-and-run driver Thomas W. Druce, on the other hand, involved no diabolical blueprint. The Pennsylvania legislator’s decision to leave Kenneth Cains dying next to the road was born of common self-preservation instinct.
Literally. Although few people are callous enough to replicate all of Druce’s actions, everyone can relate to the way desperation dissolves morality.
“Capitol Crimes,” the Forensic Files episode about Druce’s offenses, was absorbing because of the predictable way it unfolded, confirming what viewers would pretty much suspect all along.
The deadly clash of two men worlds apart in socio-economic status (both of whom drank inadvisably) was something of a real-life Bonfire of the Vanities.
Hasty decision. It starts on July 27, 1999, when Thomas Druce, a 38-year-old member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, was driving home after having drinks with co-workers in Harrisburg, the state capital.
Druce hit and mortally wounded pedestrian Kenneth Cains, a former Marine who worked as a day laborer.
Investigators determined that Cains had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17 percent, twice what’s considered impaired, which possibly contributed to his stepping into traffic on Cameron Street.
Whether or not Cains, 42, was walking in a careless fashion didn’t matter once Druce fled the scene without checking on the injured man or calling 911. The politician instantly turned himself into a criminal.
Another driver witnessed the accident and summoned the authorities. He had seen the brake lights go on right before the vehicle zipped away but couldn’t determine its make or model. Paramedics pronounced Kenneth Cains dead at the scene.
Carded. By taping together fragments found near the scene, police officer Raymond Lyda uncovered a Chrysler logo and concluded that the car was a 1996 or 1997 Jeep Cherokee.
Kenneth Cains
The leads stopped there until the police received an anonymous Christmas card a few months later. It suggested they investigate Rep. Thomas Druce because he had taken in his state-provided black Jeep Cherokee for repairs and traded in the vehicle shortly after Kenneth Cains’ killing.
The story unspooled pretty quickly from there. Druce told investigators what just about any criminal trying to cover up a deadly hit and run would — that he didn’t stop because he thought he struck an object (a traffic barrel), not a person.
He also lied by asserting the accident took place on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Then, he explained, he had the cracked windshield fixed and traded the car in because he wanted a vehicle with lower mileage.
Druce claimed that a stop he made at the state capital building happened before the accident and that he did so to pick up some files.
Once investigators obtained the ID of the Jeep, they traced it to an unsuspecting consumer who had purchased it from a car dealership.
Questionable malfunction. Despite the repairs and many washings, the car held a cache of evidence. Glass lodged in Cains’ elbow and paint on his clothing matched those of the Jeep. Investigators recovered a hair in the seam of the side-view mirror and determined it had come from Cains’ arm.
The police suspected Druce made the visit to his office after the accident, to assess the damage. The video camera at the gate Druce entered that night had mysteriously stopped working, and the “capital cop” — the complex has its own police force — who witnessed the car enter the parking lot retired shortly after the incident.
Investigators discovered that, on his insurance claim, Druce had said he hit a sign, not a traffic barrel.
Thomas Druce (center) heading to court
On March 16, 2000, Druce was arrested and charged with numerous crimes, including homicide by vehicle.
A Philadelphia Inquirer story by Glen Justice and Rena Singer described Druce at his court date:
“Druce, in a wrinkled blue suit, chewed gum and appeared nervous at his arraignment, where he also was charged with leaving the scene of an accident — which carries a mandatory jail sentence. The eyes of Druce’s wife, Amy, filled with tears as District Justice Joseph S. Solomon rejected the 38-year-old lawmaker’s attempt to pay 10 percent of his $20,000 bail with a personal check.”
Money buys time. In September 2000, Druce pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, evidence tampering, and insurance fraud. He resigned from office, got a sentence of two to four years, and paid a civil fine of $100,000 to Cains’ brother and two sisters.
Thanks to various legal maneuvers, Druce didn’t go to jail until 2004. (His attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the time Druce spent with an electronic monitoring device on his ankle and an evening curfew should be subtracted from his jail sentence.)
On March 13, 2006, after serving two years of his sentence, Druce was paroled. He exited Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands prison with his political career destroyed.
In a statement, Druce came close to admitting what he’d denied for years: that he knew his car struck a person, not an object:
“Although the state police ruled the accident was ‘unavoidable’ since Mr. Cains stepped onto the roadway and into the path of my car,” Druce said, “I have no excuse for not stopping near the scene and reporting the accident to the police.”
Indeed, calling 911 after the accident and giving an honest account might have gotten Druce off with a DUI plea — or nothing if his blood-alcohol level tested below 0.10 percent, Pennsylvania’s generous legal limit before Act 24 in 2003.
Druce “might well have fled the scene of his innocence,” as then-columnist Dennis Roddy put it in a January 2000 Pittsburgh Post Gazette piece.
More important, reporting the accident would have spared Kenneth Cains’ family the anguish of knowing the driver of the car that killed their brother didn’t care enough to stop.
Upcoming posts will contemplate the role race or class, or both, played in the handling of the tragedy and give a post-conviction epilogue for those involved.
cars. Again, that seemed like a weak remedy: Even with those deterrents, wasn’t there still the same population of thieves out there who would simply find other ways to intimidate and rob?
