But other things Patricia did also seemed strange, especially according to prosecutor Michael McIntyre. But none of those charges ever stuck. He was a little surprised when she approached him as though they were old friends last fall at a county barbecue.He was selling T-shirts for the department. "I guess she thought she wasn't going to get caught. Again, this vital piece of evidence was never tested prior to trial. Victims Joann Katrinak Alex Katrinak, 3 months Find-A-Grave: Joann M. Katrinak Woman Held In Catasauqua Killings Man Recalls Day His Wife, Baby Vanished As Katrinak Double-murder Trial Opens . Hair we go. But defense lawyer Robert Pfeiffer said that plenty of evidence supported Patricias innocence. Nothing Ive read by her supporters goes to the heart of the case against her unless perjury. Investigators discoveredhis DNA under Lisas fingernails, some strands of long dark hairwith the roots attached (suggesting a struggle) in the vacuum cleaner bag at the store, and the babys DNA on thecarpet. Rorrer said she purchased grain for her horses that day, brought it home and then later went to a bar for western dance lessons with her fianc and another man. But there was only one day in question, so it feels like Patricia might have been overselling her story. Enter numeric value. If you subscribe to Hulu and upgrade to Starz (theres a free one-week trial offer), you can stream the Wrong Man episodes about Patricia Rorrer. The state of the bodies suggested the victims had likely been killed the day very they were abducted. An infant was lying face down on her stomach. This was where Joann regularly parked her car and became an even more likely crime scene when the evidence of the basement break-in was discovered. When Rorrer was initially granted the right to do post conviction testing, the first thing she wanted tested was the butt. 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. McIntyre almost shouted, turning to face Rorrer at the defense table..Police learned that Rorrer bought a .22-caliber handgun that she allegedly still had in fall 1994. http://articles.mcall.com/1998-03-06/news/3183202_1_mcintyre-defense-lawyer-killed/2, Unreliable Chain: Questionable Hair Evidence Condemns Woman to Prison, FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades - The Washington Post. Theres been some debate with regard to a picture of Rorrer shortly before the murders and the color of her hair. Barbara, wife of Gary Verser of Virginia; and a . Chain of custodyScientists from the Pennsylvania StatePolice tried to perform mitochondrialDNA tests on the six hairs from the Toyota,which were immediately collectedand logged. Weak wages. "They were skin and bones and totally neglected," Eggers said. During Rorrers 18-day trial in February1998, prosecutors pushed the circumstantialmotive of a fatal-attractionmurder. (Shopping Spree,Forensic Files). Andrew described his existence with Joanne and Alex as a little Camelot., Ex-spouse off list. So begins a case that features a missing wife, a missing baby, and the husband who gave news interviews repeatedly asking for the return of his wife and son. Continuing with this request will add an alert to the cemetery page and any new volunteers will have the opportunity to fulfill your request. Andrew Katrinak reported missing his wife, Joanne and 3.5-month-old son, Alex, in December 1994. Stable situation. She walked into a kids clothing store where a young man working the cash register just happened to be a fantasy-gamesuperfan seething with thoughts of criminal perversion. 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. If shes been in a public place, such as a shop, a shed hair from someone else could be picked up on ones clothing and stick to a sweaty palm, etc. Great catch. At 17, Patricia dropped out of high school and married landscaper Gary Gabard. not three days before it to tell him she had won a national horse competition in Oklahoma. Inside the locked 1992 vehicle, police discovered some strands of blond hair stained with dried blood. "She had a reputation of, `You don't mess with me,'" Fonda Kay Eggers told a reporter for the Dispatch of Lexington, N.C. Eggers, a Humane Society investigator and distant relative of Rorrer, filed animal cruelty charges against Rorrer in 1994 after checking on Rorrer's horses. The media love the femme fatale., FBI lab blunder. Conflicting versions. Nailed? Required fields are marked *. Hasty assumption. Christopher Coble and Sgt. Prosecutors offered Patricia a plea deal that would take the death penalty off the table, but she declined. Of course Fairley could have committed other murders but there was no sexual assault in the Katrinak case, which appeared motiveless except in attributing Rorrers jealousy. Andrew Katrinak was suspected because he failed two polygraph tests when asked if he had lied to police and hid evidence. You will also be advised that the transcripts consist of 6500 pages and the cost of copying it runs between $3.00 to $5.00 per pagemeaning you will have to fork over between $19,000 and $32,000 just to see the transcripts. Ex-boyfriend Walter Blalock said that Patricia wanted him to be more like Andrew. Both were deceased. I do not just blindly accept whatever the courts decide. ", "I can remember till this day, seeing that infant being lifted off the abdomen of his mother. Still, no good leads materialized. I also communicated with Patricia via email to get her input on some matters. Joann Katrinak, and her baby, had planned to go Christmas shopping with her mother-in-law but she never arrived to pick her up despite calling to say that she was on her way there. Police couldnt determine whether the baby died of exposure or suffocation. At 10:40 p.m. he calls 911 to report his family missing. 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. It was conceivable that Andrew believed they were still out. (Disclaimer: Im not a big fan of eyewitnesses who come forward years after the fact, but its possible). Joann Katrinak - 349. A newspaper account described Patricia as a soft-spoken, demure woman who had a sweet Southern accent and wore feminine clothes in court. She said she did not give the hang up by Joann Katrinak a second thought. I also take into consideration the fact that Rorrer simply doesnt speak that way. Shes a desperate woman wed all be desperate and should be expected to say anything, even if it backfires. The police considered the possibility that Joann ran away, a theory disputed by her family. Having read this recent appeal document (worth a perusal its not too long), which seems to address the fundamental issues at stake, I see no merit in the claim of wrongful conviction, but rather a clutching at straws in the hope that some (spurious) claim may just cast sufficient doubt on the conviction. 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. She said she had no animosity toward the Katrinaks and she had never met the dead woman. Today, they are married and live in Colorado. No show. Patricia and her husband broke up after the babys death. Perhaps police couldn't get a warrant for a sample of Patricia's hair, the color being inconsistent with the latent hairs found in the car and at the murder scene. Andrew's involvement in the latter theory was dismissed when his alibi checked out. Walmart woe. Its appalling where deliberate. 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. Then 31 years old, she had lived a rocky existence. Andrew's second look in and around their home revealed some disturbing clues. Katrinak and Alex were the wife and child of Andrew Katrinak. People . Criminals aren't always the smartest folks - this area highlights the common (and reoccurring) mistakes they make. The final call in December 1994 ended with Joann Katrinak angrily telling her to stop calling, according to police. (McIntyre said that Egan ignored Traupman because he was a nut who said that the man he saw arguing with the woman in a car was Hispanic but wearing a fake mustache and a toupee. Andrew had a lady friend who lived less than 4 miles from those woods. 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. Phone records confirmed Patricia placed the earlier call from North Carolina, not Pennsylvania. The episode indicated that Andrew Katrinak informed police that Patricia Rorrer had made the phone call to his home three days before Joann's disappearance. Rorrer was an easy target due to all the circumstantial evidence. It was later believed that his recollection was keen, since he'd been the one to dress her posthumously. On September 15, 1995, she and Devon headed to Your Kidz &Mine, a new clothing store in the Collegeville Shopping Center, 10 minutes from her house in Limerick, Pennsylvania. Joann Katrinak. Search is on. It seems Patricia's own daughter and baby Alex Katrinak were very close in age. Incriminating words. And because some of Patricias advocates have suggested Andrew Katrinak had a motive for murder, I checked into whether he had a life insurance payout to gain upon Joanns demise. They were married 62 years. Andrew Katrinak speaking after his wife's alleged murderer is convicted. He wanted to move to Colorado and she was against it.. ), The Wrong Man investigators Ira Todd and Joe Kennedy have some theories of their own. The Irish-Italian girl had full, fluffy dark hair, olive skin, and a pretty face. That same year Limerick was hit by a night tornado which killed a mother, father and baby. It'd be plausible to reason some deniability in Patricia's role if there weren't so many indicators of her involvement. But by all accounts, Rorrer only spoke to Andrew Katrinak once or twice a year. She returned to New Jersey in 1984, met Andrew Katrinak, and later lived with him.At some point she also lived in Pennsylvania's Lehigh County, Steinberg said.``She was very familiar with the remote location where the bodies were discovered,'' he said. The same source indicates Patricia Rorrer has repeatedly appealed for a retrial and exoneration, but each request has been denied. I think often of this case and hope Caleb Fairly rots in hell! No one else from the club testified she was there. Frankly, Im neither surprised nor impressed by their decision. as she was convinced it would exonerate her. Without wishing to be pedantic, it cant be said what was in her mind, as though you can see her truth. All one can say is she thought/hoped it might (without there being any realistic basis implied that it would or should). Read the Washington Post report. But some insects found on the bodies revealed a vital clue, as did a long blonde hair found on the victims which has something uniquely in common with the brunette hair of the husbands former love interest, Patricia Rorrer. Should reasonable doubt be defined for the jury or is that to nudge them some unintended direction by lawmakers? Someone with a life sentence has nothing to lose throwing any spanner in the works that might, as they see it, cast doubt even if the spanner has the opposite effect! And because of the gun jamming, the assailant had to resort to blunt object and beat her about the head. They moved into her house in Salisbury County, staying together for about two years. Katrinak's husband, Andrew, reported his wife and son missing in December 1994 after they failed to show up at his mother's house.Andrew Katrinak said he found his basement door ajar and removed from its hinges, and a phone line had been cut. Katrinak, Andrew J.Andrew Joseph Katrinak, 88, of Bethlehem, died on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at Blough Healthcare Center in Bethlehem. There are myriad issues surrounding this case and conviction. And if nothing more, it certainly galvanized the law enforcement community and got us moving in the right direction. And Andrews explanation of how the intruder got in through the basement door seemed contrived, according to Grube, who gave an interview to Wrong Man, a 2020 true-crime docuseries from the Starz network, which produced two episodes called The Hang Up about the Rorrer case. Rorrer, a photographer with an 18-month-old child, was arrested in Linwood, N.C., and jailed without bail pending an extradition hearing.She was born in Phillipsburg, N.J., and in 1978 moved to North Carolina with her family. 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. Thats all for this post. After her arraignment, she had to walk past a crowd of dozens of locals screeching hang her! and baby killer! Patricia clung to a Polaroid picture showing her and her own little girl. In addition to the Facebook page, there are Reddit threads on her case. The appeal argued that substantial documentation of the chain of custody process was at best incomplete and that critical forensic evidence was never tested. Patricias phone bill showed no record of a call to Catasauqua that day, but police noticed she didnt make any calls at all from her house in North Carolina that day either suggesting she could have been out of state and used a pay phone to dial up the Katrinaks. So lets get going on the recap of the Forensic Files episode A Woman Scorned, along with extra information drawn from internet research: Joann Marie OConnor was born on Oct. 11, 1968, the youngest of Sarah and David OConnors four children. Katrinak, Andrew J.Andrew Joseph Katrinak, 88, of Bethlehem, died on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at Blough Healthcare Center in Bethlehem.He was born in Bethlehem son of the late Martin and . The thing about Katrinak is that she was actually found with her jeans unzipped and unbuttoned, suggesting a possible sexual assault. 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. This was further disproved when her bank reported there'd been no activity on Joann's credit cards since her disappearance. Curiously, he immediately implicated Rorrer, his ex-girlfriend, even though they hadnt spoken in months and she was living in North Carolina. It showed her usually all-brown hair haphazardly highlighted blond. At 6 a.m. on June 24, 1997, police arrested Patricia at her modest house in Linwood, North Carolina, and took her back to Pennsylvania. Phone calls played a significant role in the case overall. Everything about that statement rings false, but it sure worked out for Officer Suzanne Pearson; she was promoted to Sergeant after sharing this bombshell confession with her superiors. What IS reasonable doubt and what is it to be at or beyond that threshold? I cant lose them, he told the media. The victims' families wept at the sight of photographs of the bodies and cried when Andrew Katrinak identified objects found at the scene -- his son's diaper bag, his favorite rattle and a bottle with a dinosaur cap. She is a tough one, Sheriff Gerald Hege would later tell the Morning Call in a June 29, 1997 interview. But if Andrew wanted to find his wife and his son, why on Earth did he wait until 10:30pm before notifying authorities? But when did he find the evidence of the break-in? "I'm not worried about my clothes," Rorrer said. Court papers allege he asked the customer for sex in return for the drug. That is to say, I see nothing contradictory in the evidence against her that must entail perjury. From the start, the Rorrer murder case was plagued with allegations of inconsistent evidence collection and testing that eventually led a judge to hold hearings on whether she deserves a new trial.Her case shows how the present system in contrast to the dictates of the Coverdell Act actually contributes to scientific confusion and has almost no automatic audit on investigations when misconduct allegations are leveled.On Dec. 15, 1994, Andrew Katrinak told police he arrived home from his construction job to find his wife, Joann, and 4-month-old baby, Alex, missing from their Catasauqua, Pa., home. 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? Many of these are circumstantial, so investigators were grateful for their DNA match from the hair. 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. The authorities charged her with two counts of murder. At the states request, the instructor wore a wire during a phone conversation with Patricia. One on one? 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. There were no love letters, cards, gifts, or any other indication that she still had a romantic interest in him. 25, 1997. Along with Rorrer, Joann Katrinaks ex-husband, Michael Jack, and Andrew Katrinak were suspects for a time. Then, in what has to be everyones favorite part of the episode, police noticed Fairley was wearing beige makeup on his face when they brought him in for questioning. On December 12, 1994, Joann answered a phone call from a woman shed never met, Patricia Rorrer, her husbands onetime girlfriend. Prosecutors claimed Rorrer manufactured an alibi for the day the victims disappeared. Charles Robert, the 3-month-old son she had with Gary Gabard, died of sudden infant death syndrome; Patricia found him blue in his crib. She also said that she was in North Carolina on the day of the abduction, where she was involved in a committed relationship with the father of her daughter. She made an effort to look perfectly groomed even when she took out the trash, according to her mother, who appeared on Forensic Files. 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. The indications of Patricia's involvement in Joann's and young Alex's disappearance were numerous. Patricia had of course not registered that night. View the profiles of people named Andrew Katrinak. The episode claimed the jury required just two hours to deliberate, but other sources indicate it took six. Puny policy. All this culminated in Caleb Fairleys April 1996 conviction fortwo counts of murder, aggravated assault, theft, and abuse of a corpse. Three days later, Joann had plans to pick up her mother-in-law, Veronica Katrinak, to go Christmas shopping. Until next time, cheers. Why would someone want to kidnap and murder the young mother? She just stayed in touch with everybody, Kathy Barber said in her interview on NBCs Murder in Lehigh Valley: Keith Morrison Reports in 2017. I dont have any reason to believe that Fairley might have been in the Catasauqua area in December of 1994. Random misfortune. Pretrial and trial reporting is listed below: Rorrer's Reputation: `Don't Mess With Me'. Prosecutor pounds away. Prayers to the family. After Joann Katrinak, the wife of Patricia's former flame, turned up dead along with her infant son, prosecutors suspected Patricia. Find a typo or issue with the details of this case? 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. Sad discovery. Viz Andrews newer wife, he likely, to me, believed absolutely that she could not possibly be the perp, as endorsed by the fact that he married her. The farmer's remote field bordered an isolated horseback riding trail. After his wife disappeared, she made no attempt to be with him or to see him. The Manderachsran a janitorial service on the side. Pal stays true. . Thanks for responding, Marcus.

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