Even her defence counsel is desperate: having accepted that if mounted hair (see the doc) DNA was hers, she did it, it then moved to avering that she was framed when said hairs proved to be hers. ", "Due to the fact that she sustained one gunshot wound to the face, and then approximately 19 blows to the head led us to believe that the gun probably had jammed. Pennsylvania prison inmate is asking for new D-N-A tests in a 13-year-old murder case. I also take into consideration the fact that Rorrer simply doesnt speak that way. Even though Joanne was supposed to take her mother-in-law for Christmas shopping, she never showed up. Rorrer maintains her innocence to this day and argues that someone either negligently or intentionally put her hair on the slide. Until WCJN has thought that the hair was planted but the FBI has just released a report detailing unscientific and fraudulent analysis of hair samples in criminal cases. Her husband, Andrew, was surprised to not find his wife and child at home after arriving there after work. Men who murder are conventional, women are sensational, posits the Worldwide Womens Criminal Justice Network. I most definitely will not personally afford Patricia a platform, Michael said in an email to ForensicFilesNow.com She had her chance to answer my questions and tell her story in court over 20 years ago. What IS reasonable doubt and what is it to be at or beyond that threshold? "Yes," Rorrer replied very quietly.Pfeiffer said Rorrer is testifying freely and voluntarily.Jurors, who have heard nearly 100 witnesses, will be asked by the prosecution to give Rorrer the death penalty if they find her guilty of first-degree murder.McIntyre earlier said that Rorrer's alleged lies and contradictory statements to police show "consciousness of guilt. Meanwhile, interest in Patricias plight continues on social media. My guiding principle if I were administering criminal law is what is it reasonable to do to establish probative fact and what is it reasonable to believe of those facts (a matter for the jury)? Prior to the trial, a local man named Walter Traupman told Pennsylvania State Police he saw a couple matching the Katrinaks descriptions engaging in a heated argument near where the Toyota was found the day of the disappearance. 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. Perusing the claims made by her supporters, I find many are Aunt Sallies: points that claimants suggest are probative of innocence but are no such thing. Andrew's involvement in the latter theory was dismissed when his alibi checked out. Another former boyfriend said she talked about Andrew frequently and liked to gaze at old photos of him. Tragedy also touched Patricias life. Angry that Joann hung up on her, she stalked her for three days, then broke into her basement and cut the phone line, put a gun to Joanns head as she was placing Alex in the car, and forced her to drive to the rural area. I do not just blindly accept whatever the courts decide. he asked her. 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. My husband passed away of a broken heart, Sarah OConnor said on the Montel Williams Show in 2001. There was a piece of a fingernail found attached to Joanns chest. On closer inspection, he saw it was the body of a woman. I have the same profile but had no children. Whatever observers claim about the circumstances surrounding the crime why would she do this/surely shed be seen/shes unlikely to have thought that they are speculative, whereas the hard science, beyond REASONABLE doubt, says she did it. "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. Joann had been shot once and then bludgeoned in the head. He gave an audio interview to the Wrong Man investigators when they made a surprise visit to his house, but he declined to appear on camera. Great catch. Im certainly aware police lie but this would require a conspiracy. And if nothing more, it certainly galvanized the law enforcement community and got us moving in the right direction. After his wife disappeared, she made no attempt to be with him or to see him. What you suggest is that law enforcement officers had to lie (about what she allegedly said, for example), AND that DNA was not just poorly/mistakenly administered but corruptly. But considering that Joann was found with her jeans unzipped and unbuttoned, it stands to reason that her death was sexually motivated. Christmas was right around the corner, and the biggest shopping center in that tri-county area is the King of Prussia Mall, which is about 54 minutes away from Catasauqua and a stones throw from Fairleys home in Gulph Mills. This had been taken just 11 days before Joann's disappearance. Plus, two men, her babys father and his friend, testified they saw Patricia at the line-dancing club the night of the homicide. She claimed to have been home during this period how did her defense team justify such a departure from Patricia's norm? Some lawyers call microscopic hair analysis junk science that today wouldnt qualify as evidence in a trial like Rorrers. "I'm not worried about my clothes," Rorrer said. Thats my life.. memorial page for Joann Marie O'Connor Katrinak (11 Oct 1968-15 Dec 1994), Find a Grave . As for an update on Lisas widower, Jimmy Manderach, it appears he still lives in the same part of Pennsylvania. Three days before she vanished, Mrs. Katrinak had angrily told Ms. Rorrer to stop calling her husband. As for the murder weapon, police didnt find a .22 caliber pistol on Patricias property, but an ex-boyfriend claimed that she owned one and it would always jam after one shot. And the kidnapping scenario became more plausible when you factor in the privacy of the alleyway behind the Katrinak house. Her husband, Andrew, was surprised to not find his wife and child at home . "He's a nice guy," Rorrer said of Katrinak. Convicted of murdering her ex-boyfriends wife and child because of a telephone impropriety. Lisa Agostinelli Manderachlost her life because the aforementioned Dungeons and Dragonsenthusiast, one Caleb Fairley, age 21, reportedly considered her the embodiment of beauty hed been wantingto seize. She was born on Jan. 24, 1964, in eastern Pennsylvania and moved back and forth between there and Davidson County, North Carolina. According to legal documents reported on in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1998, the Fairleys contended: While the circumstances were indeed horrific, the deaths . BETHLEHEM, PA. BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) _ Joann Katrinak was shot in the face in woods not far from where her 3-month-old son, Alex, suffocated or was left to die.Investigators believed early on they had a good idea who the killer was. Katrinak, Andrew J.Andrew Joseph Katrinak, 88, of Bethlehem, died on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at Blough Healthcare Center in Bethlehem. "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. Rorrer offered her attendance at a private club in North Carolina as one of her alibies, but the club (per a state regulation) required members to sign in. Her attorney persuaded her to have the hair re-tested. The series was produced by Joe Berlinger, who made the Paradise Lost documentaries, which garnered actor Johnny Depps attention and ultimately helped free the West Memphis Three. I used to shop at Redners. (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. The Free Patricia Rorrer page responds to comments from supporters (How is this even possible that this woman is still in jail?!? Andrew described his existence with Joanne and Alex as a little Camelot., Ex-spouse off list. Advocates for her innocence complain of hype surrounding the case. According to Pennsylvania State Police, Rorrer met Andrew Katrinak, the husband and father of the victims, in 1986. In 1991, she returned to North Carolina after the relationship with Katrinak was over and she had defaulted on a mortgage loan.She briefly held a job as a saleswoman for a Salisbury, N.C., car dealership, where she is remembered as an outgoing, friendly person. Four months later, investigators found the bodies of Joann Katrinak and her baby 15 miles away from the Katrinak home at the edge of a field. But its small argument on her side. Try sending something like that to a lab for paternity testing and see how far you get. Andrew Katrinak, a former heavyweight boxer, quickly gathered his in-laws and said he suspected foul play. Coble later told Rorrer that her mother was on the way and that she could get dressed. "I guess she thought she wasn't going to get caught. There are more questions than answers in this case. She was also accused of breaking into barns, stealing horses, and underfeeding the ones she owned. Family members found Joanns tan Toyota sitting vacant in the parking lot of McCartys, a nearby bar. She appears a rather better fit than Fairley, particularly when we remember that in the great majority of murders, victim and perp are known to each-other, per Katrinak-Rorrer. Dedication. Andrew mentioned to police that his former live-in girlfriend Patricia Rorrer once managed a horse stable two miles from the bodies location and would have been familiar with the riding trails close to the murder scene. Nailed? Although there was a conviction in that case, there are many troubling aspects and questions surrounding the conviction, and the states theory was probably the silliest thing I ever heard. On Oct. 5, 2007, the District Attorney of Lehigh County agreed to allow the testing of the hair found in the Toyota at Orchid Cellmark Laboratories in Dallas. Even though no gun wasever tied to the killing, a firearms experttestified that Joann Katrinaks injuriescould have come from such a weapon.Andrew Katrinak testified that he hadan amicable breakup with Rorrer, but healso told a jury she had knowledge of thelayout of his home. It was conceivable that Andrew believed they were still out. Counsel for the 52-year-old woman convicted in 1998 argues evidence handling calls for new attention, reports say. As testimony continued on the seventh day of her double-murder trial, Patricia Rorrer cried for the first time.The North Carolina woman, who had shown no emotion while the families of the victims have wept openly and often, lost her composure Tuesday afternoon.Detectives from the Davidson County sheriff's office took the witness stand to recall the morning of June 24, 1997, when they knocked on the door of Rorrer's Linwood, N.C., home and told her she was under arrest for the murders of Joann and Alex Katrinak.Rorrer, 34, was charged with kidnapping Joann Katrinak, 26, and Alex, 15 weeks, in December 1994 from their Catasauqua home, killing them and leaving their bodies in Heidelberg Township woods. Here in UK juries are now being instructed to be satisfied that they are sure of guilt, with surety not being as high as certainty. Andrew Katrinak said that Rorrercalled three days before his wife disappeared, but the phone records do not confirm this call.With little objection, prosecutors used the second FBI analysts description of the hair evidence to put Rorrer at the crime scene. She moved to North Carolina after her relationship with Katrinak ended in 1991. She is a tough one, Sheriff Gerald Hege would later tell the Morning Call in a June 29, 1997 interview. 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. Catasauqua is only about 54 minutes away from where Fairley lived in Gulph Mills. Finally, maybe not a conspiracy but rather a botched investigation and forensic analysis of the hair sample. Most of all, Patricia said, she would like a rematch with prosecutor Michael McIntyre. The indications of Patricia's involvement in Joann's and young Alex's disappearance were numerous. Im not trying to throw shade at either one of them, but I do find it odd that when police asked Andy if he knew of anyone who lived in the area, he thought of an ex-girlfriend he hadnt been with in over 5 years, but failed to mention his friend, with whom he had much more frequent contact. More hairs there. Police slowly built a case against Patricia. Ex-boyfriend Walter Blalock said that Patricia wanted him to be more like Andrew. Her husband, Andrew, was surprised to not find his wife and child at home after arriving there . Its not clear whether Fairleys interest in vampires was part of D&D or a separate pastime. December 15th, 1994. That day I was at the Dunkin Donuts too. December 15th, 1994. No activity on her bank account or credit cards took place after the day she went missing, so investigators dismissed the theory that she took her child and bolted. On December 12, 1994, Joann answered a phone call from a woman shed never met, Patricia Rorrer, her husbands onetime girlfriend. A young mother and her infant son suddenly went missing just before Christmas in 1994. Patricias accusers theorized that she resented Joanns domestic bliss with the tall, athletic Andrew Katrinak. But investigators conceded they had no solid evidence against Andrew. I find THAT to be incredible. Frankly, Im neither surprised nor impressed by their decision. If there were awards for distorted reporting, the Morning Call out of Lehigh, PA would win high honors. 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. "I would never of dreamed it in a million years," said Joy Deal, manager of the dealership.After leaving the car dealership, Rorrer worked sparingly as a photographer and lived with her mother and 1-1/2-year-old son in a remote home outside of Linwood. But if Andrew wanted to find his wife and his son, why on Earth did he wait until 10:30pm before notifying authorities? She failed miserably to convince me, or anyone else who mattered, of her innocence. The father of her son is not known.In 1993, Rorrer called Katrinak, who told her he was married. It certainly tugged at our heartstrings, you know, it brought a tear to my eye. Background details that you might want to know about Andrew include: ethnicity is Caucasian, whose political affiliation is unknown; and religious views are listed as unknown. 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. Suzanne Pearson fabricated quotes from Patricia including her claim that Patricia said, Im going to the electric chair upon her arrest because a conviction would boost Pearsons career. Testimony began with her birth in January 1964 in Phillipsburg, N.J.She told jurors about the jobs she held, the men she dated, her involvement with horses, their training and competitions, and the different places she lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.Rorrer, dressed in a black suit and white blouse tied at the neck, cried once when she testified about being beaten by a former boyfriend in 1991. Both sides agree Joann hung up on Patricia. During the investigation, police took hair samples from several individuals, including Andrew Katrinak, but none matched the headrest hairs. At 10:40 p.m. he calls 911 to report his family missing. And James Pfeiffer and Jim Burke have remained on her side. I do rejoice when I learn of someone particularly on death row exonerated. 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. She had money put aside. Andrew Katrinak was suspected because he failed two polygraph tests when asked if he had lied to police and hid evidence.If it wasnt for the DNA, I wouldhave had a hard time saying guilty. GEORGE JAMES GATANISJUROR, DISCUSSING AFTER THE RORRER TRIAL THE FACTORS THAT LED TO HIS DECISION.27During the investigation, police took hair samples from several individuals, including Andrew Katrinak, but none matched the headrest hairs. 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. The nail was not consistent with Joann or Rorrer with regard to size and grooming. And because of the gun jamming, the assailant had to resort to blunt object and beat her about the head. "The testimony appeared to strike an emotional chord in the woman whom prosecution witnesses have portrayed as a tough cowgirl. But Patricia had moved from Pennsylvania years ago, and she'd started her own family in North Carolina. But, Id like to offer you a challenge. Lets consider these statements Rorrer is alleged to have made in the presence of a police officer. Your email address will not be published. A newspaper account described Patricia as a soft-spoken, demure woman who had a sweet Southern accent and wore feminine clothes in court. One thing is for certain though: regardless of what color one would describe her hair, it was unequivocally a lot longer than 8 inches. Rorrer, who owned horses, excelled at the sport of cattle-penning, loved to drive far and fast, remodeled her own home, and shot guns for the fun of it.Rorrer, when Coble talked about her baby, started discreetly wiping the corners of her eyes, her lower lashes and her nose. Whether she suffocated him or left him to die of exposure, there's a special place in hell for someone who's able to live with themselves after such a heinous crime.
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