November 2021 | Page 16 of 19

Ralph Stokes Pennsylvania Death Row

Ralph Stokes was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for a series of murders that took place during an armed robbery. According to court documents Ralph Stokes and Donald Jackson would rob a restaurant and in the process murder three people. Ralph Stokes was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Ralph Stokes has maintained his innocence since being sent to death row.

Ralph Stokes 2021 Information

Parole Number: 4777T
Age: 58
Date of Birth: 02/08/1963
Race/Ethnicity: BLACK
Height: 5′ 11″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: DARK
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: PHILADELPHIA

Ralph Stokes More News

Ralph Stokes’s convictions resulted from his participation, along with Donald Jackson, in the robbery of Smokin’ Joe’s Korner on March 12, 1982. Smokin’ Joe’s is a restaurant and bar, where the appellant had been previously employed, located at 5100 City Line Avenue in the city of Philadelphia. At trial Mr. Jackson testified that he and appellant had donned[532 Pa. 249]blue jumpsuits and ski masks and equipped themselves with weapons in anticipation of the robbery. Jackson was armed with an automatic pistol and appellant carried a .38 caliber revolver.

The two men entered the restaurant through the unlocked rear kitchen door with their guns drawn. They confronted two restaurant employees in the kitchen, Renard Mills and Pierre Blassingame. A third restaurant employee, Eugene Jefferson, entered the kitchen from another part of the building about the same time. Ralph Stokes locked the three employees into a walk-in refrigerator, then proceeded into the restaurant office where he encountered Mary Figueroa, the restaurant manager and wife of one of the owners of Smokin’ Joe’s. Jackson joined Ralph Stokes and Mrs. Figueroa in the office as appellant was forcing Mrs. Figueroa to open the safe. At that point Jackson noticed appellant’s ski mask was pulled up off his face. Jackson told Ralph Stokes to cover his face, to which appellant replied that he had already been recognized by Mrs. Figueroa. After Mrs. Figueroa opened the safe she was placed in the walk-in refrigerator with the other three employees. Mrs. Figueroa told the others that she had recognized “Trent.” She then attempted to exert a calming influence upon the others in the refrigerator.

With everyone in the refrigerator, Jackson and Ralph Stokes proceeded with their looting of the restaurant. Unfortunately, while these activities were in progress, Peter Santangelo, a mailman, happened upon the scene. Jackson opened the kitchen door a fraction sufficient enough to accept delivery of the mail, and then closed the door. Appellant, afraid of being discovered, chased after the mailman, bringing him into the restaurant and ordering him, at gun point, to lie on the kitchen floor. With Mr. Santangelo on the floor, appellant placed his ear against the refrigerator door in an effort to overhear the conversation among the persons therein.

Ralph Stokes then announced to Jackson that he had been identified and would have to “off” the witnesses. Whereupon, appellant opened the refrigerator and fired three shots, killing Eugene Jefferson and Mary Figueroa. Upon witnessing this[532 Pa. 250]event, Peter Santangelo ran from the kitchen. Appellant cornered Mr. Santangelo at the locked front door and fired three more shots, leaving Mr. Santangelo as his third fatality.

Jackson, upon witnessing the murders, ran out the rear door and started the car. The vehicle was difficult to start, leaving sufficient time for appellant to join Jackson in the car. The two men then fled the scene. Appellant and Jackson went to the home of Jackson’s friend, Eric Burley, where they divided the proceeds of the robbery and directed Burley to dispose of appellant’s gun, the jumpsuits, and the ski masks worn during the commission of the crimes.

Viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the evidence adduced at trial was sufficient to establish appellant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of each element on all three charges of murder in the first degree, robbery, possessing instruments of crime and criminal conspiracy.

https://www.leagle.com/decision/1992774532pa2421750

Steven Duffey Pennsylvania Death Row

Steven Duffey was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for the murder of a coworker. Steven Duffey according to court documents would stab to death a nineteen year old female coworker in a bathroom at a store where both were employed. Steven Duffey would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Steven Duffey 2021 Information

Parole Number: 5342P
Age: 60
Date of Birth: 08/16/1961
Race/Ethnicity: WHITE
Height: 5′ 10″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: LACKAWANNA

Steven Duffey More News

In the afternoon of February 17, 1984, the body of Kathy Kurmchak was found in the ladies restroom of Genetti’s Manor, a restaurant located in Dickson City, Pennsylvania. The victim, then age 19, was a waitress at the restaurant. She was found slumped in the corner of the bathroom stall in a pool of blood; she had sustained approximately thirty stab wounds.

A subsequent police investigation revealed that a yellow Chrysler LeBaron was seen parked behind the restaurant that day. Routine questioning of all employees revealed that appellant, Steven Duffey, then an employee of Genetti’s Manor, had stopped by the establishment that day to drop off a W-4 tax form. It was determined that appellant drove a yellow Chrysler LeBaron and the car behind the restaurant was identified as belonging to him.

Steven Duffey was then asked to come to the state police barracks for further questioning. He was read his Miranda rights and he gave a statement corroborating an earlier statement that he had dropped off a W-4 form and returned home to watch television. He was informed of inconsistencies in his statement, such as the fact that his car was seen behind Genetti’s Manor at the time that he claimed he was watching television. He was also informed that a search warrant was obtained for his car and that the police were looking for blood, clothing fibers, etc. Appellant then decided to make a more complete statement.

Appellant was again read his Miranda rights. He then recounted in great detail how he parked behind Genetti’s Manor and proceeded into the restaurant. He found Kathy Kurmchak alone in the office. Appellant quietly entered the kitchen where he found a large butcher knife. Appellant slipped the knife into his pants and made his way back into the office.

He approached Kathy Kurmchak and demanded money. He obtained several dollars from the coat check tip jar and Ms. Kurmchak produced several more dollars from her *355 wallet. Appellant then said to the victim “come with me for a walk” and both proceeded to the ladies bathroom. Appellant told Ms. Kurmchak to walk over to one of the stalls, to open the stall door and to take off her pants. He then told Ms. Kurmchak that he wanted to have sex with her.

Kathy Kurmchak responded “no way” to appellant’s suggestion. She then inquired, “what are you going to do, stab me?” Appellant took her watch from her wrist and stabbed Ms. Kurmchak. The victim grabbed the knife with her hands and said “don’t, don’t.” Appellant stabbed her two or three more times and she started to slide down the wall of the bathroom stall. Appellant stabbed the victim five or six more times and the victim began to gasp. Appellant then stabbed her in the throat. Appellant exited the building. He buried the knife in the swamp behind the restaurant, got in his car, and drove home.

Appellant next gave a question and answer-type statement to the police. He recounted how he went to Genetti’s Manor that morning to drop off his W-4 form. There were two women present at the time. He returned later to find that one woman had gone. He drove to the rear of the building and parked his car. He then went back into the restaurant to rob it because he thought the victim had the key to the safe.

Steven Duffey went to the kitchen and found a knife. He walked to the office and stood by the door for about twenty minutes. The urge then came over him to “get it done.” He proceeded into the office and demanded money from the victim. She gave him three one dollar bills and a handful of quarters from the tip jar, as well as four or five dollars from her purse.

Steven Duffey again recounted how he marched the victim to the ladies bathroom. He told her to turn around. She refused and asked “what are you going to do, stab me?” He responded “yes, if I have to.” He further stated, “give me your watch.” He stuck the watch in his pocket and took the knife by the handle. He then demonstrated for the officer who was taking the statement, how he held the *356 knife, how the victim tried to grab it, and how he stuck it into her stomach.

Steven Duffey recounted how the first stab wound was beneath the victim’s breast. She looked at him and said “don’t, don’t.” He stabbed her two or three more times and she began to “creep” down the wall. She slid down and hit the flush on the toilet, and blood began to run out of her into the toilet. Appellant further stated: “I then stabbed her around the throat because she was gasping and trying to say something. After I stabbed her near the throat she slid down the rest of the way to the floor.”

Appellant then stated “I stood there and felt her face and shirt to see if she was breathing. She was still breathing. I walked out [of] the stall by backing up. I looked back at her and her mouth was open like she was gasping for air. There was blood all over the place.” The rest of appellant’s statement detailed his actions after he left the crime scene.

https://law.justia.com/cases/pennsylvania/supreme-court/1988/519-pa-348-1.html

Robert Wharton Pennsylvania Death Row

Robert Wharton was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for a double murder. According to court documents Robert Wharton and Eric Mason would break into a home and would strangle a man to death then drown a woman in a bathtub. Robert Wharton and Eric Mason would both be arrested. Eric Mason would be sentenced to life and Robert Wharton would be sentenced to death

Robert Wharton 2021 Information

Parole Number: 9742S
Age: 58
Date of Birth: 02/12/1963
Race/Ethnicity: BLACK
Height: 5′ 09″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: PHILADELPHIA

Robert Wharton More News

At 3 years old, Lisa Hart was taken to the Montgomery County grave where her murdered parents lay buried in the same casket, their names on the same gray tombstone. She ran around calling for her mother and father, wondering why they didn’t come out to play.

She had been only 7 months old in January 1984, when two men barged into her family’s East Mount Airy home, strangling her father, Bradley Hart, 25, and drowning her mother, Ferne, 30, in an upstairs bathtub. The little girl was left in the house to die, but survived. Her father’s parents, the Rev. B. Sam Hart, a nationally known evangelist, and his wife, Joyce, would later tell her of that visit to Whitemarsh Memorial Park in Ambler.

Lately, Hart has been reliving her parents’ murders from 35 years ago after learning that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office agreed with Robert Wharton, one of the two killers, that his death sentence should be vacated and that he should be resentenced to life in prison, the same punishment to which a jury in 1985 sentenced his accomplice, Eric Mason.

Although the DA’s Office was in contact with an uncle in Montgomery County, Hart said the office has not reached out to her.

“I was also a victim in this situation,” said Hart, 36, a stay-at-home mother who lives in Texas with her husband and their 21-month-old daughter. “I feel as though they should have contacted me.”

Gov. Tom Wolf in 2015 imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania. The last person executed by the state was the infamous Philadelphia basement torture killer Gary Heidnik, in 1999. Still, when an inmate is removed from death row and resentenced to life in prison, he is moved into the general prison population and obtains more visitation rights and time out of his cell.

“They’re not even putting anyone to death in Pennsylvania. So essentially, his death sentence is a life sentence,” Hart said of Wharton, adding that she didn’t understand why the DA’s Office wants his sentence changed. “All it does is it gives him extra privileges. Why does he need extra privileges? I don’t get it. I feel like it’s a slap in the face to the justice that we got.”

A federal judge has yet to rule on Wharton’s appeal.

In court filings over the summer, the Attorney General’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office have been battling over the Wharton case, revealing a divide between the two offices.

District Attorney Larry Krasner, a former criminal defense attorney-turned-progressive prosecutor, had vowed on the campaign trail to “never seek the death penalty.” In other death-row cases, his office has turned to “prosecutorial discretion” in arguing for death sentences to be vacated.

On July 15, Krasner filed a brief in the state Supreme Court in another case, that of Philadelphia death-row inmate Jermont Cox, asking the high court to “hold that the death penalty, as it has been applied, violates the Pennsylvania Constitution’s ban on cruel punishments.”

Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a former Montgomery County commissioner, has said he supports the death penalty for “the most heinous of crimes.” His spokesperson, Jacklin Rhoads, said Friday that since taking office, Shapiro “has not sought the death penalty in any cases.”

The AG’s Office has opposed Krasner’s office on narrow legal issues involving death-row inmate cases, including the DA’s willingness to overturn jury-imposed death sentences by prosecutorial discretion.

U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg in May asked the AG’s Office to weigh in on Wharton’s case, after he found that the DA’s Office was conceding the death penalty “without exploring whether contrary views may be viable and worth considering” in Wharton’s remaining appellate claim regarding his adjustment to prison over seven years.

The AG’s Office, in its July 22 brief, wrote that records show that Wharton had adjusted poorly to prison, not positively, as Wharton claimed. It pointed out two searches of Wharton’s cell in May 1989 in which authorities found hidden pieces of metal that could have been used for escape, including one fashioned into a handcuff key.

“Evidence of Wharton’s full record,” wrote Chief Deputy Attorney General James Barker, showed that “Wharton was an escape artist.” Barker also noted that in April 1986, after Wharton was brought from prison to Philadelphia City Hall for a hearing in an unrelated home-invasion robbery case, he escaped from deputy sheriffs and ran down the stairs of City Hall. A deputy shot and wounded him, and he was arrested outside.

Barker also contended that the DA’s Office, although it had contacted one of Bradley Hart’s brothers, the Rev. Tony Hart, still failed to meet its obligations under federal and state law to notify the victims’ family of its change in stance on the death penalty in Wharton’s case. The AG’s Office included in its public filing copies of letters it obtained from Lisa Hart, Tony Hart, and two other relatives, in which they asked for Wharton’s death sentence to remain.

In her letter, Lisa Hart wrote that the DA’s change in stance on Wharton’s sentence “is an affront to justice and has shown a total disregard for the life of my parents, my own life, and the impact that this would have on our family.”

Paul George, assistant supervisor of the DA’s Law Division, in an Aug. 1 response to the AG’s brief, called that office’s representation of his office’s interactions with the victims’ family “misleading.” He attached an affidavit signed by a victim/witness coordinator for the office, Heather Wames, in which she wrote that on Jan. 23, she had spoken with Tony Hart and “advised him that the office intended to agree to death penalty relief.” Wames also wrote that she had asked Tony Hart to give other relatives her contact information.

Tony Hart, 65, senior pastor at the Montco Bible Fellowship and president of the Grand Old Gospel Fellowship, both in Lansdale, told The Inquirer this month that during his January conversation with Wames, he understood that the DA’s Office was still “deciding what to do.”

It wasn’t until someone in the AG’s Office contacted him, he said, that he understood that the DA’s Office was not going to defend the death penalty in Wharton’s case. He then told Lisa Hart about the DA’s change in stance.

In phone interviews this month, Lisa Hart recalled how as a child the details of her parents’ deaths in the hours after the intruders arrived on the night of Jan. 30, 1984, came to her in bits and pieces.

When she was about 8, her paternal grandparents sat her down on their bed in West Mount Airy and Sam Hart told her in his calm and strong voice how “he found me close to my mother’s body,” she said.

She likely had crawled to the second-floor bathroom from her bedroom, she said. Checking on his son’s family three days later on Feb. 2, 1984, Sam Hart found his granddaughter next to her mother’s body, then carried her out of the house.

As she grew older, Lisa Hart began searching for more details about her parents in her maternal grandparents’ one-story house in Nassau, Bahamas, where she grew up in her mother’s childhood bedroom. After her grandfather, the Rev. F. Edward Allen, an evangelist, and his wife, Velma, went to sleep, she would look in what she called the “junk room” — an extra room with a small dresser, bookshelves, and a closet filled with her mother’s clothes.

There she found a VHS tape of her mother before her mother left to go to Houghton College, a Christian liberal arts school in western New York; letters her mother had sent home about her blossoming relationship with Bradley Hart; and a cassette tape inside a cardboard box tucked in the closet.

Lisa Hart was about 15 when she found the cassette tape, which she had heard about from a family friend. It came from her grandparents’ old answering machine. She took the tape back to her bedroom to play it. It was from the day in 1984 when her great-uncle Charles Hart in Philadelphia called her maternal grandparents in the Bahamas to tell them that their daughter and her husband had been killed.

The answering machine picked up just before Edward Allen answered the phone. As the conversation continued, the tape kept recording

In a shaky voice, her great-uncle told her grandfather that Bradley and Ferne Hart had been killed, said Lisa Hart, describing the contents of the tape to The Inquirer. As her grandfather’s voice started to break and he got emotional, his wife was heard in the background, panicking and saying: “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

Hart recalls sitting on her bed with the tape. “I must have cried the rest of the night,” she said.

Robert Wharton, 56, is on death row at the State Correctional Institution-Phoenix in Montgomery County.

He and Mason were 20-year-old construction workers from Germantown when they forced their way at knifepoint into the Harts’ house on Pleasant Street. Wharton sought revenge after not being paid for construction work at a religious radio station in Phoenixville managed by Bradley Hart and owned by his father, the Rev. B. Sam Hart, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Bello told jurors at the defendants’ 1985 trial.

The assailants tied up the two victims and watched TV for several hours. Mason then took Bradley Hart to the basement, where he plunged Hart’s face into a bucket of water and strangled him with an electrical cord. Wharton, meanwhile, took Ferne Hart to the upstairs bathroom. He bound her face with duct tape, choked her with a necktie, and partially undressed her, according to court records. “I dunked her head in the water,” he told police. “I held her head down in the water till the bubbles stopped after a while.”

The jury imposed two death sentences on Robert Wharton and gave Mason life in prison. Afterward, Bello told The Inquirer at the time: “The only difference between the two was that one killed a woman and the other killed a man. And the jury was made up of two men and 10 women.” (Bello, who rejoined the DA’s Office in February as a supervisor after nearly 30 years as a defense attorney, has since declined to comment on the case.)

In 1992, after the state Supreme Court vacated Wharton’s sentence because of an erroneous jury instruction, a second jury again imposed his double death sentence.

Wharton’s sole remaining claim before Goldberg is whether Wharton’s former lawyer was ineffective for failing to tell the jury about Wharton’s alleged positive adjustment to prison between his two sentencing hearings.

In a court filing last month, Wharton’s federal public defenders argued that his “prison record is more positive than the Attorney General makes it appear.

Lisa Hart said that although she could understand that Krasner would not seek the death penalty in future cases, she couldn’t understand how he would “tamper with” past cases. “Don’t rewrite history,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in a Philadelphia City Hall courtroom in Cox’s case and that of another death-row inmate, Kevin Marinelli of Northumberland County. The Philadelphia DA’s Office is expected to side with federal public defenders representing both men in arguing that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

The AG’s Office, which represents the commonwealth in Marinelli’s case, is expected to take an opposing position, arguing that the death-penalty issue should be resolved by the legislature, not the court.

The justices’ eventual decision could affect not just future death-penalty cases, but also the approximately 130 other death-sentenced inmates in the state, including Wharton.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-district-attorney-larry-krasner-death-penalty-robert-wharton-murders-bradley-ferne-hart-20190907.html

George Banks Pennsylvania Death Row

George Banks was sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for thirteen murders committed during a mass shooting. According to court documents George Banks would open fire at his home killing eight people including five children. George Banks would leave his home and shoot and kill a man who was working across the street. George Banks would travel to another location where he would shoot and kill four more people including his girlfriend and their child. Banks would shoot and kill two more people in the home bringing the total to thirteen. George Banks would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

George Banks 2021 Information

Parole Number: 6946F
Age: 79
Date of Birth: 06/22/1942
Race/Ethnicity: BLACK
Height: 5′ 10″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: LUZERNE

George Banks More News

The first call was chilling enough: Two lay shot on a Wilkes-Barre street.

But as Robert Gillespie headed to the scene where George Emil Banks began his massacre 35 years ago this week, the scope of the situation began to mount as the bodies piled up. Gillespie was on Interstate 81 when the next call from a detective informed him of a second crime scene, in Jenkins Township.

Four shot dead.

When Gillespie arrived in Wilkes-Barre, he learned that not only were the two there shot outside a home on Schoolhouse Lane — one fatally — but eight more bullet-riddled bodies were inside.

Four were children. The two youngest were 1.

Decades later, Gillespie can still see them.

“You never forget seeing a child that has been brutally murdered,” said Gillespie, the former Luzerne County district attorney who prosecuted Banks.

Thirty-five years later, Gillespie and Al Flora Jr., one of the attorneys Gillespie battled in the courtroom over Banks’ culpability and competency, reflected on the details and aftermath of the murderous rampage Banks wreaked on the Wyoming Valley on Sept. 25, 1982.

Banks gunned down five of his own children and eight other people on Schoolhouse Lane and in a Jenkins Township trailer park in the largest killing spree by a single mass murderer in Pennsylvania history. Most victims were shot at close range.

After a highly publicized trial that lasted just under two weeks, a jury from Allegheny County found Banks guilty of 13 counts of first-degree murder on June 22, 1983. The next day, the panel returned 12 death sentences and one life sentence for the murders.

For the prosecution, the outcome was bittersweet.

“We had done nothing but work toward it for a year and there was some pride, but no pleasure, in hearing the jury actually assert he should be put to death,” Gillespie said. “But if there was ever anyone who deserved the death penalty, in my opinion, it was George Banks.”

Yet Banks, inmate No. AY6066, was never executed. Now 75, he remains on death row at Graterford, a maximum-security prison in Montgomery County.

He is a distant shadow of his former self.

First violent crime: 1961

It wasn’t long after Banks was discharged from the Army that he committed his first serious violent crime, the shooting of an unarmed tavern-keeper during a robbery in 1961. He was sentenced to six to 15 years in prison, then was hit with additional time when he briefly escaped in 1964.

Despite the escape attempt, Banks was granted parole in 1969, and his sentence was commuted by Gov. Milton Shapp in 1974.

After prison, Banks was hired by the state, first by the Department of Environmental Resources, then as a guard at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill in Harrisburg.

Weeks before the murder spree, Banks was suspended from prison-guard duty after he locked himself in a guard tower with a shotgun and threatened to kill himself. Fellow guards also had complained Banks had been talking about committing a mass killing.

He was placed on involuntary sick leave and was supposed to see a psychologist on Sept. 29, 1982, but four days earlier he embarked on the unprovoked killing spree that defense attorneys have long argued was a product of paranoid delusion.

The night before the killings, Banks was at a birthday party in Wilkes-Barre where he drank beer, played darts and fawned over a woman’s T-shirt that read “Kill Them All and Let God Sort It Out.”

Banks and the woman switched shirts, and he donned it underneath military-style fatigues the next morning when he methodically began walking through his home firing an AR-15 rifle.

When the rampage ended hours later, Banks had killed 13 people at two homes — seven children, his three live-in girlfriends, an ex-girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend’s mother, and a bystander in the street. Five of the seven children were his own; he has fathered at least seven.

Banks holed up at 24 Monroe St. in Wilkes-Barre, where swarms of police tried to convince him he should give himself up because his five children were alive and in need of blood. A phony radio broadcast was played to support the ruse. Banks finally surrendered after a four-hour standoff.

‘A delusion’

Flora last met with Banks in 2010.

That year, after numerous rounds of appeals, Luzerne County Senior Judge Joseph Augello ruled Banks was too mentally ill to be executed, describing the inmate’s mindset as a “tossed salad of ideas and beliefs.”

Augello wrote that Banks is not competent to be executed “because he has a fixed, false belief, a delusion, that his sentence has been vacated by God, the governor and (former President) George W. Bush. He believes he is in prison illegally, and he should be going home. He should be out there ministering to the people, but there is a conspiracy against him.”

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling in 2012.

At trial, Banks’ bizarre behavior was a constant obstacle, Flora recalled. He refused to cooperate with Flora and fellow defense attorneys Basil Russin and Joseph Sklarosky Sr., who had hoped to have him declared not guilty by reason of insanity.

Banks took the stand in his own defense, then delivered a rambling account of the shootings. During that account, he showed jurors the gory photographs of his victims that his attorneys labored to keep out of trial. Banks, who is bi-racial, then claimed he had only wounded the victims and said racist police officers had fired the fatal shots to frame him.

Prosecutors argued Banks’ motive was based on his fear of losing control over his extended family.

The trial attracted such a throng of attention from relatives, onlookers and national media that presiding Judge Patrick J. Toole instituted a lottery for courtroom seating.

Gillespie said Toole was clear on courtroom decorum: There would be no emotional outbursts from relatives of Banks or his victims.

And while not an outpouring of emotion, Gillespie acknowledged he had to hide tears from the jury at one strenuous point during the proceedings, when a child victim’s young brother testified about reporting the murders to 911 using a phone covered with blood and brain matter.

“No child should ever have to see that and tell a whole bunch of strangers what had happened,” Gillespie said.

Locked in isolation

Flora, who long has fought to have Banks declared incompetent, said the case is now considered closed, and Banks is destined to die in prison.

“Being locked in a cell 24 hours a day and being in isolation will have a profound effect on someone,” Flora said. “George has significantly deteriorated. He is severely mentally ill … and there is likely no treatment for him.”

Gillespie, now in private practice in Hazleton, said he never thought of George Banks as a victim, but as a misogynist who hid behind claims of a racial divide. But, Gillespie conceded, he was smart.

“I thought that George Banks was a very intelligent person,” Gillespie said, noting that during one of his first encounters with Banks, the mass murderer draped himself in a blanket so a psychiatrist couldn’t discern reactions to his analysis.

But Banks’ hatred also defined him, Gillespie said.

“He hated women, ” Gillespie said. “He cared for his sons, but he had no feelings at all towards his daughters or stepdaughters. He was, quite frankly, a cold-blooded killer.”

35 years later, mass murderer George Banks remains on death row

David Chmiel Pennsylvania Death Row

David Chmiel would be sentenced to death by the State of Pennsylvania for a triple murder. According to court documents David Chmiel would break into a home and would murder three elderly siblings by stabbing them to death. David Chmiel would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

David Chmiel 2021 Information

Parole Number: 6842S
Age: 66
Date of Birth: 02/24/1955
Race/Ethnicity: WHITE
Height: 6′ 00″
Gender: MALE
Citizenship: USA
Complexion: LIGHT
Current Location: PHOENIX

Permanent Location: PHOENIX
Committing County: LACKAWANNA

David Chmiel More News

On September 21, 1983, at approximately 1:30 a.m., Angelina, Victor and James Lunario were murdered in their home located in Throop, Lackawanna County. All three victims *248 had been stabbed repeatedly. Angelina was found sitting upright on the sofa in the living room, while James was found in his hospital bed also in the living room. Victor Lunario was found in his bedroom on the second floor of the house in Throop. Victor’s and Angelina’s bedrooms had been ransacked. On the floor in Victor’s bedroom was a lock box which had been broken open. The lock box was surrounded on the floor with empty brown government envelopes with dollar amounts written on them totalling $4,256.25. Down the hall from Victor’s bedroom, Angelina’s bedroom had papers, shoe boxes, and jewelry strewn on the floor. In her bedroom closet was found a brown sweater sleeve which had been fashioned into a homemade ski mask.

The state police concentrated their investigation upon the brown sweater sleeve ski mask. Eventually, the police obtained a photograph of Martin Chmiel, David Chmiel’s brother, who was wearing a sweater that looked similar to the brown sweater sleeve ski mask. Although Martin Chmiel had on a prior occasion denied any knowledge of the crimes, the state police once again questioned Martin and when the police confronted him with the photograph and the mask, Martin broke down and told the state police the same facts that he later testified to at trial, which was the Commonwealth’s principal evidence in this case.[1]

Martin Chmiel related that in late August or early September, 1983, he and Appellant had a conversation in Appellant’s automobile during which David Chmiel told Martin that Appellant needed “fast money.” Martin told Appellant that there was money in the Lunario home in Throop, Pennsylvania. Appellant and Martin then made plans to rob the house in Throop. The brothers plotted to use masks during the robbery. Martin *249 suggested that sleeves be cut off an old brown sweater that he had at home in order to make the masks.

Subsequently, Martin Chmiel once again met David Chmiel in Appellant’s automobile to further discuss the robbery. Martin brought with him to this meeting the two sleeves that he had removed from his brown sweater. During their conversation, Martin continued to fashion the two ski masks from his sweater sleeves by using his fingers to make eye holes and tying a knot at one end of the sleeve and then trying one on to see if it fit. Martin left the two masks in Appellant’s automobile.

It was Martin’s testimony that either at the second meeting or shortly thereafter, he changed his mind about participating in the robbery. Nevertheless, Martin told Appellant what the Lunario house looked like, how to get to Victor Lunario’s bedroom, and where money could be found in Victor Lunario’s bedroom.

According to Martin, in the afternoon of September 21, 1983, Appellant told Martin that Appellant had killed the Lunarios and had taken $4,500.00 from a wooden box under Victor Lunario’s night stand and $800.00 from Angelina’s purse. Martin claimed that he had asked Appellant whether the masks were used. Appellant told Martin that a mask was used but Appellant had gotten rid of it and it would never be found.

As a result of the information provided by Martin Chmiel, Appellant was arrested on September 28, 1983, and charged with the crimes committed against the Lunarios.

In the early morning hours of September 29, 1983, the state police obtained from Martin Chmiel a dark brown and beige sweater with its arms removed and a blue and white flashlight. The blue and white flashlight appeared to be very similar to a flashlight found at the Lunario home on the morning the murders were discovered. Thereafter, that same morning, the state police executed a search warrant at Appellant’s home. In a hutch in the dining room, the police officers found *250 an envelope containing $2,400 in U.S. currency, some of which was bound in money wrappers.

Review of the facts of this case leaves no doubt that the evidence was sufficient for the jury to have determined that all elements of the crimes had been established beyond a reasonable doubt.

https://law.justia.com/cases/pennsylvania/supreme-court/1994/536-pa-244-1.html