She said that shes no fan of Forensic Files and that the show had many misrepresentations about her case and that shed heard ForensicFilesNow.com mixed up some facts as well. RR, Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube, Murder in Lehigh Valley: Keith Morrison Reports, 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. Great communicator. And dance instructor William Jarrett couldnt remember whether she attended his dance class at the club the night of Joanns disappearance. Patricia seemed like the girl next door but all of a sudden, something snapped, Katrinak later told Wrong Man investigators. 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. Three days later, Joann had plans to pick up her mother-in-law, Veronica Katrinak, to go Christmas shopping. One she was out buying feed for horses. And yikes, he discovered someone had cut one of the houses phone lines and pried the hinge on the basement door. One on one? 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). She claimed to have been home during this period how did her defense team justify such a departure from Patricia's norm? Prayers to the family. Despite the troubling evidence from Joann's car, detectives considered whether or not Joann had taken baby Alex and simply left. 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. "Testimony ended Monday with Pfeiffer taking Rorrer up to October 1994 when she came to Pennsylvania from North Carolina to try to sell four of her horses. When Andrew returned from work several hours later, Joann's car wasn't in its normal spot in the alley behind their house, but otherwise everything looked ordinary. To answer your question re the testing of the cigarette butt: it was never tested prior to the trial, and one can only speculate as to why it wasnt. During Rorrers 18-day trial in February1998, prosecutors pushed the circumstantialmotive of a fatal-attractionmurder. But the public needs to know what our system does or doesnt do.Bridget DiCosmo graduated from St. Johns University in Queens, N.Y., in 2003. Forensic tests suggested the hair found in the car and at the murder scene came from Patricia. I find THAT to be incredible. Marcus, dont you find it interesting that a hair inconsistent with both the victim and the accused was found clutched in the dead womans HAND, and was never tested? Nothing probative of innocence should be read into anything she offers viz DNA. 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. Her alibi about going to the club, called Cowboys Nitelife, got fuzzy when investigators discovered she hadnt signed the guest book on that day. Joann Katrinak - 349. Forensic Files didnt mention it, but the hairs were actually brown at the top and the rest dyed blond, according to the show Autopsy Six: A Fatal Attraction. Required fields are marked *. 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. She had a suitcase packed, Devine said. 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. 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. Patricia Rorrer was a cold woman. DNA testing revealed the blood came from either Joann or her son. He had worked as a semi-pro boxer in Las Vegas in his youth and later settled into his own construction business. ~~~~~~~~~Rorrer's Reputation: `Don't Mess With Me', June 25, 1997 by DAVID WASHBURN, The Morning Call. In fact, she had moved 500 miles away and was in a new relationship herself. ""She was cool," Hege said of the 33-year-old mother, about the same time Rorrer was being arraigned. Scorned ex lover etc. But when did he find the evidence of the break-in? The Murders of Joann and Alex Katrinak: FF ep A Woman Scorned. In Dec 94 in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Joann Katrinak and her three-month-old son, Alex, disappeared. Theyd fit well in a made-for-TV movie, wouldnt they? He would be alive today if it were not for Patricia Rorrer. The mild-mannered Sarah died in 2019 at the age of 83. "I guess she thought she wasn't going to get caught. Her name is not on a Dec. 15, 1994, sign-in sheet for the private club..Police never found the murder weapon, a .22-caliber gun.."Where's the gun, Patty?" The farmer's remote field bordered an isolated horseback riding trail. She was always looking for a fight, Gary Gabard told the Morning Call, which noted that he was a head shorter than Patricia. But I remember them finding that poor baby in Valley Forge Park. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. She attended Point Park University as a graduate student from 2005-07 and still is working on her masters degree. I also forgot to mention the fingernail evidence. 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. 24, 1997. Andrew languished for weeks and then months as investigators failed to suppl any explanation for his wife's and son's mysterious disappearance. On Instagram, I found a post for a two-part Win at All Costs podcast featuring journalism professor Bill Mousheys interviews with Patricia Rorrer from prison in December 2019. She just stayed in touch with everybody, Kathy Barber said in her interview on NBCs Murder in Lehigh Valley: Keith Morrison Reports in 2017. The Irish-Italian girl had full, fluffy dark hair, olive skin, and a pretty face. Deal refused. Police identified the pair as Joann and Alex Katrinak. The 26-year-old was recently married, and this would be four-month-old Alex's first Christmas. 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. Once, when a gun-wielding farmer and his buddy caught Patricia and Gary riding motorcycles on his field, Patricia walked up and got in their faces and argued, Gary recalled to the Morning Call. He had worked as a semi-pro boxer in Las Vegas in his youth and later settled . ``She stabled her horses and rode her horses there. Thanks for responding, Marcus. Try sending something like that to a lab for paternity testing and see how far you get. Patricia demonstrated a habit of making almost daily, long-distance phone calls from her home in North Carolina. He claims she was incensed in December 1994 when she called the Katrinak home at 740 Front St. and Joann Katrinak told her not to call anymore.In his opening statement, McIntyre told jurors he would prove several adages: "Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction" and "you can't always tell a book by its cover. memorial page for Joann Marie O'Connor Katrinak (11 Oct 1968-15 Dec 1994), Find a Grave . One thing is for certain though: regardless of what color one would describe her hair, it was unequivocally a lot longer than 8 inches. Lets consider these statements Rorrer is alleged to have made in the presence of a police officer. Katrinak, Andrew J.Andrew Joseph Katrinak, 88, of Bethlehem, died on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at Blough Healthcare Center in Bethlehem. It'd be plausible to reason some deniability in Patricia's role if there weren't so many indicators of her involvement. But she continued to call him occasionally.Three days before she vanished, Mrs. Katrinak angrily told Ms. Rorrer over the phone to stop calling her house, according to a police affidavit.DNA analysis showed that hair samples Ms. Rorrer submitted matched six found in the headrest of Mrs. Katrinak's car and two found near the bodies. She said she had no animosity toward the Katrinaks and she had never met the dead woman. This was one of. 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 moved into her house in Salisbury County, staying together for about two years. For one thing, her mother never asked Sandra Ireland to hide the gun, and she retrieved it on the way home the next day she worked as a bus driver and couldnt take it with her to school. More than 20 years after her conviction, Patricia Rorrer still has advocates working to exonerate her. Today, Patricia Lynne Rorrer resides in State Correctional Institute at Muncy, a medium and maximum security facility that has the highest rate of cancer of all prisons in Pennsylvania, according to a story from northcentralpa.com. Four months later, a farmer found the bodies. Fairleysargument:The court should have rendered him a minor for sentencing purposes. Criminals aren't always the smartest folks - this area highlights the common (and reoccurring) mistakes they make. In 1986, she met and began a relationship with Andrew Katrinak. As for an update on Lisas widower, Jimmy Manderach, it appears he still lives in the same part of Pennsylvania. The main one of course was committing murder of a young woman and her infant son over an argument. Both sides agree Joann hung up on Patricia. Lenient system? She turned a flushed face and red nose away from the visitors' section.Her demeanor during testimony about her baby, who turned 2 last month, was far different from that during the rest of the Lehigh County trial.Earlier, she was dry-eyed as witnesses described the numerous wounds to Joann Katrinak, who had been shot and beaten, and the baby's death from exposure to cold or suffocation. 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. ", "An unusual feature about the gun, he [Rorrers ex-boyfriend] stated was the fact that you fire one shot out of the gun, and the gun would jam. . Even though he committed the double murder at age 21,a persons biological process is typically incomplete until the person reaches his or her mid-twenties.. She had been beaten and shot in the face. 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 . Christopher Coble and Sgt. She is a tough one, Sheriff Gerald Hege would later tell the Morning Call in a June 29, 1997 interview. Patricia had of course not registered that night. An exterior door to their basement had been wrenched open, the lock hasp's screws literally ripped from the wall. ), And in another bombshell, Joanns good friend Karen Devine said Joann planned to leave Andrew after the holidays. They returned with a guilty verdict and a sentence of two life terms. Rorrer was an easy target due to all the circumstantial evidence. 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. The phone wire was located at the opposite end of the basement, which was dark. Freudian shrinks may agree theres a flotilla of repressed libido in both. There was a piece of a fingernail found attached to Joanns chest. On December 12, 1994, Joann answered a phone call from a woman shed never met, Patricia Rorrer, her husbands onetime girlfriend. Meanwhile, the case of the missing mother and baby turned into colossal news across the U.S. and internationally. I was able to email with Patricia via the PrisonConnect platform around Christmastime. I really never thought of it again.. . Those hairs would ultimately send Rorrer to prison for life, even though she claims she never was in the car, and the evidence collection and preservation practices have been attacked.The next day, Andrew Katrinak told police that a gut instinct made him think Rorrer was involved. 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. 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. Apparently it is universally agreed by courts that any hair testing before 2000 might had yieled an incorrect reading. Andrew's annual salary is . He allegedly pressured one of those friends,Christopher Lefler, to perjure himself bycorroborating the dance alibi in court; Lefler refused. I lived in this area at the time of the sadly disgusting Murder in Collegeville. Rorrer is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution Muncy, a prison for women in Clinton Township, Pennsylvania. I used to shop at Redners. 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! He had worked as a semi-pro boxer in Las Vegas in his youth and later settled . My theory on Fairley is nothing more than a hunch; it could have just as easily been another random sicko who targeted her. Patricia Lynne Rorrer made for a good suspect. Highly charged case. She and Andrew Katrinak shared a house in Salisbury Township in the mid-1980s, when he was a self-employed contractor and she was a real-estate agent. They produced a photo of her with dyed hair, implicating her because the hairs found in the Toyota were dyed. Did investigators look for phone calls between Andrew and Patricia prior to December 11, 1994? New state, new man. State police and the Philadelphia division of the FBI appealed to the public for leads. Patricia Rorrer's home phone record did not show her call to the Katrinak house three days prior to the kidnapping because she'd already made the trip to Pennsylvania to see Andrew. But none of those charges ever stuck. And even prosecutor Michael McIntyre, who wrote the book Hair Trigger about the case, acknowledged to Keith Morrison that it was a little odd that the police found blood on the hairs in Joanns car but nowhere else in the vehicle. If I were to challenge all the so-called evidence in the comments, it would make for a very long read. After Joann Katrinak, the wife of Patricia's former flame, turned up dead along with her infant son, prosecutors suspected Patricia. Its appalling where deliberate. The appeal argued that substantial documentation of the chain of custody process was at best incomplete and that critical forensic evidence was never tested. Hasty assumption. the couple had moved in together, married, and become the proud parents of a new baby boy they named Alex. Police couldnt determine whether the baby died of exposure or suffocation. Traupman claimed that when he reported the dispute, trooper Robert V. Egan III got mad and practically kicked him out of his office. I was like OK, maybe she was tired, you know with a new baby. Entirely random thrill-kills, as this would have to be for Fairley, are relatively rare. They allege that she drove the victims to Heidelberg Township woods where they were murdered and abandoned. Combination locks. Patricias professional life included short-lived gigs as a Century 21 real estate agent and an Oldsmobile salesperson. But Patricia had moved from Pennsylvania years ago, and she'd started her own family in North Carolina. Some who still believe in Patricia Rorrer's innocence say it was long enough for him to stage the scene. Its not clear whether Fairleys interest in vampires was part of D&D or a separate pastime. The second round of testing came back as a 100% match, raising the question of a mistake. The murders initially made James,calledJimmy, a suspect because, as we know from countless otherForensic Files, the spouse did it. Coble later told Rorrer that her mother was on the way and that she could get dressed. Regard a similar case where too much detail signaled investigators to look closer at their suspect in Bagging a Killer (s06e25). A closer examination of the hairs showed traces of dried blood. 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. Of course, its not if such forensic evidence that is or may have been exculpatory has been maladministered by accident or design. 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. A young mother and her infant son suddenly went missing just before Christmas in 1994. I also communicated with Patricia via email to get her input on some matters. Police treated Joann's car as a potential crime scene, and their investigation turned up several blonde hairs on the head rest. 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. Pal stays true. At first, a broad-daylight abduction of a mother and her infant seemed unlikely. The Worldwide Womens Criminal Justice Networks website also points to a bombshell: In 2015, the Justice Department acknowledged that most of the team members from an FBI microscopic hair comparison unit gave prosecutors flawed data from 1980 to 2000 that could have unjustly contributed to a number convictions including Patricia Rorrers. The investigation that led to her identification and then turned up enough evidence to arrest and convict Patricia Rorrer was interesting. But we just weren't making it as a couple. McIntyre didn't address that issue in his closing argument..Burke said soil in the woods didn't match soil in and on the car and questioned why there was no blood in the car if the killer drove the car back to Catasauqua where it was found..He also wondered how the victims could have been kidnapped at gunpoint from their home at 740 Front St. in the afternoon without anyone seeing anything..Prosecutors claim that Rorrer planned the killing and even might have been in the area before Dec. 15, 1994. Andrew Katrinak was suspected because he failed two polygraph tests when asked if he had lied to police and hid evidence. They had a son, Alex Martin, in August of 1994. Her husband, Andrew, was surprised to not find his wife and child at home after arriving there . I think often of this case and hope Caleb Fairly rots in hell! I used to have a crush on Lucy Lawless, from Xena the Warrior Princess. He wanted to move to Colorado and she was against it.. Psycho For Love: Patricia Rorrer killed her ex-boyfriend's new wife, Joann Katrinak, and their 3-month-old son, Alex to make Andrew Katrinak suffer. And fire hydrant of a man. 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. Suzanne Pearson testified about Rorrer's reaction to the news that she was being charged and about incriminating statements she allegedly made.Those statements were made shortly after 6 a.m. while Rorrer, still in bed clothes, held her 1-1/2-year-old daughter, Nicole, and talked to the wailing baby, according to the witnesses.Coble said Rorrer was crying and trying to comfort her child. During Rorrers 18-day trial in February1998, prosecutors pushed the circumstantialmotive of a fatal-attractionmurder. How could I explain to my daughter years later that I took a plea for something I didnt do? she said. ", "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. Should reasonable doubt be defined for the jury or is that to nudge them some unintended direction by lawmakers? Imake it a practice not to look too hard for up-to-date information about victims family members because, unless they show up onDr. PhilorDateline, theyre probably not looking for media attention. Jimmy had reported Lisa missing when she failed to return home from shopping by dinner time. Andrew Katrinak, a former heavyweight boxer, quickly gathered his in-laws and said he suspected foul play. 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. All this culminated in Caleb Fairleys April 1996 conviction fortwo counts of murder, aggravated assault, theft, and abuse of a corpse. Possession/viewing of porn and sexual devices would condemn millions on the basis this is meant to! He washed off the foundation at their request, uncoveringscratch marks that looked as though they came from someonesfingernails. When Rorrer was initially granted the right to do post conviction testing, the first thing she wanted tested was the butt. But a hair in the hand from a third-party doesnt preclude the accused from guilt of itself, as though it must be from the perp.