The prosecution painted apicture of a woman so angry after herformer boyfriends wife hung up thephone on her that she drove to Pennsylvania,forced Joann Katrinak and herbaby at gunpoint into the car, then tookthem outside of town and killed them.Witnesses said Rorrer bought a.22-caliber handgun at a yard sale just beforethe murder. Patricia supposedly still cared for Andrew Katrinak, but murdering his son contradicts this notion. 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. http://articles.mcall.com/1998-03-06/news/3183202_1_mcintyre-defense-lawyer-killed/2, Motive Made Focus Of Rorrer Case Closing Prosecution, Defense Agree It Doesn't Make Sense. Shes extremely, extremely happy with the baby. 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. On December 12, 1994, Joann answered a phone call from a woman shed never met, Patricia Rorrer, her husbands onetime girlfriend. He washed off the foundation at their request, uncoveringscratch marks that looked as though they came from someonesfingernails. But Rorrer said she didn't ride on the trails and wasn't familiar with the area. Join Facebook to connect with Andrew Katrinak and others you may know. So after a stressful afternoon of kidnapping and murder, she decides to relax with a nice soothing cigarette right there at the crime scene. 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. Rorrer said she had spoken once to Joann before she and Katrinak were married and that Joann seemed friendly when she put Katrinak on the phone.Rorrer said that years ago, she rented a barn in Washington Township for her horses. I also communicated with Patricia via email to get her input on some matters. They were married 62 years. If Patricia drove it back from the murder scene after she shot Joann and then beat her to death, luminal would have lit up the interior. Detective Barry Grube found it odd that Andrew fixed the severed phone line before police examined it in essence tampering with evidence. Im certainly aware police lie but this would require a conspiracy. Advocates for her innocence complain of hype surrounding the case. Four months later, a farmer found the bodies. Rorrer maintains her innocence to this day and argues that someone either negligently or intentionally put her hair on the slide. Walmart woe. The first round of testing done on the hair (pre-trial) indicated only that Rorrer was a potential source of the hair (odds of 1 in 37,000not exactly proof positive). The second round of testing came back as a 100% match, raising the question of a mistake. The indications of Patricia's involvement in Joann's and young Alex's disappearance were numerous. (Disclaimer: Im not a big fan of eyewitnesses who come forward years after the fact, but its possible). Yet, Joanns husbands ex girlfriend, who lived 500 miles away and had never met the victims, was convicted of the crime on a flimsy theory and highly questionable hair evidence. Traupman claimed that when he reported the dispute, trooper Robert V. Egan III got mad and practically kicked him out of his office. 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. 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. During questioning, heclaimed he got them while mosh-pit dancing, although it later came out that he had told friends he got scratched up while rescuing a guywho was being beaten up outside the clothing store. The couple had known each other since Lisa was 10 and Jimmy was friends with her brothers. Convenient Suspect: A Wrongful Conviction In The Murder In Lehigh Later, they both worked 12-hour graveyard shifts at a textile factory. Other loyal friends and associates attested to Patricias kindness toward horses and devotion to her daughter, whom she took along as she worked in stables. . . . 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. 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. Even though Joanne was supposed to take her mother-in-law for Christmas shopping, she never showed up. ", "I think she gave us something like four or five alibis as to where she was at. 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. 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. . Region. The relationship deteriorated, and she eventually moved out of the house, she said. 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. 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. Another former boyfriend said she talked about Andrew frequently and liked to gaze at old photos of him. Hecame from an affluent family, is white, and was young when he committed his crimes all factors that can favorably tip the scales of justice. The episode claimed the jury required just two hours to deliberate, but other sources indicate it took six. I have the same profile but had no children. That is to say, I see nothing contradictory in the evidence against her that must entail perjury. Continuing with this request will add an alert to the cemetery page and any new volunteers will have the opportunity to fulfill your request. Enter memorial Id . "I'm never going to see my daughter again. 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. My husband passed away of a broken heart, Sarah OConnor said on the Montel Williams Show in 2001. 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. . They had a son, Alex Martin, in August of 1994. Patricia seemed like the girl next door but all of a sudden, something snapped, Katrinak later told Wrong Man investigators. Its definitely getting rougher every day, Andrew told the Morning Call. It seems strange that Patricia would just pick up and drive 500 miles to see and ex-boyfriend from years ago on a whim, leaving her own one-year-old daughter at home in North Carolina. The 5-foot-9-inch-tall Patricia was physically strong, no match for 5-foot-4-inch Joann. Still, no good leads materialized. In TV clips, Andrew didnt come off as anguished. One on one? It was later believed that his recollection was keen, since he'd been the one to dress her posthumously. From the looks ofits Facebook page, the place isstill going strong. She had been beaten and shot in the face. But fortunately the murder createdplenty of forensic evidence that made for a stronger case against Fairley. Theres been some debate with regard to a picture of Rorrer shortly before the murders and the color of her hair. 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? Facebook gives people the power. Finally, the evidence had been exposed to the elements for who knows how many months. As of at least 2012, he was trying to have his convictions vacated and get a new trial following a Supreme Court decision that deemed life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders unconstitutional. She failed miserably to convince me, or anyone else who mattered, of her innocence. Having said that, to simply answer your question why? Police and FBI being under pressure to solve this highly publicized case, it had already been two years before they arrested Rorrer and case had gone cold. And she would just call out of the blue., According to the Free Patricia Rorrer page on Facebook:I called him to let him know that I was going to the USA finals for a horse show. On the other hand, the judicial system rarely takes kindly to anyone who kills a mother orchild, or both. Plus, he had only a minimal life insurance policy on Joann and he passed polygraphs, according to The FBI Files: Family Secrets. When Andrew was told of the location of his young family's remains, he offered investigators a lead. I would say that its only since the advent of forensic porn that wholly circumstantial cases are disparaged. Patricia also pointed out that when author Tammy Mal started her research and speaking to me, she was not an advocate at all but she reversed and ended up advocating for Patricias innocence. The Innocence Project has declined to take her case. Both were deceased. This had been taken just 11 days before Joann's disappearance. The thing about Katrinak is that she was actually found with her jeans unzipped and unbuttoned, suggesting a possible sexual assault. The Generation Why Podcast: E349: Joann Katrinak That same year, police arrested Calebs father, James Fairley, who owned a pharmacy in Phoenixville, for allegedly providing a customer with the painkiller Darvon illegally. She moved to North Carolina after her relationship with Katrinak ended in 1991. Joann Katrinak - 349-The Generation Why Podcast December 15th, 1994. According to a Morning Call account from March 5, 1998: McIntyre leaned forward conspiratorially like someone trying to persuade another to tell a secret, lowered his voice and said: Heres what I want to know: After you killed Joann Katrinak, did you kill that baby or just leave it to die?. Aside from the hair, there was almost zero forensic evidence. Some lawyers call microscopic hair analysis junk science that today wouldnt qualify as evidence in a trial like Rorrers. That same year Limerick was hit by a night tornado which killed a mother, father and baby. Nothing probative of innocence should be read into anything she offers viz DNA. Patricia had won a prize at an out-of-state horse-riding competition less than two weeks before the murders, and she allowed herself to be photographed. That does not ring true to me. . On closer inspection, he saw it was the body of a woman. December 15th, 1994. 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. However, the only record of any call made from Rorrer to the Katrinak household was on Dec 7th. Her mother, Patricia Chambers, provided day care for their baby son, Charles. My two cents, just as the heavily stretched circumstantial evidence convicted Rorrer, new uncovered circumstantial and direct evidence should give Rorrer benefit of a doubt and allowed for a new hearing and trial. I dont think she was ever scared until we put the cuffs on her.. And their phone line had been cut someone had not wanted the Katrinaks to be able to call for help. Patricia and her husband broke up after the babys death. So tragic. 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. The charges were later dismissed.In early 1995, Rorrer was arrested for shoplifting at a Linwood Wal-Mart, according to police records. When it was only able to fire once, Rorrer had to resort to bludgeoning her victim. Why would someone want to kidnap and murder the young mother? The media love the femme fatale., FBI lab blunder. 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.

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