True Crime Stories

It is not unusual to find a case in which there is much disagreement among people as to the outcome.  Regardless of any legal decision you can almost always find people who both agree, and disagree with the outcome.  It is rare however, to have a case legally end in the way that this one has.  We hear of cases of prosecution or investigative misconduct; we hear theories of the planting of evidence; we hear people fight repeatedly that they did not receive a fair trial.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I often fall into these categories myself.  I believe it is basic human nature.  There have often been cases in which I have openly said that the defendant, whether I believed to be guilty or innocent, had not received a fair trial.  Sometimes the court agrees, but more often than not they do not agree with that concept.  Even more rare than seeing a conviction overturned (without another suspect or guilty party waiting in the...

Going into this case doing the research I thought this was a pretty cut and dry case to blog about.  As soon as I started researching I learned that may not be the case and although the crime was committed in 1994 and Patricia Rorrer was convicted in 1998, as late as 2015 her lawyer were continuing to argue about possibly tampered evidence.  So, I dug a little deeper than I had really planned to in the beginning and found myself with more questions than answers. On December 15, 1994 Joanne Katrinak and her three month old son Alex, of Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania,  were supposed to meet her mother in law to go shopping for the day.  She never showed and never answered the phone.  When Joanne's husband, Andrew, returned home they were not there either.  He found the basement door open and removed from the hinges and the phone lines cut.  He called the police. Joanne's car would be found in a parking lot near the couple's home but neither Joanne or Alex ...

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I have often said before that I do not do a vast majority of cases that involve spouse on spouse because sadly they are almost routine it seems in today's world.  However, from time to time I do blog about those sorts of cases because there is generally other issues involved that give the story a different spin.  This is one of them and this case has several different or unique spins to it.  This is not just a case of a couple going through a divorce where domestic violence not only was alleged but ended the lives of two people.  This is also a case about the "Blue Code" of silence and how that code, along with political corruption nearly brought down an entire town.  We have heard of case after case where money and prestige prevents any sort of justice being dealt.  We saw it in the O.J. Simpson case; we saw it in the JonBonet Ramsey case.  On a much smaller scale we could have seen it here if it were not for the final actions of David Brame. On the...

When I sit down to research a case to blog I generally have at least a little information about the case.  In some case I know quite a lot.  Going into this one I felt like it fell into the latter category but I was very wrong.  As a teenager in the 1980's, especially one that kept up with current events and news, as well as being an adult that some say is obsessed with true crime, I of course know about what is called the "day care sex abuse hysteria" that occurred.  It was kind of hard to miss, especially when you added that to the added Satan Worshiping hysteria that often tied in with it. The McMartin Preschool Scandal fell into these categories and as I said I thought I knew quite a lot about this case, which in all honesty I did, but there was also so much more I did not know.  This turned from what I thought would be a quick case to research into a day and a half of research and one in which I have had to force myself to stop except to answer an...