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Husband is charged in wife's 1992 death Arrest follows change in coroner's ruling last year Wednesday, December 22, 1999 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Seven years after Michelle Witherell was found unconscious and dying below a Monroeville apartment balcony, her husband, Jeremy, was charged with killing her.
Yesterday, the 30-year-old account executive for Steel City Media of Downtown appeared for arraignment before Allegheny County Deputy Coroner Terry Browne, who set a preliminary hearing for Jan. 5.
Witherell, of Cranberry, was in tears as Tom Horton, a detective with the district attorney's office, led him to jail in handcuffs. His new wife, Lynn, is due to deliver the couple's first child on Jan. 10.
The affidavit of probable cause in the case recounts Jeremy Witherell's conflicting statements about his wife's death on Dec. 20, 1992, and the fact that he was the last person to see her alive. Much of the evidence in the affidavit was covered during an open inquest in January of 1998, in which Special Deputy Coroner John L. Doherty ruled the case a homicide. But Doherty said at the time there was not enough evidence to recommend that anyone be charged.
Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. declined comment yesterday on what had caused authorities to file the charges now.
But Jeremy Witherell's attorney, G. William Bills Jr., said the affidavit filed in support of his client's arrest contained no new information and rehashed testimony given at that inquest.
"We claim this was an unfortunate accident," Bills said. "The theory is the same as it was at the inquest."
When police arrived at about 12:45 a.m. on Dec. 20, 1992, at the LaVale Apartments in Monroeville, Witherell told officers his wife had jumped or fallen from the balcony of their third-floor apartment and that he had found her lying on the ground below.
But Michelle Witherell's mother, Cathy Mellema of Littleton, Colo., said yesterday, "We had our suspicions from the beginning, and we felt we should have answers. Any parent would. We're thankful for the pursuit of justice."
In 1994, after Mellema and her husband, Evert, grew tired of what they saw as the lack of progress in the investigation into their daughter's death, the couple began using their life savings from a prosperous real estate business to finance their own private investigation.
Their investigation eventually led to the Doherty open inquest and an investigation by the district attorney's office.
Two forensic pathologists hired by Michelle Witherell's parents examined the case, and both said her death was a homicide as a result of a beating, and was not due to a fall.
The pathologists concluded that because Michelle Witherell was found lying on her left side, she should have suffered more injuries there. A 23-foot fall, the pathologists found, would have caused more severe head trauma than what Mrs. Witherell sustained.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, prior to being elected county coroner, also was asked to look at the case and he agreed that her death was a homicide.
In addition to the pathologists, the Mellemas hired private investigator Robert Meinert and former U.S. Attorney J. Alan Johnson to help them after Allegheny County police insisted there was nothing left to pursue in the case.
All of them tried for years to get county homicide detectives to track down numerous tips the private investigation had gathered.
In the opinion of the Mellemas, who tape-recorded every conversation they had with county detectives, little, if anything, was done with the information presented.
The Mellemas said they were told by county police that unless Dr. John C. Hiserodt, now a college professor at the University of California-Irvine, changed his initial ruling on the case, the county could do nothing. Hiserodt was the Allegheny County pathologist who performed the autopsy and ruled the manner of death was undetermined.
In the fall of 1997, the Mellemas asked Hiserodt to review his findings. He did, and he changed his opinion to say that Michelle died either as the result of a fall or that she was beaten and her body placed under the balcony.
Bills said he recently reviewed the findings by Doherty, the special hearing officer who presided over the open inquest held in January 1998.
"He said there was not prima facie evidence to support a conclusion that Jeremy Witherell did it. What took them two years to regurgitate the open inquest?" Bills asked.
In a telephone interview yesterday from her home in Littleton, Cathy Mellema expressed gratitude.
"We're thankful for the progress and for the integrity and pursuit of justice the Allegheny County district attorney's office has shown through both District Attorney Stephen Zappala and Chief Investigator Terry O'Leary," she said.
The Witherells' four-month marriage, which began in September of 1992, was not a happy one, according to the affidavit.
Michelle Witherell moved to Pittsburgh from her home in Colorado, where she met Witherell.
According to the affidavit, she, "was unhappy with the hours and extensive entertaining" that Jeremy Witherell did in connection with his work at The City Paper, a free entertainment tabloid owned in part by his brother, Brad.
Mary Herr, a neighbor of the Witherells who lived below them, complained to building manager Timothy McMackin about yelling and banging she heard in November and December of 1992.
On the night of Michelle Witherell's death, Herr told police, she heard a "loud, thumping argument" that "shook her chandelier" around 11 p.m. She also heard the sliding glass door to the couple's balcony open and close five times.
Initially, Jeremy Witherell's mother told the Mellemas that their daughter fell from the balcony while hanging Christmas lights. That story did not make sense to the Mellemas because Michelle Witherell was due to leave for Colorado a few days later to spend Christmas with her family.
The Mellemas were skeptical from the start because a Monroeville police officer at the scene told them in an early morning telephone call that the incident was "suspicious."
Witherell told his in-laws that his wife was hanging by her hands along the balcony and that he tried to pull her up. Then, he said the railing gave way and she fell.
When police arrived, Witherell told authorities that when he realized his wife was on the ground below, he grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911 as he rushed down the stairs to assist her.
A Monroeville police officer "noticed that the sliding glass door leading to the balcony was only open about two inches indicating that Jeremy would have nearly closed the balcony sliding glass door and locked the apartment door behind him even though he stated he had just observed his wife lying three stories below on the pavement and rushed immediately to her aid," according to the affidavit.
Witherell told police that, earlier in the evening, the couple had dinner and drinks at the Parkway Tavern in Penn Hills. On the way home, they argued about an inappropriate remark that Jeremy Witherell had made about a woman who wore a Hooter's T-shirt.
Michelle Witherell did not accompany her husband into the apartment, choosing instead to sit alone in their car, something that other residents of the apartment complex said they had seen on prior occasions when the couple had argued.
Jeremy Witherell said the couple left the restaurant at 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 20 and that he paid the bill.
But Cathy Mellema found a Visa card receipt in her daughter's purse showing that Michelle Witherell paid the bill at 10:18 p.m.
Michelle Witherell died at about 2:15 p.m. at Mercy Hospital on Dec. 20.
Two days after his wife's death, Jeremy Witherell passed a polygraph exam administered by the Allegheny County Police.
Today, Bills said he will ask Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Raymond Novak to release his client on bond.
Staff Writer Bill Moushey and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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