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Three terrible crimes have led the DA to seek the death penalty: Taylor, Baumhammers and Cornelius
Sunday, December 31, 2000 By Michael A. Fuoco, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
In the year that is about to end, perhaps the three biggest local stories were the most unthinkable.
Just one of these stories of death most dreadful would have been enough to shock the community, but three of them rocked the region to its core.
"Any one of these cases is more than you would want to experience in a career," Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said last week. "In my lifetime, I can't recall there being three cases like this."
It began on March 1, when a black man armed with a pistol and racial animus, went on a rampage in Wilkinsburg, shooting five white men, three of them fatally. Ronald Taylor, 39, is accused in the shootings.
"My first reaction was, 'That doesn't happen in this area,' " Zappala recalled.
But it did. And then, on April 28, it happened again.
This time, a white man went on a shooting spree that began in Mt. Lebanon and ended in Center, Beaver County. Killed were five people -- a Jewish woman, an Indian, two Asian-Americans and a black man. Another Indian was wounded and paralyzed for life. Richard S. Baumhammers, 35, of Mt. Lebanon, an anti-Semite who despised nonwhite, non-European immigrants, is accused in the shootings.
And then, on Sept. 25, the nude body of 11-year-old Scott Drake was discovered in a North Side lot. Scott had been strangled, his genitalia had been cut off and his abdomen had been sliced.
A homeless man, Joseph Cornelius, 47, was charged in the killing that brought Mayor Tom Murphy and countless others in the area to tears.
In the new year, the cases will move to trial. Attorneys for Taylor and Baumhammers likely will mount mental infirmity defenses, while the attorney for Cornelius will maintain his client is innocent despite a confession to police.
Deputy District Attorney Edward J. Borkowski will be the prosecutor in all three cases. Zappala is seeking the death penalty in each case, a move criticized by William H. Difenderfer, Baumhammers' attorney.
"I think all of these cases have documented clinical psychotic backgrounds. To me it's a shame when you look at all the other homicides that have gone on this year and last year, and you seek the death penalty in these three," Difenderfer said.
But Zappala said his decisions came only after much thought and discussion.
"We're very conservative in the application of the death penalty. We're very judicious. The obligation is to be consistent in the application of law. I think in these three cases we're being consistent. And these were horrendous crimes."
Following is a look back at what happened in 2000 and a look forward at what is likely to occur in the coming year.
Ronald Taylor
Attorney John Elash said he planned an insanity defense for Taylor. Jury selection is set for May 15.
"It absolutely has to be an insanity defense," said Elash, the court-appointed attorney for Cornelius as well as Taylor."Was this an act by someone who is insane? I think only an insane person would commit such an act."
Elash said he was likely to seek a change of venue for Taylor because of the racial nature of the case.
The incident began about 9 a.m. March 1. John DeWitt and John Kroll went to 1208 Wood St. to remove and repair the door to Taylor's fifth-floor apartment. Apparently enraged by how long the repair took, Taylor lit the couch on fire in his two-room efficiency. Police said he then he fatally shot Kroll, 55, of Cabot, Butler County, with a .22-caliber pistol.
Police received a call at 11:15 a.m. about the Kroll shooting and were told the gunman was at 1208 Wood St. There, police found the fifth floor totally engulfed in flames.
At about 11:20 a.m., police received another call of a gunshot victim inside the Burger King on Penn Avenue, only blocks away. There, Joseph Healy, 71, a former priest and longtime resident of Wilkinsburg, had been fatally shot.
At about that time and a block away, Richard Clinger, 56, of North Huntingdon pulled his van into the parking lot of the McDonald's. Police said Taylor strode into the parking lot and shot Clinger through his window, permanently disabling him.
Inside McDonald's, police said Taylor walked up to the counter and opened fire on the assistant manager, Steven Bostard, 25, of Swissvale. Then, police said, he walked outside and fatally shot Emil Sanielevici, 20, a University of Pittsburgh student from Greenfield, who was waiting to pick up food in the drive-through lane.
Police said Taylor went into a home, emptied the spent shells from his gun and reloaded. He went back outside and was walking east on West Street when he came upon several Wilkinsburg police officers. Police said he fired two rounds at them before running into the Penn West Building, which includes a children's day-care center, an adult day care and numerous businesses.
Several officers isolated Taylor on the first floor while others began evacuating the 125 people inside. SWAT teams from Pittsburgh and Allegheny County responded, as well as state police, suburban police, county sheriff's deputies and FBI agents.
On the first floor, Taylor ran in and out of offices, frightening four people in wheelchairs in an adult day-care center and other people in a doctor's office.
Eventually, he was confined to the southeast hallway where, from 40 feet away, Pittsburgh police Sgt. John Fisher, a hostage negotiator, began two hours of negotiations. They successfully concluded when Taylor slid his gun and knife down the hallway and surrendered, police said.
Should Taylor be convicted, Lisa Middleman of the public defender's office will represent him in the penalty phase, hoping to spare his life. Looking for mitigating factors to present to the jury, she has been researching Taylor's life "from birth until now. It's intense work."
But she hopes all of her work is for naught because that would mean Taylor wouldn't be facing the prospect of death.
"The more I get to know about him, the more I hope I'm wasting my time."
Richard S. Baumhammers
Baumhammers, creator of the self-styled Free Market Party, which argued against non-European immigration, will be the first of the three to face trial. Jury selection is scheduled for April 9. Difenderfer said he would mount a mental infirmity defense, which can include innocence because of insanity or diminished capacity or guilty but mentally ill.
Despite the massive amount of publicity given the case, Difenderfer said he would not seek a change of venue. Nevertheless, he agreed with Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning's plan to determine how publicity might have affected prospective jurors.
Manning, Difenderfer and Borkowski will meet Feb. 20 and 21 to test the potential jury pool by asking jurors called in other cases whether they have heard about the Baumhammers case and whether the publicity has affected their opinions about it. Based on their answers, Manning said, he will decide whether the jury panel should be selected from Allegheny County or brought here from another county to hear the case.
"I'm confident we'll be able to pick a jury, but that remains to be seen," Difenderfer said. "I'm going to fight to stay here. I just love the cross section of people in Allegheny County.
"The fact someone saw on the news that he allegedly killed five people and wounded a sixth is all going to come out at trial. The question then becomes will the jurors comprehend and appreciate a mental infirmity defense, which will be presented on a very intellectual level.
"The fact there are five dead people in this case and the allegations are horrible makes it a difficult case to defend. It will depend upon how you strike a chord with the jury .... It will take a lot of thought and a lot of work."
It was 1:43 p.m. April 28 when Mt. Lebanon firefighters responded to a home alarm at 788 Elmspring Road, next door to where Baumhammers lived with his parents, both well-known dentists. There, firefighters found a burning rug and the body of Nicki Gordon, 63, married and the mother of three. She had been fatally shot.
Over the next 72 minutes, the gunman would strike at the India Grocers in Scott Towne Center, where Anil Thakur, 31, a native of Bihar, India, was killed and the store's manager, Sandip Patel, 25, was wounded and paralyzed for life; at the popular Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine at Robinson Town Centre, where Ji-Ye "Jerry" Sun, 34, of Churchill, and Thao Q. "Tony" Pham, 27, of Mt. Lebanon, were killed; and at C.S. Kim's School of Karate off Route 60 in Center, Beaver County, where Garry Lee, 22, of Aliquippa, was fatally shot.
Along the 20-mile trail of blood, the gunman desecrated two synagogues with gunshots and spray-painted swastikas.
Baumhammers stopped his getaway car at a roadblock in Ambridge and surrendered to officers there.
Joseph Cornelius
Jury selection for Cornelius' trial is scheduled for July 9. Elash continues to maintain Cornelius' innocence, even though police have a statement from his client.
"The statement reeks of reasonable doubt. The physical evidence doesn't exist," said Elash.
But Pittsburgh police officials say Cornelius is indeed the killer, revealing in his confession certain details about the crime and crime scene that only the murderer would know.
Scott Drake was reported missing late on the night of Sept. 24 and was last seen on East Ohio Street at Madison Avenue at about 7 p.m. His body was found by police at about 9:45 p.m. the next day in a lot off East Ohio Street that is bounded by ramps for Route 28, the Veterans Bridge and Interstate 279. The site where the body was found, 150 feet from East Ohio Street, is a hangout for homeless people.
By the next morning, Sept. 27, city homicide detectives were joined in the probe by county and state investigators and two profilers from the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Some North Side regulars had already been questioned that day, among them Cornelius, who had been known to panhandle in the area. All had denied having had any encounter with Scott Sunday evening.
But after Cornelius was taken back to his "home" -- the porch of an abandoned house in Beechview -- witnesses, including an off-duty Pittsburgh police officer, called the homicide squad to report having seen Cornelius and Scott together at 7 p.m. on East Ohio Street on the day Scott disappeared. And a tow truck driver said he saw Cornelius emerge later that evening from the lot where the child's nude and mutilated body was discovered.
Detectives decided to bring Cornelius in for another interview. Cornelius told Pittsburgh homicide Detective Dennis Logan that he hadn't seen Scott. Detectives had learned that Cornelius was wanted for not appearing at a hearing on a charge of obstructing traffic by panhandling on East Ohio Street, so he would be spending the night in the county jail. He and Logan agreed to meet the next day, Sept. 27.
That's when Cornelius described to Logan how he had killed and mutilated Scott. He said they had engaged in sex acts -- an allegation detectives can't confirm -- and, when he thought Scott was going to steal his black $4.99 AM-FM radio, he knocked the child to the ground and strangled him. He told Logan he mutilated the body to make the killing appear to be the work of a "pedophile."
Staff writer Johnna A. Pro contributed to this report
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THE SUSPECTS: Ronald Taylor, 39, of Wilkinsburg; Richard S. Baumhammers, 35, of Mt. Lebanon; Joseph Cornelius, 47, homeless.