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Detective recounts Cornelius confession
Thursday, October 04, 2001 By Jim McKinnon and Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Another investigator testified yesterday that Joseph Cornelius confessed last year to the strangulation and sexual mutilation of an 11-year-old North Side boy.
It was the third time since Cornelius' trial began last week that the jury has heard testimony of his confessions.
After Allegheny County homicide Detective Regis Kelly testified, the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Edward J. Borkowski, said he would rest his case today.
Cornelius, 48, is charged with first-degree murder, sexual assault and abuse of a corpse, and faces a possible death sentence if convicted.
Kelly testified that Cornelius agreed to be interviewed by county detectives hours after being interrogated by Pittsburgh police in connection with the Sept. 24, 2000, slaying of Scott Drake.
"I already told the other detectives what I did and I put it on tape," Kelly said Cornelius told him.
Though the jury did not hear why Kelly wanted to question Cornelius, the detective has said in pretrial proceedings that he was investigating whether Cornelius was involved in other crimes.
"He said that the media made him out to be a pedophile. He said this was the only time he had done anything like this," Kelly testified.
In previous testimony, Pittsburgh homicide Detective Dennis Logan testified that Cornelius admitted that he had two sexual encounters with Scott, on Sept. 23 and 24. Logan said Cornelius confessed that he strangled the boy during the second encounter, after he thought Scott was trying to steal his radio.
Cornelius said that he later cut the boy and removed his genitalia in an attempt to deceive police by making it look like a pedophile had committed the crime, Logan testified.
Kelly said yesterday that he and Detective Lee Yingling were driving Cornelius to their Point Breeze headquarters office when Cornelius made unsolicited comments about the case.
As Yingling disabled the locks on the rear doors of their police car, Cornelius told him there was no need for that, Kelly testified.
"I won't try to escape," Kelly quoted Cornelius. "After my picture has been on the news, I wouldn't last an hour. People would want to kill me. You probably would want to kill me after what I've done."
At the office, Cornelius told detectives that he wanted to plead guilty to killing Scott. He said he did not wish to embarrass his family further, nor did he want the boy's family to suffer through a trial, Kelly testified.
After a while, Kelly escorted Cornelius to the men's room, where Cornelius asked the detective whether Pittsburgh detectives had found the bag he had thrown into the Allegheny River, Kelly said.
In the previous confessions, including a taped statement played for the jury, Cornelius said that he put Scott's pants and parts of his body into plastic bags and threw them into the river from the Ninth Street Bridge.
Police searched the river, but the bag has not been found.
On cross-examination, defense attorney John Elash asked Kelly whether he had taken advantage of Cornelius' lack of sleep, hunger and alcoholic withdrawal.
"You ingratiated yourself with Mr. Cornelius, didn't you?" Elash asked Kelly. "As a result of ingratiating yourself with Mr. Cornelius, did he confess to being on a grassy knoll in '63 [when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated]?"
Borkowski objected, and Common Pleas Judge John A. Zottola sustained the objection and ordered the attorneys into his chambers.
In earlier testimony yesterday, a homicide detective and a crime unit officer described working under a steady rain in a dark area of the North Side where Scott Drake's body was found the night of Sept. 25, 2000.
Homicide Detective Brian Weismantle testified that because it was raining that night, a tent was set up over the body and a cover placed over the boy's bicycle nearby.
Pittsburgh police Detective Blase Kraeer, one of the first officers to arrive at the scene, testified that among the evidence he gathered were pieces of broken glass, possibly fragments from the broken beer bottle that Cornelius said he used on Scott's body.
Under questioning by Elash, Kraeer said the particles were not dusted for fingerprints.
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