December 27, 1979

Wearing a green shirt with green plaid pants, 49-year-old Peter Levato, who worked as a security guard, pulled up his gold colored, two-door sedan at the Edison Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh at 2 a.m.  He was single after a brief, one-month marriage to Mary J. Levato in 1978.

He was about to enter the Edison Hotel, when 21-year-old Michael Travaglia approached the car.  With a gun in his hand, Travaglia opened the driver’s door and forced Levato to slide over.  When he tapped the horn, Travaglia’s friend John Lesko, also 21, slid into the car from the other side and forced handcuffs on Levato.

Travaglia drove with Lesko and the handcuffed Levato on the Parkway East toward Monroeville for about a half an hour before stopping the car.  Using rope they found in the trunk, Lesko and Travaglia tied up Levato, took his wallet from his pants, and threw him into the trunk.  They then headed east to the Loyalhanna Dam in Westmoreland County, where they opened the trunk and hit Levato over the head with the butt of the gun.  Travaglia pushed the dazed Levato into the water of the dam. 

Levato screamed for someone to help him as he broke free of the ropes and swam to shore.  Lesko and Travaglia, hearing the screams and realizing Levato was still alive, ran through the brush and hunted him down like prey.  Cold and disoriented, Levato had crouched behind a tree where his kidnappers found him.  Travaglia shot Levato in the chest, and his lifeless body fell to the ground.  To make sure he was dead, Travaglia shot him in the top of the head two more times, then he and Lesko quickly  escaped from the area in Levato’s car. 

Two days later while checking his hunting traps around lunch time, Edward Wolak saw the body and ran to call the state police.  Pennsylvania State Trooper Charles J. Lutz, the first officer to arrive at the scene, found Levato’s body in a wooded area about 19 feet from the water’s edge.  Later, Levato’s friend Richard Crowe identified him.  A few days later, the gold, two-door sedan was found in a cornfield in nearby Penn Township. 

According to court records, Lesko said he and Travaglia took Levato hostage because he had made a pass at the two men.  For the torment Lesko and Travaglia inflicted, they only came away with $59 from Levato’s wallet. 

Dec. 30 and 31, 1979

Travaglia and Lesko continued their drug and alcohol binge – as is evidenced by the records of state police, who later searched their motel room and found empty bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey, Seagram’s 7 whiskey, Canadian Club whiskey, Vodka, gin, Stroh’s beer and Miller beer.  Travaglia had used the alias Michael Simons when he initially registered at Thatcher’s Motel on Route 22 and was given the key to room number 12. 

At some point during their stay, Travaglia and Lesko crawled into the back window of Sonny’s Lounge, a bar attached to the motel.  They broke into the cigarette machine and juke box, stealing $150 worth of coins and picking up some food and beverages, such as a five-pound package of Land-O-Lakes American cheese and one and one-half packages of Lugar Kulbassy, which was on hand  for a New Year’s Eve party.

The motel evicted Travaglia and Lesko at 4 p.m. on Dec 30 because they hadn’t paid and the room was only rented to Travaglia.  The owner was also wary about the litter of liquor bottles he had seen in the room and the large pile of coins on the floor.  Travaglia and Lesko asked permission to leave a bag with the owner, stating they would return no later than 11 p.m. that night to pick up the bag and pay the motel fee.  They never came back. 

On Dec. 31, State Trooper Lutz, who had found Levato’s body, responded to a burglary call at Sonny’s Lounge.  The owner told Lutz what he had seen in Travaglia’s motel room and took the trooper to search room 12 and the bags the men had left.  Nothing was found except half empty packages of Land-O-Lakes cheese and Lugar Kulbassy.

Jan. 1, 1980

Marlene “Sue” Newcomer, a 26-year old seamstress and mother of a 6-year-old boy, was driving home to Connellsville after a New Year’s Eve party in her new, tan-colored Dodge Ramcharger when she saw Lesko and Travaglia hitchhiking along Route 66 in Washington Township, Westmoreland County, around 2 a.m. 

“Come on in out of the fog,” she called out the window as she pulled alongside the two men.  Travaglia climbed in the back seat and Lesko in the front.  They had been to Travaglia’s family home for New Year’s Eve.  Newcomer told the men she could take them as far as Connellsville.

After they had driven for about 20 minutes, Lesko pulled out a .22 caliber revolver stolen from Travaglia’s father and ordered Newcomer to stay calm and not attract police attention.  The men told her to pull off to the side of the road. Travaglia took over driving the vehicle.  In the back seat, Lesko handcuffed Newcomer and tied her with yellow electrical wire – also stolen from Travaglia’s father – and placed a blanket over the bottom half of her body. 

Shortly afterward, Lesko shot at Newcomer but missed, and Newcomer feigned a heart attack in an effort to escape.  But when Lesko removed her handcuffs and checked her pulse, he realized that she was faking.  He then shot Newcomer twice, hitting her once in the left temple and once in the left chest.  By this time, the men were near Indiana, Pennsylvania, and they robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store at 6:45 a.m., leaving Newcomer dead or dying in the car. 

They then drove to Pittsburgh, throwing Newcomer’s identification under the Homestead High-level Bridge and abandoning the car – along with her body – on the third tier of the Gimbel’s parking garage on the corner of Liberty Avenue and Smithfield Street.  Around 9 a.m., the two men ordered some bacon and eggs at the nearby White Tower restaurant and paid for their breakfast with cash they had taken from Newcomer’s purse.  After breakfast, they used a little more of her money to play pinball and other games at a downtown arcade. 

According to her sister, Judy Butler, Sue Newcomer had started to scrawl a message on the inside of the car door in her own blood before she died.  She only got the first two letters.  Newcomer’s body was found in her vehicle sprawled across the backseat at 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 2.            

Jan. 2, 1980

William “Bill” Nicholls, a church organist from the Mt. Lebanon area, had celebrated a happy Christmas with his parents and siblings in Greensburg.  A few days later, he called his brother Dave excited to tell him about the silver-gray, 1977 Lancia Fiat he had just bought. 

Nicholls, who was divorced, was having a few drinks at the Edison Hotel when he first met Michael Travaglia.  Some reports state that Travaglia believed Nicholls was making homosexual advances toward him.  That pass allegedly angered Travaglia, and, in retaliation, he decided to kidnap Nicholls and take along Lesko and Richard “Ricky” Rutherford, a 14-year-old runaway from Weston, W.Va.  Dante Bertani, Westmoreland County public defender, said that both Levato and Nicholls might have been targeted because Travaglia and Lesko thought they were homosexuals. 

The kidnappers located Nicholls’ Fiat and forced him inside.  During their drive, Travaglia shot Nicholls in the arm with his father’s .22 caliber pistol.  Nicholls was then handcuffed while Lesko repeatedly punched him in the face and chest and taunted him with a knife.  Nicholls eventually gave in to the pain and lost consciousness as they headed toward Blue Spruce Lake in Indiana County, where Travaglia’s family had a secluded summer cottage. 

At the lake, the killers pulled the handcuffed and unconscious Nicholls out of the car and took him to a heavily wooded area where they bound his feet and gagged him with a scarf.  They placed rocks in Nicholls’ pockets to weigh him down, then dragged him down to Blue Spruce Lake and rolled him into the water.  According to later testimony, when Nicholls’ head bobbed back to the surface, the men pushed it back under the water with their feet and held it there until the victim was drowned.

Nicholls was one of two sons of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Nicholls of Greensburg.  Bill’s sister-in-law, Mary Ann Nicholls of Irwin, remembers him as an articulate young man who loved a good-natured argument.  He loved, music, she said, and enjoyed his job as choir and liturgical director at St. Anne’s.

“He was musically talented,” said Mary Ann, a campus minister at Duquesne University.  “Two of my daughters [Jenna and Mara] are musically involved and often ask what it would have been like if Bill was still alive.”

Jan. 3, 1980   

Travaglia was driving Nicholls car along Route 66 in the early morning hours when he spotted Patrolman Leonard Miller, 21, an acquaintance from his hometown, in the parking lot of an Apollo convenience store – now a CoGos – located in Apollo Plaza.  He and Lesko decided to goad Miller into a chase across the Apollo Bridge, which divides Westmoreland and Armstrong counties, thinking the patrolman would be unable to pursue them across the bridge and out of his jurisdiction. 

Travaglia, Lesko and Ricky Rutherford, a 14-year-old West Virginia boy who was in the back seat, sped past Miller several times repeatedly honking the horn until, on the third drive by, they saw Miller’s lights flashing in the rearview mirror.   Miller chased the car across the Apollo Bridge and to the left and along Route 66, driving them off the road at Nazer’s, a local grocery store, about 500 feet from the bridge.  The men began to panic at this point, they later said, because they simply intended to scare Miller and then dash off.   Some testimony indicates that they wanted to lure Miller away from the store so they could return to rob it. 

As Miller approached the vehicle, Travaglia balanced his arm on the partially rolled down window and aimed.  He pulled the trigger and shot Miller twice with a .38-caliber pistol that he had stolen from his father’s truck.  During the shooting, Travaglia injured his head, and the wound was later mentioned used by a witness who noticed his bleeding forehead at approximately 7 a.m. that morning when he entered a grocery store near Route 286.

Travaglia later stated that the first time he shot Miller his finger had slipped and the second time Lesko was shouting at him to shoot Miller again.  Despite his injuries, Miller fired six shots at the escaping car before collapsing from the pain.  He later died. 

Miller, only son of John and Evelyn Miller, had only been on the Apollo police force three days.  According to his friends, Miller was a positive thinker, the type of person who always had a smile and everyone wanted to be around.

Debbie Dietrick, an emergency medical technician from Saltsburg, first met Miller when he was 16 and a rookie at her father’s gas station, Greece’s Sunoco.

 “I can remember pulling in the garage one day and this cute little chubby black boy came out,” Dietrick said.  “He was real cute… and always happy.”

Dietrick became friends with Miller, and they later took first aid and CPR classes together when he was in training for the police force. An only child, Miller was devoted to his parents and still lived at home, she said.

“He got along with everybody,” Dietrick said, adding that Miller’s brutal murder cut short a life that she believes could have had a profound impact on others.  “He probably would have been one of those policemen that kids really looked up to,” she said.

The capture

At 4 p.m. on Jan. 3, State Trooper Charles Lutz filed a criminal complaint before District Magistrate Robert E. Scott against Travaglia for receiving stolen goods, based on robbery at Sonny’s Lounge and the evidence Lutz had seen at Thatcher’s Motel.  Scott immediately issued a warrant, which opened the criminal investigation into Travaglia and Lesko. 

At the same time, Frank Amity reported for work at in the Pittsburgh Police homicide section.  Information was already on the state police wire about the Miller case.  Earlier that morning Nicholls’ car, which police now knew was tied to the Miller case, had been found abandoned with the windows shot out at Cooper’s Trailer Sales on Route 286 in Westmoreland County.  Three people had been seen leaving the car.

Police called David Nicholls to report that his brother William’s car had been found and to ask him when he had last seen his brother.  David hadn’t seen Bill since the family’s Christmas celebration.

At 7 p.m., Amity saw a state police teletype confirming that Michael Travaglia had been positively identified as part of an earlier Seven-11 robbery in Indiana.  A description of the car in that robbery matched Sue Newcomer’s Dodge Ramcharger that had been found in the Gimbel’s parking lot with her body inside.  The pieces were started to fit.

Amity and his partner, Tony Condemi, picked up that name of Ray Scalise from the wire and went to find him at an address on 21st Street on the South Side.  Police had found Scalise’s phone number in Michael Travaglia’s old repossessed truck.  The landlady on 21st Street said Scalise had moved out but he worked at Dog-Gone Sam’s at Ninth and Penn, Downtown. 

Other officers were already looking for the suspects in that area because they had information that this was the homosexual hangout where both Levato and Nicholls had been picked up.  Although they did not yet have Nicholls’ body, police were pretty sure he had been killed.

At 10 p.m., Amity and Condemi asked four other officers to wait outside while they went into Dog-Gone Sam’s.  The proprietor there told them that Scalise was not at work, but the conversation was interrupted by a man with a West Virginia accent, who told the police that Scalise lived around the corner on Liberty Avenue. 

Amity recalled a description on the state police wire of an accomplice named Daniel Montgomery from West Virginia, who used aliases of Daniel Keith and Michael Montgomery,  and he asked for some identification.  Amity took one look at Daniel Keith Montgomery’s West Virginia drivers license and asked the man to step outside.

Police searched Montgomery and found a .30 caliber revolver with five rounds of ammunition and one spent, along with 20 rounds of loose bullets.  They placed Montgomery under arrest for a gun violation and receiving stolen goods.

It wasn’t his gun, Montgomery quickly claimed.  He had just gotten it 20 minutes earlier from Michael Travaglia, who had taken a room at the Edison Hotel across the street, he said.  Condemi stayed in the car with Montgomery while the five other officers approached the hotel’s night watchman.  The watchman found a Mike “Simmons” and John Lesko registered in room 616.  He then took the officers upstairs, put his key in and opened the door.  The five officers rushed in with their guns drawn.

Amity, the first one in, saw Lesko in the bed closest to him.  He later testified that Lesko grabbed a gun from under the sheet and pointed it at him.  Lesko conceded that the gun was under the sheet but said he never put his hand on it.  Lesko also said he was afraid it was a drug bust and swallowed dozens of amphetamines in his panic.

Michael Travaglia, dressed in jeans and part of a sweatshirt, ran toward the door.  He was immediately overcome by one of the officers, while others jumped on Lesko.  After a brief scuffle, the suspects were handcuffed, and the officers advised them of their rights.  Amity took possession of Lesko’s .22, which had the serial number filed off, and found a box of cartridges in his jacket.  They also found a honing stone in a leather sheath, a handcuff key and some of Lesko’s personal papers.  Then, as Amity later described the scene on the witness stand, the officers helped the suspects put on their shoes, jackets and gloves.

At 10:20 p.m., Travaglia and Lesko were booked at Pittsburgh’s Public Safety Building.  Between 11:08 p.m. Jan. 3 and 12:47 a.m. Jan. 4, Travaglia informed homicide Detective Ronald Freeman of his involvement in the four murders and other crimes, later agreeing to be recorded on tape.  In another room, Lesko confessed to Amity and also agreed to be recorded on tape.  

At 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 4, Bill Nicholls’ body was recovered from Blue Spruce Lake.  Mary Ann Nicholls, who went with her husband to the Indiana County Morgue that day, said her brother-in-law was badly bloated and blue, almost unidentifiable.  The “only positive identification was the ring on his finger,” she said, which Bill had received while on a trip to Israel a few years earlier.

Dave Nicholls had hesitated to contact his parents when his brother was missing.  Albert Nicholls and his wife were on their way to Florida in a new RV their six children had given them for Christmas.  It was their first vacation in years.  But now, Dave knew, he had to call them home to face what must be any parent’s worst nightmare.

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The depravity of John Lesko’s childhood in Pittsburgh during the 1960s rivals Oliver Twist’s misfortunes and misadventures in 1850s London.  But not even the genius of Charles Dickens could craft a happy ending from this story.
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Throughout his years at Kiski Area High School, Travaglia – described as a tall, thin youth – was an active member of the swim team, marching band and symphonic band.  “He enjoyed school and his classes, especially music,” his wife Fran said, noting that school was a break away from his home life.
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