Stalled Justice: Pennsylvania’s Fierce Ambivalence

Two days after Christmas in 1979, John Lesko and Michael Travaglia--both 21, drunk and stoned on amphetamines --set out on what would come to be dubbed a  ‘kill-for-thrill’ rampage with four dead in its wake.  Their savage violence stunned Western Pennsylvania and left four families crippled by grief.  Twenty-three years later, both men languish prison, one in the solitary confinement on Graterford Prison’s death row, the other, at least temporarily, among the general population at Greene.  They emerge only occasionally, shackled at the wrists and ankles, to appear at court proceedings.

None of their victims’ family members whom we were able to find has let go of that grief, except for those now relieved of its burden by death or Alzheimer’s disease.  Some family members still keep a wary watch on the killers and even schedule time off from work to attend their appeals hearings.  Others keep a physical and emotional distance.  Many who knew and loved these victims curse their killers and wish them dead.  Others are reaching toward forgiveness. 

Pennsylvania’s legal system reflects this mix of feelings about what should happen to John Lesko and Michael Travaglia. Although Pennsylvania juries readily return the death verdict, the appeals process just as often uncovers procedural flaws and stalls the cases for decades.  The result is a policy of stalled justice and wasted lives that neither side of the death penalty debate would endorse.

Pennsylvania’s prisons hold 245 inmates on death row, a number that ranks fourth in the nation. Yet, the state rarely executes.  Only three prisoners have died at the hands of the state since the death penalty was reinstated here in 1978, and those three were volunteers.  That is, they had terminated their appeals processes and asked to be executed.

The kill-for-thrill case of Lesko and Travaglia serves as a good example of the Commonwealth’s deep ambivalence. By now, these two men have spent more years on death row than they spent of their short youth in freedom.  Graying, middle-aged and sober, they have each become men of deep religious conviction, who bear little resemblance to the reckless 21 year olds who had once declared themselves disciples of Satan. 

The story of their killing spree and its aftermath is a tale of heartbreak that never ends.  Pennsylvania’s policy of endless appeals reflects the state’s, and the nation’s, fierce ambivalence about the death penalty.  The result leaves the victims’ families unsettled and the murderers poised endlessly at the gates of extinction.

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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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