Brothers Zachary and Gregory Witman are seen in this 1990s family photo. Zachary, serving a life imprisonment after a conviction in the murder of his younger brother in their New Freedom home, was granted a new trial this week. Background posts: 100th anniversary of drunken Pleasureville brawl, Relative: Evil in Hex murder came from outside and Ray Krone hopes book will open eyes about capital punishment and A list of traumatic, painful incidents that rocked York County.
The case of Zachary P. Witman, granted a new trial this week, is one of the most-watched criminal actions in more than four-score years in York County Court.
Zachary Witman was convicted in 2003 and later sentenced to life imprisonment for first degree murder in the death of his brother five years earlier.
Gregory Witman was 13 when he died. Zachary Witman was 15... .
Zachary Witman in 2007.
Gregory had been stabbed 65 times with a pen knife and almost decapitated.
York County Judge John Uhler based his decision on Witman's attorney's agreement to admit as evidence at trial a bloody pair of socks the teen-age defendant had been wearing when his brother was killed.
Witman's trial came soon after another set of landmark criminal proceedings - grand jury findings and subsequent trials of defendants in the late-1960s deaths of a black woman and white police officer.
York Mayor Charlie Robertson was acquitted and nine white former gang members implicated in the York riots-era shooting death of Lillie Belle Allen were convicted or pleaded guilty.
Later, three men were convicted in the shooting death of Police Officer Henry C. Schaad, the second riot victim.
According to "Never to be Forgotten" and stories in the York Daily Record/Sunday News, here is a sampling of other major criminal cases that ended in sentences to life imprisonment or death row late in the 20th century and early in the 21st:
- The nine-day trial of Mark Newton Spotz, ending in a first degree murder conviction and death penalty sentence in 1996, perhaps drew more media and public attention than any other county court proceeding since the Hex Murder trial of 1929. In the Hex case, a trio of defendants were found guilty in the slaying of suspected witch Nelson Rehmayer in an attempt to break a spell.
Spotz of Clearfield County was sentenced to die for killing Penny Gunnet, a York New Salem resident. Spotz also killed two other women. His crime spree started in Clearfield County where he shot his brother in an argument over a gerbil.
-- Paul Gamboa-Taylor pleaded guilty to killing five people with a ball-peen hammer and knife in his West Princess Street, York, home.
-- James Garrett was convicted for the pick ax-slaying of his 79-year-old mother in her home in an attempt to get the remainder of her $822,000 estate.
-- Robert G. Lehr received a life sentence for the 1986 stabbing of a Spring Grove pastor.
-- Cornell Mitchell received the death penalty for the butcher knife-slaying of a youth counselor as he slept inside a children's home in North York.
-- Daniel Jacobs was convicted of killing his 18-year-old girlfriend and infant daughter. The victims were found in a bathtub filled with water and chlorinated bleach in a case the coroner called 'the most brutal I've seen."
-- William Babner raped a woman, then shot her and her boyfriend in September 2000. He then dumped them into the Susquehanna River, but they survived. Babner is sentenced to117 to 235 years in prison.
-- Harve Taylor, slayer of a young child with a computer game cord, becomes the ninth York countian on death row.
-- Steven Valinski served the maximum of a 10- to 20-year state prison sentence for the Aug. 31, 1988, bondage-suffocation murder of 39-year-old Ellen L. Swift. The 21-year-old Valinski had cut off body parts and had sliced open her abdomen. He was released from prison on Sept. 3, 2008. Former York County District Attorney Stan Rebert had sought the death penalty for the Red Lion man. "Step aside Jack the Ripper and Freddie Krueger, there's a new kid on the block," Rebert said in his closing statement of the 1989 trial. Valinski was convicted of third degree murder.
Zachary Witman is led into the York County Courthouse for a bail bond hearing. In 2003, he was convicted of first degree murder in the 1998 slaying of his brother. He was granted a new trial this week. For a listing of other major court cases involving York County, click here.
- Check out York Town Square's archives, with all posts from the start.
- Check out all posts relating to the notorious Hex Murder trial of 1929 from the start.
Retired York City Police Detective Dennis Williams remembers stepping into the crime scene.
"It was just . . . wow," Williams recalled. "I was just taken aback. All you could do is stand there and shake your head."
The crime scene was a bedroom in the 700 block of East Princess Street in September 1988. In front of Williams was the decomposing, mutilated body of a woman tied to a bed.
Now, the man who committed that crime is back in York County.
Zachary is guilty as charged.
Never understood why Gregory's
friend who walked home from school with him that day was never brought in court. He said (according to newspaper a/c) that Gregory said he was afraid of his brother and asked him to telephone him when he got home.