Is Patricia Rorrer Innocent?

Patricia Rorrer with her infant daughter

In Convenient Suspect: A Double Murder, a Flawed Investigation, and the Railroading of an Innocent Woman, author Tammy Mal argues, as the title suggests, that a jury wrongfully convicted Patricia Rorrer for the murders of Joann Katrinak and her three-month-old son Alex. Mal based her arguments on transcripts of the trial, police reports, FBI reports, and the investigative work of late journalist Margaret Sneary. Sneary attended Rorrer's trial and believed the jury convicted an innocent person.

"Patty didn't convince me that she was wrongfully convicted; she literally proved it to me," Mal wrote. "When Patricia Rorrer would tell me about troubling aspects of the case, and then back up her claims with actual police, FBI, and forensic lab reports verifying what she said. It was pretty astonishing to realize that the case was littered with some very serious problems."

Background of the Case
Joann Katrinak and her three-month-old son Alex went missing in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, on December 15, 1994. Four months later, their bodies were found in a wooded area in Heidelberg Township, a couple of miles from a stable where Patricia Rorrer kept horses. Rorrer was an ex-girlfriend of Andy Katrinak, Joann's husband. When Patricia won a horse competition, she called everyone she knew, including Andy, to tell them the good news. Joann answered the call, told Patricia not to call again, and hung up.

Police & Prosecution Theory
According to the police and prosecution theory of the case, Patricia was so upset that she jumped into her van days later and drove 500 miles from her home in Linwood, North Carolina to Catasauqua. She remained there for days stalking Joann, then broke into the Katrinak home, took Joann and her infant son hostage when they left the house and forced Joann to drive to the woods. Rorrer then shot Joann in the head with a .22-caliber pistol before bludgeoning her. Afterward, she drove Joann's car to a parking lot one hundred yards from the Katrinak home.

Possible Timing of the Crime
Joann's mother-in-law Veronica Katrinak claimed she talked to Joann at 1:15, and they made plans to go shopping. However, a neighbor told police that he saw Joann leaving home around noon that day. Another neighbor witnessed Joann putting Alex in the car. Eyewitnesses reported that they saw Joann's car in the parking lot of McCarty's Bar around 12:30. They claimed to notice the car again later in the evening, and it hadn't moved from its original location.

Tammy Mal's Arguments for Railroading
Tammy Mal makes several well-researched arguments for Patricia Rorrer's innocence. I will touch on just some of her points here. Read her book for a complete accounting of the facts of the case.

First, no witnesses placed Rorrer in Pennsylvania at the time of the disappearances. Rorrer is almost six-feet-tall. She drove a distinctive van with Riverwood Stables emblazoned on it. There's no evidence she traveled to Pennsylvania, bought gas along the way there or home, rented a place to stay, or ate at any restaurants despite allegedly spending five days in the area. And no one in North Carolina seemed to notice her absence a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Rorrer was also under surveillance because she was a suspect in a horse-stealing operation. On December 12, 1994, concerned citizens began to surveil her. This is the same day police claim Rorrer left for Pennsylvania. The surveillance ended on December 16, 1994, the day after the disappearances of Joann and Alex. The individuals involved in the surveillance operation said Patricia Rorrer wasn't around much. The surveillance notes were handed over to the police and subsequently lost. Rorrer's defense never had access to them.

Several people who knew Rorrer verified that she didn't have any roadworthy vehicles at the time of the murders, and there's no evidence she rented any vehicles to make the trip. Mal argues that an almost 6-foot tall woman who spoke with a Southern accent and drove a large distinctive van with North Carolina plates wouldn't have gone unnoticed in a small town like Catasauqua. According to Mal, there is only one rational explanation; she wasn't there. While there were no sightings of Rorrer, there were many sightings of a woman matching Joann's description.

The problems with the case don't end there for Mal. Neighbors saw Joann leaving home for the last time. Mal doesn't believe she would have gone quietly with Rorrer. In Mal's opinion, she was a "spitfire" who would have put up a fight to protect her son.

According to the police, Rorrer spent seven hours in the Katrinak home waiting for Joann and Alex to go out. When she heard them leaving the house, she cut the phone line, then confronted Joann outside. Mal doesn't think this is very convincing. According to the police, the suspect cut the phone line right before the abduction. They make this assumption because Joann made a phone call a few minutes before leaving home. This theory raises an obvious problem. Why would Rorrer cut the phone line when it wasn't necessary? Even more confusing, the cut was in a difficult-to-access area. "There, tucked up near the floor joists and almost hidden in the insulation, two wires dangled in the empty air." If Rorrer was in a hurry to get outside before Joann had a chance to drive away, cutting the phone line doesn't make any sense.

The seven hours police believe Rorrer spent in the Katrinak home presents another big problem. There was zero physical evidence of her presence. The police didn't find any fingerprints, footprints, hair, fibers from clothes, or DNA. DNA was a new science at the time, so criminals weren't taking any precautions to avoid leaving any. And according to Mal, when the police arrived at the Katrinak home after Joann and Alex were reported missing, they saw no evidence of a break-in. This claim is disputed.

In 1999, Officer Joseph York claimed that he and Officer Joseph Kicska discussed the case. Kiscka was the first Catasauqua Police Officer to arrive at the Katrinak home. During that discussion, York claims that Kiscka admitted to perjuring himself at the trial when he said a cellar door to the Katrinak residence was broken. Officer Kicska vehemently denies this claim. According to the Innocence Project, police officers lying at trial isn't unusual. "...the motive is to convict someone, regardless of whether or not that person actually committed the crime." (1)

"An oft-cited but not especially scientific survey of prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys in Chicago surmised that cops fib on the witness stand about 20 percent of the time." (2)

York says he informed Rorrer's defense team, but they never responded. "I contacted a person from the defense team and left a message briefly outlining the above conversation."

However, even if police officers lying on the stand to ensure convictions isn't unusual, York versus Kiscka is a case of he said, he said, and we have no way of knowing who is telling the truth.

Andy Katrinak found Joann's car in the parking lot of McCarty's bar. According to the police and prosecution theory of the case, Rorrer forced Joann to drive into the woods. But that brings up some major problems with the theory of the case.

• Why would Rorrer risk being seen by eyewitnesses by driving the car into town instead of abandoning it in an isolated area?
• If the car had been in the woods, a forensic analysis should have found evidence of that. Yet nothing on the car indicated it was ever in the woods.
• According to eyewitness reports, the car had been in the parking lot since 12:30 pm (two hours before Patricia allegedly kidnapped Joann and Alex). 
• In The Wrong Man, a show available on Starz, investigators Ira Todd and Joe Kennedy raise yet another possible problem; residents who lived near the murder scene should have heard a gunshot.

When a police officer interviewed Rorrer on December 22, a week after the disappearances, she wore a short-sleeve shirt. The police officer saw no signs of injury. Joann and her killer engaged in a violent struggle, yet Rorrer didn't have any scratches or bruises. He also described her as cooperative and said she told him everywhere she had been the day of the disappearances. He didn't check on her alibis because she wasn't a suspect at the time.

The killer's fingernail, pulled off during the struggle, was found on Joann's chest. That fingernail was too large to be Rorrer's. Inexplicably, the prosecution didn't test it for DNA even though there was skin attached. Rorrer's lawyers convinced a judge to approve DNA testing of the sample. The judge examined the sample and determined it was intact and testable. Yet when it reached the lab for testing, the skin had been removed, making DNA testing impossible.

Evidence of Guilt
If you aren't familiar with this case, you may be wondering what exactly ties Rorrer to the crime. Because again, there was no evidence that she traveled to Pennsylvania, no proof that she was ever absent from North Carolina, and no physical evidence found in the Katrinak home. There were also no eyewitness sightings. The main evidence tying Rorrer to the crime were hairs found at the crime scene and in the Katrinak car. "Ten hairs were recovered from the back of the driver's seat headrest." (3) There weren't any roots on the hair, so the police relied on hair analysis involving mitochondrial DNA. Thousands of people were possible matches. One of those potential matches was Patricia Rorrer. The science used to connect her to the crime is now considered unreliable junk science.

Years later, a cigarette butt found at the crime scene was DNA tested. "DNA on the cigarette butt found near the two bodies belonged to Appellant [Patricia Rorrer]." (3)

Answers to Common Arguments for Guilt

• Rorrer didn't make any long-distance calls for the five days when police claimed she was in Pennsylvania.
• Tammy Mal says it wasn't unusual for Rorrer to go days at a time without making long-distance calls. There were several multi-day breaks without long-distance calls in her phone records. After winning a horse competition in Oklahoma, she called people she knew to let them know. This win led to her fateful call with Joann. Mal points out that Rorrer would have little reason to make long-distance calls during those five days because she had just called everybody she knew.
• Rorrer claimed she was at a club on the night of the disappearance. The club had a sign-in policy, but she had not signed in.
• Rorrer took dance classes at the club. The sign-in sheets weren't out when the dance students arrived. The club didn't strictly enforce the policy, and many patrons never signed in.
• Rorrer was a potential match for hair found in the victim's car.
• Tammy Mal points out that thousands of people were potential matches.
• The bodies were found near a horse stable where Rorrer kept horses.
• This could also be an argument for innocence. Why choose a location that could potentially lead to her?
• The arresting officers claimed that Rorrer told her infant daughter, "If I knew I was going to get caught, I never would have brought you into this world."
• It's doubtful a suspect would make an admission like this in front of the police.

An Accomplice Could Undermine Tammy Mal's Arguments for Innocence
While Tammy Mal makes a compelling case for the innocence of Rorrer, she rejects the possibility that Rorrer may have had an accomplice. Many arguments for why Rorrer must be innocent are undermined when a potential accomplice is brought into the mix.

• How she got to Pennsylvania and moved around Catasauqua without being seen
• How she got to Pennsylvania despite not having roadworthy vehicles
• If the accomplice was from the area, she would have had a place to stay
• The fingernail that clearly wasn't hers
• The lack of any signs of injury
• An accomplice who knew Joann could have lured her to the spot where she was abducted, making a 7-hour stay in the Katrinak home unnecessary

Of course, this creates problems as well. Rorrer having an accomplice raises the question of why she didn't turn on them in return for a more lenient sentence. But if Rorrer was the mastermind behind the plan to kill Joann, she may not have expected any leniency. Ratting out her accomplice could have condemned her as well.

Mal makes a compelling case that the police/prosecution theory is likely untrue. That theory doesn't fit the evidence, and it requires Rorrer to make choices that make absolutely no sense. However, it is just a theory. That theory being false does not mean Rorrer didn't commit this crime.

Bad Luck
If Rorrer is indeed innocent, she is very unlucky.

• What are the odds that police found hairs potentially belonging to one of Andy's ex-girlfriends in Joann's car and at the crime scene just days after a heated telephone call?
• What are the odds that Rorrer owned a gun that frequently jammed after firing one shot and that Joann had been shot once with a .22-caliber gun before being bludgeoned?
• What are the odds that Rorrer didn't make even one long-distance phone call from home during this time period, even if there were occasional periods in the past where she also didn't make calls?
• What are the odds that people surveilling her didn't see her very much if she had been home the whole time? After all, Rorrer claimed she bought horse feed and attended a dance class the day Joann disappeared. Yet the individuals surveilling her said she wasn't around much. It's unlikely that Rorrer was in Pennsylvania for five days because surely they would have noticed if she wasn't around at all. But if she had been away for a couple of days, that could have gone unnoticed.

Unfortunately, the detective who interviewed Patricia Rorrer a week after Joann disappeared didn't check her alibis. If he had, that could have condemned her then and there if she is guilty and cleared her if she's innocent. Since the bodies were found months later, no one remembered whether or not Rorrer was where she claimed to be.

There are also troubling questions about how the police handled the case, according to Tammy Mal. They had a fingernail sample with skin attached that was found on Joann's body, yet they didn't test it for DNA. That should have been one of the first pieces of evidence tested. The police focused a lot of attention on hairs found in Joann's car that had no roots to test for DNA, yet they ignored a piece of skin. And when they finally sent the sample to a lab for testing, the skin had been removed.

The Rorrer case is difficult because of the lack of forensic evidence tying her to the crime and evidence in the form of a fingernail indicating that someone else may have been involved. The case against her is mostly circumstantial, but it's also impossible to completely rule out her involvement. It's no wonder that many true crime fans argue vehemently about her guilt or innocence.

In 2020, Mike McIntyre, who prosecuted Patricia Rorrer, released a book of his own called Hair Trigger: The True Story of the Investigation, Trial and Aftermath of the Katrinak Family Murders to debunk "the conspiracy theories that Rorrer's defenders have presented."

What Do You Think?
Leave a comment to let me know what you think? Is Patricia Rorrer innocent? Is she guilty? If you think she is guilty, did she work alone, or could she have had an accomplice?

References:
(1) https://innocenceproject.org/prevalence-police-lying/
(2) https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-police-false-testimony-edit-20150702-story.html
(3) https://law.justia.com/cases/pennsylvania/superior-court/2017/1919-eda-2016.html

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