Passing the Killer

Bundled into a too-small thrift store coat that pulled against my chest and bunched weirdly at my waist, I trudged down the alley, hunching against the wind and hurrying to get to the crowded little house before dusk moved to dark.

We'd lived in the little two bedroom rented home for two months- five kids plus our parents- making do while our home was being rehabilitated and recovered from the fire that had ripped through its lathe and plaster walls. Slogging through the alley each evening was just another new thing that I hoped would be over soon, right up there with replacing my ruined clothes and having my own room again. I craved the privacy that always seems so important when you are 18 years old.

Privacy was one thing that I usually had on my walk home from the bus stop; very few people actually used their garages for cars in this neighborhood, and most of the residents were probably sitting down to dinner by the time I got home from work smelling either like bleach and soap suds, or grease and yuck from cleaning the grill at work.

It looked, though, that I wasn't alone tonight. I could see someone turning into the alley and heading my way. It was a guy, looked just a little taller than me, and he wasn't dressed for the cold. Wearing a jean jacket against the winter cold he was probably just ducking into his garage.

Except he didn't. Staying close to the side of the alley he passed the shut doors of two, three, four, five garages and then veered closer to the center of the road as we neared each other.

It was then that I recognized him. John Lesko. My brother's best friend. That was odd; I thought he was down South somewhere learning how to be a Marine. As he got closer I could see that, odd or not; it was indeed John walking towards me in that shadowy alley.

I hadn't seen John for several months and that didn't bother me at all. John and his brother Michael were constantly present in our lives and had been since my brother Pete fell in with them four or five years earlier. Thanks to their fine example and teaching, Pete's always erratic approach to life had moved from troublesome to terrible. Not just pilfered cigarettes from family members, Pete lifted our Mom's Valium (every housewife's friend in the 70's), our Dad's 'muscle relaxers', and was suspected along with John and Mike in several break-ins in the neighborhood. That had quieted down, though, since moving into the small house. One thing that a lack of privacy brings: it's hard to keep secrets when family is around every step of the day.

I'd had some difficult experiences with John and his brother, too. The worst of it had been too shameful, terrifying, and confusing to talk about, and talking about such things wasn't something my family did. A tremor ran across my neck at the thought and my armpits dampened under the grip of that too-small coat. Even though that had been several years ago I didn't want to strike up a conversation with John. I wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. I wanted to pretend he wasn't there.

But John was here, walking deliberately down the alley towards me, getting closer, with the night starting to deepen, merging with the shadows that hugged the sides of the street and buildings. As we walked he suddenly looked my way, lifting his gaze to my face, directly into my eyes, and held my gaze.

Nothing changed and at the same time everything stood still. His face was immobile, his stride stayed the same, his hands were jammed into those too small pockets of the thin Levi knockoff jacket, his long blond bangs with the 70's side swoop flopped- he didn't blink. Didn't speak. Those eyes stopped my breath, dried my mouth, hammered my heart.

They were worse than angry: they were at once empty and full of ice. He was there and not there. He saw someone but didn't see me. It was impossible that he didn't know me, he must have the same as I knew him, but it didn't register in his gaze. He looked at me, into me, through me; his frozen emptiness had nothing to do with the wind and chill.

Then he was gone. He passed me and vanished as the dark came full on, porch lights switched to glowing life, and the smell of pierogies, burgers, and spaghetti sauce filtered out into the night as stove fans whirred the kitchen heat out into the night. The strange meeting and unsettling feelings weren't mentioned as the evening progressed into the daily family dramady that was our life.

What would I have said? "I saw John today, John Lesko. Isn't that weird? I thought he was in the Marines?" Maybe: "I had the most awful feeling when John Lesko passed me in the alley..." No, there was no chit chat, no discussion of things that were odd around our dinner table. And eventually that terror that had gripped me because of his look slipped and quieted, all but forgotten.

All but forgotten- but never erased from my memory. I took a different way back to that little house for the two additional months that we stayed there. I looked closely at the faces of the people on the streets and relaxed when I saw they weren't John. I got that room of my own again, replaced the burned up clothes, got engaged, and was married in December 1979.

I didn't see John again until his name and face were splashed across the newspapers thirteen months later, and the last week of 1979 in Pittsburgh became the setting for the Kill for Thrill murders.

I found out from those newspapers that around the time that John had gone AWOL from the Marines and showed up in that alley, he had also met Michael Travaglia and bonded over drugs, booze, anger, and the defiant belief that the world owed them better than what they'd gotten.

It took a year, a year that found John's brother Mike in juvie, my brother running way and hospitalized for a mental breakdown, a year for John Lesko and Michael Travaglia to build up the consuming rage and disrespect for life that culminated in the outright murders of four people from December 27 1979 to January 3 1980.

Travaglia died in prison in 2017, and John Lesko, now 63, is still on Death Row in Pennsylvania; he is its longest resident. Lesko received the death penalty five times due to various appeals that he has lost. Pennsylvania's Governors have stated they will not sign execution warrants so it is probable that John Lesko will also die in custody.

I'll never know for sure what changed and when to bring on the icy frozen stare that I saw on John's face that evening. I do know that, 40 + years since that night I was wandering through a Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Pennsylvania, my grandson happily looking for books with trains on the cover. I wandered into the local interest section and the title of a book jumped out at me: Kill For the Thrill by Michael W. Sheetz.

Of course I knew what it was; that title, this city: it could only mean one thing. That cold sweat, the crawl down the back of my neck, the pounding heart; I stood there and held the book unable to determine what to do. My husband took the book out of my hands and put it back on the shelf, but not before I read the description of police arresting John for their fourth murder, a 21 year old policeman that had been on the job for just 3 days. The author, a former policeman from the same precinct, described John Lesko as I last saw him in person , and as I will always remember him:

************************

This Vocal story describes what happened the day our home burnt. It occurred two months before that passing encounter in the alley:

This story is about my brother:

Please click on the wee heart if my writing clicked with you, and drop in a comment to share your thoughts!

You can also find me on Medium.