May 7, 2002 By Patty Shultz 4 min read

PITTSBURGH – Pauline Mitts finds it difficult to contain her emotions when asked to talk about the death of her daughter. “She was my baby girl,” she told the jury on Monday as she wiped away the tears flowing down her face. “It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

The nine women and three men that make up the jury panel listened intently as the woman detailed a stormy, and sometimes abusive relationship between her daughter, Deana Kay Mitts, and the man accused of killing her, Joseph P. Minerd, in the second week of testimony in the capital case.

The Bullskin Township man is accused of setting a pipe bomb in the 504 McCormick Ave. apartment of Deana Kay Mitts that exploded just minutes after she and her 3-year-old daughter, Kayla Ashley Mitts, entered the residence on Jan. 1, 1999.

Pauline Mitts told prosecutor Shaun E. Sweeney, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District, that she couldn’t find it in her heart to accept the man her daughter had agreed to marry just two weeks after they had started dating.

“They were moving too fast,” she said of her hesitation to condone the relationship. “They hadn’t gone together long enough and there was too much of an age gap between them.”

Over the next several months, Pauline Mitts said she encountered Minerd on a few occasions, but still found it difficult to embrace the relationship.

During two meetings she found herself angry after hearing Minerd chastising her granddaughter for no apparent reason.

“He was constantly on her,” said Pauline Mitts.

On Mother’s Day, she could not accept a plant that he had brought to her home, she told Sweeney.

“I told him to give it to his mother because I could never accept him as a son or would I ever be his mother,” testified Pauline Mitts.

In mid-July after learning of her daughter’s pregnancy, she began to notice bruises and a black eye.

“I’d saw she had some bruises at the back of her neck,” recalled Pauline Mitts. “I pulled away the turtleneck she had on and there were more marks.”

Court records indicate that Minerd wanted Deana Kay Mitts to have an abortion.

A few weeks later, her daughter came to her and said that she had ended the relationship and the wedding that had been planned for September was canceled.

However, Pauline Mitts told Sweeney, the two continued to spot Minerd’s vehicle outside the apartment complex and behind them as they left weekly church services and driving past her home.

“It was happening more and more as time went on,” she told Sweeney.

Her daughter became so frightened that she began spending more time at the South Connellsville home of her parents.

On New Year’s Eve, the Mitts family decided to celebrate the holiday together with the daughter and granddaughter agreeing to spend the night.

“I told her let’s spend the end of this year together. You don’t know what will happen in the new year,” said Pauline Mitts. “We set the clock in case we fell asleep so we could pray the old year out and the new year in.”

The last time she saw her daughter alive was the next afternoon when they exchanged kisses and agreed to meet later for dinner.

During cross-examination by Minerd’s legal counsel, attorney Richard Kammen, Pauline Mitts said she believed her daughter and granddaughter’s deaths were due to a natural gas explosion when investigators first interviewed her following the accident, and found it difficult to understand when they returned with a different theory.

“I couldn’t imagine why he would want to murder my daughter – his ex-girlfriend and his (unborn) daughter,” she said.

Joyce Piper also testified to being stalked by Minerd following the break-up of their five-year relationship in 1997.

Just after the split, Piper spotted Minerd parked outside her home.

Two women who resided in the Rose Garden Apartments at the time of the explosion testified seeing a man in a ball cap push Deana Kay Mitts during an apparent argument outside the complex.

“I asked her if she wanted me to call the police,” testified Carol Washington. “She told me she was alright and went into her apartment.”

Cathy Ruggieri said she, too, witnessed the incident and added she saw Deana Kay Mitts on the ground.

Both women admitted that they had never met Minerd, but had seen him occasionally with their neighbor and spotted his vehicle near the complex following the physical encounter.

Testimony resumes at 9 a.m. today.