Judge to decide if woman faces homicide trial
A Fayette County judge will determine if prosecutors have enough evidence to bring a Georges Township woman to trial for allegedly drowning her 2-year-old son 30 years ago. Last November, Glenda Rae Masciarelli, 52, was charged with killing Alfred Masciarelli Jr. on Sept. 26, 1976. State police brought charges against her after a trooper reviewed the case and re-interviewed her.
In 1976, Masciarelli told police that she and her son were walking down the railroad tracks near her home when a man came out of the woods, grabbed the toddler from her arms and ran away with him.
A short time later, neighbors found the young boy lying facedown in a creek near Route 857. The child had drowned in 11/2 feet of creek water. An autopsy performed on the child indicated he died of asphyxiation from drowning, but did not indicate a manner of death, for example, homicide or accident.
During an October interview with a state police polygraph examiner, Masciarelli reportedly acknowledged she made up the story about a man taking her child.
Cpl. Anthony Guy testified at a preliminary hearing that he asked Masciarelli if the man existed, and she replied, “You might as well take me to jail now.”
Guy testified Masciarelli told him no one took her child, and wrote a partial statement that included an apology.
But those statements alone are not enough to link Masciarelli to her son’s death, her attorney, Nicholas Timperio, argued in the motion. Timperio previously said that prosecutors need more than statements from Masciarelli to link her to her son’s death – and noted that she never confessed to killing the child. “The commonwealth failed to establish any link between the defendant, Glenda Rae Masciarelli, and any criminal activity,” Timperio wrote in the motion.
District Attorney Nancy D. Vernon has maintained that there is sufficient evidence to prove that Masciarelli killed her son, noting that the creek was shallow enough for the child to get out of, and that Masciarelli lied to investigators about a man kidnapping him.