Judge to decide on bail for woman
Fayette County Judge John F. Wagner Jr. will decide at a later date if a Masontown woman accused of killing her 2-year-old son in 1976 should be granted bail. Assistant District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr. opposed allowing Glenda Masciarelli bail, noting that prosecutors could seek a first-degree murder conviction against her.
Under the state constitution, bail is not allowed when life imprisonment is a possibility.
Defense attorney Nicholas Timperio argued that Masciarelli should be allowed bail, noting that she has ties to the community and has lived in the county nearly her whole life.
Masciarelli, 53, was charged with criminal homicide for allegedly drowning Alfred Masciarelli Jr. in a Georges Township creek near Route 857 on Sept. 26, 1976.
State police arrested Masciarelli last year after authorities re-interviewed her in connection with the toddler’s death. During an interview with a polygraph examiner, police alleged Masciarelli admitted making up a story about a man grabbing her son the day the child died.
She allegedly acknowledged to police that she might have hurt her son, but said she could not remember how.
Masciarelli testified briefly during the bail hearing Friday.
She told Timperio that she never had been arrested before, but under cross-examination by Heneks, she apologized for forgetting that she had been.
Heneks asked her if she had been arrested in 1982 for retail theft, and Masciarelli acknowledged that she had been.
“My mom and dad took care of that for me,” she said. “I think why I did this is because I was depressed about my baby, or upset, however you want to say that.”
When Heneks asked if she received “ARD” for the offense, Masciarelli told him she did not know what that meant. ARD stands for Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition and is a pretrial diversionary program.
If granted bail, Masciarelli testified she would move back in with her boyfriend, with whom she lived for about three years before her October 2006 arrest.
Before she moved in with him, Masciarelli said she considered her propensity for sleepwalking.
“I was a little bit afraid to (move in) at first because of getting up and walking in my sleep and falling down the steps,” she testified.
Masciarelli also told Timperio that she had been doctoring with a mental health professional for at least 30 years about her sleepwalking problems, noting that she does not remember anything when she sleepwalks.
Based in part on Masciarelli’s alleged mental problems, Timperio has filed a challenge to the statements she gave to police, claiming she did not voluntarily waive her rights before talking to police because she was under duress when she was interviewed.
He also challenged forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht’s determination that Alfred Masciarelli Jr. died from drowning and his manner of death was homicide. Wecht testified previously that he made that determination after examining records and photos from the scene 30 years earlier.
Another person performed the autopsy.
Wecht made the homicide determination because the creek in which the child was found was 1 1/2 feet deep.
Wecht reasoned that the child, at 2 years old, could have stood up in the creek and got out of the water without difficulty.
Timperio held that the initial autopsy does not have enough information in it for Wecht to base a medical opinion on, and asked that it be suppressed.
A hearing on the suppression motion has yet to be set.