U.S. Court of Appeals rejects John Lesko’s appeal in 1980 western Pa. “Kill for Thrill” spree

PENNSYLVANIA — One of the final appeals for Pennsylvania’s longest-serving death row inmate has been rejected.

According to our partners at the Trib, the United States Court of Appeals rejected 64-year-old John Lesko’s request for a new trial and sentencing hearing on Tuesday.

Lesko was sentenced to death — first in 1981 and again in 1995 after the original sentence was thrown out — for the Jan. 3, 1980, murder of Leonard C. Miller, a 21-year-old Apollo police officer. Lesko and Michael Travaglia were arrested later that day in the so-called Kill for Thrill spree in which they took four lives across the region over eight days.

The first body was found Dec. 29, 1979.

A short news item on the front page of the next day’s Tribune-Review said a man was found dead in a wooded area near the Loyalhanna Creek reservoir. Investigators believed the man was shot twice in the back of the head and once in the chest two days earlier.

He was later identified as Peter A. Levato, 49, a night watchman from Pittsburgh’s North Side.

The next body was found Jan. 2, 1980, in a car at a parking garage in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Marlene Newcomer, 26, a single mother from Connellsville, Fayette County, was fatally shot a day earlier after picking up hitchhikers after leaving a New Year’s Eve party in Westmoreland County.

The body of church organist William Nicholls, 32, of Mt. Lebanon, previously of Irwin, was pulled from an Indiana County lake Jan. 4, the day after Miller was fatally shot during a traffic stop when he pursued a vehicle from Apollo into Oklahoma, Westmoreland County.

Miller’s death still stirs up emotions in those who knew him.

Bill Kerr was finishing up a term as Apollo mayor and transitioning to his new elected post as Armstrong County commissioner when the officer was killed. He can recount every detail of that night, down to what Miller said over the radio as his killers fled in Nicholls’ Lancia sports car: “They shot me twice.”

Police on Jan. 3 charged 21-year-olds Lesko, of Homestead, and Travaglia, of Washington Township, in the four homicides. Fifteen-year-old runaway Ricky Rutherford was arrested in connection with the deaths of Nicholls and Miller, but prosecutors dropped the charges against him after he testified against Lesko and Travaglia.

Travaglia’s execution was scheduled, then stayed, four times by three different governors. He died in September 2017, at age 59, of natural causes in a Greene County state prison.

The Trib said Lesko was seeking to overturn his conviction and sentence for several reasons, including ineffective assistance of counsel because he was not permitted to testify at trial and evidence not being available to the defense.

The appellate court rejected both arguments, according to the Trib.

The Trib also reports that Lesko remains in SCI Phoenix near Philadelphia.

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