Missing woman's estranged boyfriend facing new unrelated charges

GREENSBURG, Pa. — Thomas Stanko now faces nearly a half dozen new charges all stemming from a 24-page letter he wrote while behind bars.

Stanko, the estranged boyfriend of missing Latrobe woman Cassandra Gross, is considered a person of interest in her disappearance, but has never been criminally linked to the investigation.

These new charges are not related to her disappearance.

According to a criminal complaint from State Police, during their missing person and homicide investigations, detectives searched Stanko’s home and found a 1988 Yamaha ATV. That ATV, according to the complaint, had been stolen from a man in Potter County, Pennsylvania back in 1997.

While in jail, the complaint said Stanko wrote a letter to a woman pleading with her to forge a fake receipt to document the purchase of that ATV and then put “it in the oven to make it look 14 years old”.

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Also in that letter, according to the complaint, Stanko told the same woman to steal electricity from the Westmoreland County Housing Authority (WCHA). The complaint said a WCHA garage sits adjacent to Stanko’s property.

In the letter, Stanko wanted the cord ran so it could charge the battery in his vehicle. The complaint said State Police interviewed WCHA employees who had no idea how Stanko could have gotten a key to their facility.

Thomas Stanko has been the subject of multiple police investigations and is in jail on unrelated federal firearms charges.

Cox Media Group