Ruling stuns Munchinski stepchildren

Renee Hoffman remembers lying in bed at night, a butcher knife beneath her pillow for protection, trembling in fear of her stepfather.

Her brother, Peter Hoffman, remembers the night a bullet just missed his head when motorcycle gang members shot up his family's trailer in New Derry in retaliation for a drug deal gone sour.

Growing up with David Munchinski as their stepfather is something the Hoffmans have spent years trying to erase from their memories.

When they heard he may be released from prison after serving more than 17 years for two murders he may not have committed, the fear and anxiety they felt as children returned.

Renee Hoffman's hands shake when she talks about her stepfather. She is so afraid of him that she refuses to divulge where she lives.

"This man tormented me the entire time we were growing up," she said. "Whenever he wanted to, he would take out his anger on us. In all honesty, it's a miracle my brother and I and my mom are still here."

Renee Hoffman said Munchinski first had a common-law relationship with and later married her mother, Veronica Lazur. They also had a son and daughter together, Raina Munchinski and David Alexander Munchinski.

"Since all this started about his release, I'm a bundle of nerves," she added. "I'm 36 and I still have nightmares."

Munchinski was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the Dec. 2, 1977, murders of James "Petey" Alford, 22, of Hempfield Township, and Raymond Gierke, 28, of Bear Rocks, who died at Gierke's home in the Fayette County resort community. The killings remained unsolved for five years until police arrested Munchinski and a co-defendant, Leon Scaglione, who died in prison in 1996.

Earlier this month, a judge vacated Munchinski's conviction and sentences and accused former Fayette County prosecutors, judges Gerald Solomon and Ralph Warman, and attorney John A. Kopas III, of prosecutorial misconduct.

The ruling has stunned the Hoffmans.

Peter Hoffman, who is in the military but refused to say where he is stationed, said his stepfather is "where he needs to be." He added that he's upset that Munchinski could be freed.

Troubled life

Records show Munchinski has suffered from mental illness.

Buried in the criminal files of one of his early arrests is a psychiatric assessment compiled by the Department of Corrections in the 1970s. In the assessment, the then-26-year-old is described as an alcoholic, a heroin addict and a paranoid schizophrenic who was in desperate need of psychiatric treatment but resisted any attempts to help him.

According to prison records, Munchinski, the son of a Latrobe police officer, began using marijuana and LSD in junior high school.

Munchinski's parents were divorced when he was young and he was raised by a grandmother. After high school, in August 1970, he enlisted in the Marines. He was discharged eight months later "under other than honorable conditions," according to prison records.

His employment history is short. He worked for one month at a Latrobe salvage yard and briefly held a job at a paper mill in New York.

Munchinski started using heroin and cocaine at 20, according to records. He attempted suicide by cutting his wrists and was twice confined to psychiatric hospitals, records show.

At 23, he was arrested for the first time as an adult for allegedly trying to break into the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory in Latrobe. Those charges were dropped, according to court records.

In 1973, he was charged with breaking into a school and stealing hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, but those charges also were dropped, according to court records.

At 26, he went to prison for the first time, on a two- to-10-year sentence for reckless endangerment and firearms violations.

Prison psychiatrists found Munchinski resistant to treatment, according to reports that indicated "Munchinski was not receptive to psychiatric intervention, no treatment plan was recommended," and "Munchinski is without insight and his judgment is negligible."

One counselor described him as a "simplistic, impulsive, demanding individual whose mood is characterized by underlying feelings of anger and frustration."

At one point, he told a counselor he wanted to stop using drugs and alcohol, a report revealed.

"This is highly doubtful," the counselor noted. "Munchinski's prognosis for change is poor due to his lack of insight and motivation."

Fearful climate

Munchinski's name still strikes fear in the hearts of some who knew him.

"I really don't want to talk about him," said a former teammate on the 1969 Greater Latrobe championship football team. "I don't want my name in the same story with his."

Edgar Wiltrout, of Ligonier, whom police at one time considered a suspect in the murders, refused to talk about Munchinski and hung up the telephone when a reporter contacted him.

But James Festa, of Derry, who now lives in New Mexico, wasn't so reticent.

"Munchinski was a bully in high school," Festa said. "He had a reputation in high school as a bully."

Festa said he once drove to New York to visit Munchinski after Festa returned from Vietnam. He said he left when Munchinski started saying things that frightened him.

"I left. I was out of there... This guy, he meant it. I looked into his eyes and face. I knew he meant it," Festa said.

Mike Urdzik, of Derry, a former heroin addict whom police considered a suspect at one time in the murders, said he bought heroin from Munchinski. He said Munchinski "treated those stepchildren worse than dogs."

"I've seen him beat people and stab people," said Urdzik, who denied having anything to do with the murders and said he doesn't know how his name surfaced as a suspect.

Munchinski, in a prison report, admitted that he'd slashed a man with a knife during an argument.

Nancy Timko, of Garner, N.C., a former Latrobe resident, said Munchinski asked her to raise his two biological children while he was in prison.

"I'm glad he's getting out. I don't know anything bad about him," Timko said. "I couldn't believe he got convicted."

Timko said she would gladly have raised the children, but could not because she was getting divorced at the time.

"It made me feel bad because I couldn't take his kids," she said.

Attempts to interview Munchinski's biological children, Raina Munchinski and David Munchinski, were unsuccessful. Neither responded to messages seeking comment.

In recent years, Raina Munchinski, who has been living in Florida, has been helping her father's legal efforts to win release from prison.

Bad memories

In prison, Munchinski admitted to a psychiatrist that he had made his living as a drug dealer selling marijuana, methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine.

Renee Hoffman said she knew her stepfather was a drug dealer because he sent her and her mother to search a secluded property near Idlewild Park on Route 30 for guns and drugs he'd buried.

One night, members of the Pagan motorcycle gang showed up at his trailer in New Derry and began firing, his stepchildren recalled. Munchinski's dog was hit in the eye by a bullet while his family scrambled for cover.

Peter Hoffman said one bullet missed his head "by a couple of feet." Several days later, the trailer burned to the ground.

After the shooting, Munchinski, armed and high on drugs and alcohol, went searching for the Pagans and was arrested on weapons charges, records show. He was later found guilty on charges related to the knifepoint abductions of two women.

Today, the Hoffmans remember their fear.

"I was the invisible one," Peter said. "I got straight A's and did good in school so I flew under his radar. I realized at a very young age he wasn't any good and I wouldn't be like that.

"We lived in Latrobe and moved around a lot. He never really had a job. We got kicked out from one place after another. We'd come home from school and were told, 'We're moving.' It sucked."

His sister remembers Munchinski's infatuation with the occult.

"He used to talk to Satan," she said. "He had a room in the house when we lived in Marguerite. He made a shelf which was an altar for Satan. You could hear him talking to Satan. It would make the hair on the back of your head stand up."

Prison records show Munchinski was "periodically submerged in bouts of verbal hostility which were mainly directed at natural and supernatural persecutors."

"As far as I'm concerned," Renee continued, "I don't know if he killed these people or not, but he should stay in jail for what he did to us. I will never forget, but I try to keep it behind me. If I bring it up and talk about it, it's as if he's still tormenting me. You took whatever came and sucked it up and kept your mouth shut." She recalled that when she was 7 years old, she took an overdose of sleeping pills. She was rushed to the hospital and had her stomach pumped.

"I just did not want to deal with anything," she said. "I just wanted to go to sleep. I didn't want to live like that anymore."

She said she was about 14 when the family lived in Dawson in Fayette County. It was there that Munchinski received a telephone call one night from state troopers who had surrounded their house to arrest him for the Bear Rocks murders.

The troopers told Munchinski to come outside through the back door.

"He knew they were coming," she said. "When he got off the telephone, we went out the back door and he held me in front of him. I went out and had six guns pointed at me. He had his hands on my shoulder when we walked out the back door because he thought they were going to shoot him.

"I was so happy. They got him and they were taking him away from me."