Kill for Thrill Page 3

  Like most of his colleagues, Leonard started out as a part-time officer in several towns. Working part-time for Apollo and neighboring Vandergrift and Oklahoma Boroughs, he often worked more-than-forty-hour weeks. It was a hard life, but it was his dream. Leonard had resigned himself to do what he needed to do until something full-time came along—in early 1980, he got his break.

  On January 1, 1980, Mayor William Kerr swore in Leonard Miller as a full-time patrol officer for the Borough of Apollo and assigned him badge #78. No longer would Leonard have to divide his time between various employers, working first one set of city streets and then another. For Leonard, it was a dream come true—the chance to be a cop. When Mayor Kerr finally swore him in as Apollo Borough’s first African American police officer, Leonard’s lifelong dream of becoming a police officer finally materialized. He had realized what many before him had and what many behind him would—public service is its own reward. He would later learn that it is also a great sacrifice.

  From the moment that he donned his uniform, among colleagues and citizens alike, he was highly regarded. As both an officer and a man, Leonard commanded tremendous respect. Everyone in town frequently spoke in glowing terms of his kind-hearted nature and positive spirit, and more than one errant youth had Leonard to thank for offering more than mere law enforcement intervention. He was particularly good with young people, and on many occasions he talked them into compliance without ever having to pull out his citation book. He cared about the town, and he cared about the people he served. Leonard Miller was an individual who simply loved life and loved people.

  Whether you speak with William Kerr or former officer Jim Clawson, both will agree that Leonard’s easygoing nature and carefree outlook made him a giant of a man in both body and spirit.

  A big man, Leonard’s imposing presence belied a true gentle spirit within, and while ever ready to back up his fellow officer, he was equally quick with a smile or disarming remark. The consummate low-key individual, it took tremendous effort to get Leonard Miller to the point of anger—a quality that endeared him to both colleagues and those he served. For his gentleness of spirit and strength of character, we must thank his parents.

  Evelyn and Frank Miller were most proud of these qualities in their son. Their pride extended beyond his dedication to the community to the knowledge that Leonard Miller was a good man, a caring man and one who, for all the evil in the world, had persevered and risen above the fray to find goodness, kindness and redeeming qualities in almost everyone he encountered.

  Leonard was quick with a kind word and long on patience. These are the qualities that all parents hope their children attain. The fact that he had become both what he had always aspired to be and good at heart speaks more to the person Leonard Miller was than any other measure. On January 3, 1980, as he sped across the Apollo Bridge in pursuit of three men of incarnate evil, he was a contented man living his dream.

  On January 3, Leonard donned badge #78 for the last time. It was a number that would have significance beyond anything that Leonard could have imagined. It became a number that would one day both honor him and warn others of the great sacrifice that he had made in the service of others. Leonard wore the badge proudly, but he wore it, sadly, for only three short days.

  The hollow, almost synchronistic clip-clop, clip-clop of four feet walking east on Liberty Avenue echoed down the nearly deserted streets as hookers and hustlers scurried along Eighth Street like sewer rats seeking shelter from the blistering winter wind that drove in from the Allegheny River. The two sinewy men with hands stuffed in their pockets and their collars turned up hurriedly ducked under the Harris Theatre marquee. The twinkling lights of the historic Harris Theatre had often signaled refuge and warmth to the dozens of the city’s homeless and strays who ducked into midnight showings of Debbie Does Dallas or Deep Throat to escape the pummeling cold of the city—but not tonight. Tonight, these two downcast strays skipped the show, turned sharply back out to Liberty and, instead, trudged off toward the wretched Edison Hotel.

  JOHN LESKO AND HIS WRETCHED EXISTENCE

  Thursday, December 27, 1979

  The jagged Allegheny winds smacked John Lesko in his drawn, weathered face and forced him to scrunch his head down into his secondhand leather coat. His taller and thinner companion gently wavered to and fro as he adjusted the lamb’s wool collar on his jacket. The stiff north wind buffeted both men around like two tiny skiffs on the river. In retaliation, they dropped their dark, greasy-haired heads even deeper into their coats, shoved their hands deeper into their tattered pockets and pushed forward into the night. Each step moved them closer to the warmth of the old, run-down hotel.

  In 1979, Liberty Avenue was the heart of Pittsburgh’s red-light district. It was home to prostitutes, drug dealers, pimps, hustlers, homosexuals and various other itinerant perverts of all manner and breed. Historic establishments such as the once stately Casino Theatre, which at one time hosted some of vaudeville’s brightest stars, had declined into festering cesspools on the south side of the city’s north shore.

  Liberty Avenue was once a main artery out of the city and ran from picturesque Point State Park all the way out to the well-manicured neighborhood of Shadyside. In the process, it ran straight through the heart of the city, paralleling the Allegheny River and winding through such historic locations as Bloomfield and the Strip District.

  The historic Strip District was once a thriving, one-half-square-mile marketplace and warehouse district, filled to the brim with colorful ethnic grocers and peddlers who used to cram the teaming marketplace with their fresh fruits, produce, fish and poultry. It was a bustling thoroughfare and had played host to the commerce and shipping that came straight from the Allegheny River as it made its journey out into the cornucopia neighborhoods that sprawled around the outskirts of the city. Sadly, by the mid-1970s the ravages of urban decline, migration to the suburbs and economic blight had turned many of the historic buildings and the district’s once stately architecture into shabby, run-down flophouses, drug dens and fleabag hotels. One such hotel was the Edison.

  Located at 135 Ninth Street, on the corner of Ninth and French, the tattered, brown brick façade of the Edison belies its historic pedigree and illustrious but checkered past. Built in 1916, the Edison began its life as a simple one-story saloon. Then, in 1923, thanks to the Volstead Act and Prohibition, the Edison adopted, at least according to official government records, a “soft drink”–only beverage list. Local lore, however, suggests that the hard-drinking Irish communities that surrounded the hotel may have flocked to its mahogany bar for something a wee bit stiffer than root beer.

  In the early 1930s, under new ownership and just coming off a 1928 renovation that added five stories to its height, the Edison became the home-away-from-home to countless vaudeville performers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey while they performed at the nearby burlesque houses.

  With the eventual demise of burlesque, the Edison fell on hard times. Then, in the 1960s, economic necessity brought about its conversion into a topless bar. As with many adult establishments, the conversion brought with it a less desirable and oftentimes less civilized group of clients. By 1979, it had enjoyed a brisk revival, as it offered a steady stream of no-questionsasked hourly customers a safe refuge to ply their trades or simply escape from the cold.

  Such was the state of affairs at the Edison Hotel when John Lesko and Michael Travaglia took up residence amidst the flotsam and jetsam that floated into and out of its seventy tumbledown rooms on a daily—or even hourly—basis. In late 1970, prostitutes, johns, drug dealers, hustlers and John Lesko and Michael Travaglia all floated in and out—nameless, faceless and soulless in a world of economic and moral depression.

  Perhaps it was the abuse that time had wrought against the Edison Hotel that had drawn John Lesko and Michael Travaglia to it. Or perhaps John Lesko felt a kinship with the building grounded in his own wretched existence. To describe John Lesko’s life
as Dickensian would hardly be hyperbole. In fact, the record of abuse inflicted on John and his siblings at the hands of their mother and maternal grandmother would make even the most sadistic of Dickens’s villains recoil in disbelief.

  Born on November 11, 1958, John was the oldest of six children. His mother, Mary Anne Fedorko, had John at the tender age of sixteen and, unsure of the identity of his biological father, chose the surname of Lesko after her paramour at the time of John’s birth. The product of an abusive mother herself, Mary Anne Fedorko had embarked on raising her family in the only way she knew—with violence and hatred.

  Shortly after John’s birth, Mary Anne gave birth to John’s half brother, Michael. Unfortunately, by the time of Michael’s birth, his father had also disappeared, leaving John, Michael and Mary Anne Fedorko to fend for themselves. John’s younger sister, Matilda, or Tilly as they used to call her, was Mary Anne’s daughter with Kermit Miller, with whom Mary Anne had one of many brief relationships. Next in line were Kimberly, Joseph and Alicia—all by different and largely unknown fathers, and all brought into a vicious world of drugs, crime and abuse.

  When Mary Anne and her children weren’t staying with her mother, Anna Ridge, and Mary Anne’s sexually abusive stepfather, James Ridge, she was busy shuffling her kids from one rat-infested apartment to another in an effort to stay one step ahead of landlords, bill collectors and the occasional police warrant. Dragging her children to one rathole after another, she occasionally managed to put down roots for several months, only to either abruptly scurry back to her mother’s Munhall home or to another equally filthy tenement, two steps ahead of the landlord.

  Throughout this time, living conditions were squalid. Frequently without heat, running water or decent furniture, her children slept either on the wooden floor or on a filthy mattress in the corner of the room. When the youngest child, Alicia, was born, an old wooden crate served as her crib for months. When Fedorko finally secured a crib for the infant, a surprised child services worker discovered that the crib was filthy and covered in human feces. This was not the first such visit by child services; nor would it be the last. In fact, child services has memorialized John’s entire childhood in volumes of protective services records that could be aptly titled The Fedorko Family History: Crime and Punishment.

  Frequently disturbed by what they had observed in the various Fedorko homes, child services workers maintained a seven-year-long relationship with the family; however, it was not until matters became unavoidably deplorable that they intervened in any significant way. To say that the health and welfare agencies in Allegheny County had completely failed the Lesko children would be a great understatement.

  Underfed, malnourished and clothed only in rags—even in the dead of the frigid Pennsylvania winters—Mary Anne’s children were frequently the subject of neglect reports by their various school principals. In hindsight, more than ample grounds existed on numerous occasions for child welfare agencies to remove the children from the home, but John and his brothers and sisters continued to endure a life of filth and squalor. Whether through malfeasance or a desire to keep the family together, child services allowed the children of Mary Anne Fedorko to remain in her care well into John’s early teens, even though conditions over the years remained largely unchanged.

  Mary Anne Fedorko constantly left the children, some of whom were barely older than infants, home alone. When they weren’t running from the rats, they would attempt to heat the apartment with the open flame from the burner on the stove. Additionally, they were forced to do their own laundry in a broken-down ringer washing machine, and they often crushed their fingers trying to manipulate the decrepit apparatus in the freezing, damp basement of their hovel.

  When Mary Anne Fedorko did come home, it was usually with a steady parade of men—the drunks she would rob, the johns she would charge. Either way, Mary Anne’s answer to supplementing her welfare income was always carried out in full view of her six children. In fact, as they got older, Mary Anne enlisted her children’s help in going through her paramours’ pockets for money as they lay passed out on the flea-infested sofa.

  As a disciplinarian, Fedorko was barbaric, unpredictable and ruthless. Prone to wild mood swings, she would fly into a rage at the children and inflict barbaric punishments far out of proportion to whatever perceived misconduct she accused them of. On numerous occasions, she forced the children to kneel on a hot radiator for hours at a time. With their knees burned and bruised, she denied them bathroom privileges. When they eventually wet their pants because they could no longer hold it, Fedorko would beat them with whatever she could get her hands on: a cat-o’-ninetails, an extension cord or a skillet or frying pan.

  Unfortunately for John, as the oldest, he often bore the brunt of his mother’s tirades and abuse. Through either intention or circumstance, he seemed to be a magnet for her sharp tongue and quick backhand. Telling him that he was worthless and would amount to nothing, Fedorko constantly reminded John that she “wished he had never been born.”

  Finally, when John was eleven years old, child services workers intervened. The catalyst was when workers reported that the most recent Fedorko residence was once again rat infested and covered in human and animal feces to the point that their feet actually stuck to the floor. Children’s services placed the three oldest children in Holy Family Institute—a group living facility—and Alicia, Kimberly and Joey were placed in foster homes.

  During the children’s stay at Holy Family, Mary Anne and her mother visited on weekends. Occasionally the children were allowed home visits to their mother’s filthy residence, usually on alternate weekends. It was during one of these weekend visits that Mary Anne’s boyfriend-of-the-month, Ray Pryzbilinkski, allegedly molested Tilly in the basement. Fearing the repercussions, Mary Anne and Ray blamed John for the abuse, shielding Ray from serious trouble.

  As a result, caseworkers separated John and Michael from Tilly and terminated the home visits to the Fedorko residence. Viewed as a more stable environment, visits to the children’s grandmother’s home were still permitted. Eventually, child welfare authorities gave Anna Ridge full custody of the children. Unfortunately, Anna Ridge was equally abusive.

  During John and his siblings’ time at Anna Ridge’s home, drugs and alcohol became a way of life. From their early years, John and his brother and sister drank, smoked and used drugs. Between exposure to Mary Anne’s sisters Joanne and Bunny, who were polydrug addicts and alcoholics, and infrequent supervision, it is little wonder that John and his brothers and sisters turned to drug use. On one occasion, John found his Aunt Joanne’s hidden stash of rum. Ever the enterprising youth, he drank the rum and secretly refilled the empty bottles with water.

  In John’s world, a life of crime was not only accepted, but it was also, in fact, expected. In a scene that could have easily been lifted from a Dickens novel, John’s grandmother and aunt turned the children out at night to a life of crime. In the winter, she put the children out on the street with orders not to return to the house without something to show for their efforts. If they did return empty-handed, she locked them out of the house. Even during the bitter cold Pittsburgh winters, Anna Ridge often forced her grandchildren to sleep outside. Occasionally, they were lucky enough to find refuge at a benevolent friend or neighbor’s home.

  Not surprisingly, John did not fit in at school. Both spotty attendance and poor performance plagued him. The frequently nomadic lifestyle to which Mary Fedorko subjected John and his siblings no doubt aggravated matters.

  After school, John sought refuge in the structure and discipline of the Marine Corps. While his initial impressions were enthusiastic, and he seemed to respond quite well to the strict discipline of the corps, he eventually went AWOL. After numerous AWOL charges, John was less-than-honorably discharged and unfortunately was forced to return to the crime-infested, drug-ridden lifestyle from which his brief stint in the marines had freed him.

  John’s time in the marines had changed h
im. When he returned, he was much more distant, less talkative and much more out of control. He frequently got into fights, sometimes with little or no provocation. He constantly drank, drove recklessly and appeared to have no fear. John’s return from the marines brought not only a return to his former degenerate lifestyle, but it also brought him some disturbing news.

  Child welfare had removed John’s youngest brother, Joey, from the family well before they had successfully taken the other five kids. Because of this, Joey was placed in a foster care facility separate from the others. Even though his placement may have saved him from some of his mother’s worst abuse, his foster parent subjected him to something far worse. While in foster care, one of his foster care guardians repeatedly abused him sexually.

  John was violently upset when he found out about this. Beyond the protective nature of an older brother, John’s strong reaction was likely rooted in some early childhood memories of his own.

  As a small child roaming the streets and projects of Homestead, amid the steel mills and row houses, John and his brother had run a shoeshine business. For extra money, John carried around his shine kit, and he polished shoes for locals. He tried desperately to put food on the table. On one occasion, one of John’s shoeshine patrons invited him back to his home with an offer of more money for another pair of shoes. While at this customer’s home, the patron sexually molested him.

  These are the formative experiences that John endured. Whether this early abuse was enough of a catalyst to tip the precarious scales of his psychic balance is still up for debate; however, over the next few days, something would align the forces of evil within John enough to bring about a metamorphosis of Kafkan proportion.

  Perhaps the grand orchestrator of John’s evil rampage was his recent acquaintance, Michael Travaglia. Some argue that while older than John by a mere two months, Michael was the more dominant figure, and as a result, John quickly followed Michael’s lead wherever it took the pair.