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Ellwood City officers testify at homicide hearing
By Jeanne Starmack
New Castle, Pa.
Two Ellwood City police officers on duty the morning of May 22 got a call to go to 804 Pershing St. for a possible deceased person.
What they found when they got there around 10:30 a.m., officers Christopher Hardie and Michael McBride testified, was Keith Wolfrey, 23, calmly smiling and playing with his 6-month-old son on the porch.
“I asked him where the dead person is,” McBride testified before a packed room at Wolfrey’s preliminary hearing on murder charges in Lawrence County Central Court on Thursday.
“He said, “‘She’s inside,’” McBride continued, adding that Wolfrey made a backward motion with his thumb over his shoulder.
He motioned like an umpire throwing someone out of a game, noted Assistant District Attorney Thomas Minett.
Yes, McBride agreed, adding that Wolfrey showed no emotion.
“I got a chill down my back, because it wasn’t normal,” McBride said.
Hardie went inside, first going upstairs to the bedroom with the thought that maybe someone had died during the night. He came back to the porch.
“I said, ‘I can’t find anyone,’” Hardie testified.
Wolfrey told them: “She’s in the kitchen,” they both testified.
Hardie went in, and it was there he found Joie Lordi, 20, Wolfrey’s estranged girlfriend and the mother of his son, dead on the kitchen floor. Strips of duct tape, from her chin to her forehead, hid her face. There were bruises and scratches on her neck.
Hardie came back outside and mouthed the word “homicide” to McBride.
An autopsy would concur. Lordi died from manual strangulation, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.
In front of the apartment on Pershing Street that morning, family and friends were beginning to gather. The crowd was getting emotional, McBride testified. He asked Wolfrey if he would like to go to the Ellwood police station to talk about what had happened the night before.
Wolfrey agreed, McBride said, adding that he appeared uncomfortable about the crowd. He handed the baby over to a relative.
When he got to the police station Wolfrey talked freely, saying he didn’t need a lawyer and he didn’t mind if McBride recorded his statement, McBride said.
“I asked him, ‘What went on last night?’” McBride said.
Wolfrey told McBride that at 10 p.m., he, Lordi and Lordi’s father were moving some items out of the apartment. He said that he and Lordi were breaking up, and he was moving out, McBride testified.
The baby was not at the apartment, and Lordi left to pick him up, McBride said. When she returned around midnight, the couple argued.
“She wanted the key back. She wanted him out,” McBride said.
Wolfrey tried to get some water, but she continued to ask for the key, McBride said.
“She grabbed his beard and pushed him,” McBride said. “He pushed her and remembers fighting and remembers placing his hands around her neck,” McBride said.
But after that, Wolfrey told him, “it all gets foggy.” He told McBride he was not using alcohol or drugs.
Wolfrey blacked out, woke up at approximately 12:30 a.m. and saw her lying on the floor next to him. “He didn’t know what to think,” McBride said.
He went upstairs to bed. At 4 a.m. he came back to the kitchen, saw her, “freaked out” and duct-taped her face “so he didn’t have to look at her,” McBride said.
He went back to bed. In the morning, the baby’s cries woke him. He fed the baby and called his mother, telling her, “Something bad happened.” She told him to call paramedics and the police, McBride said.
District Magistrate Jerry Cartwright found probable cause to send Wolfrey’s case to the Lawrence County common pleas court. Wolfrey is charged with criminal homicide, first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse in connection with Lordi’s death.
He will remain in the county jail without bail.