In its opinion, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court relied heavily on the history of the crime committed by convicted murderer Shonda Dee Walter.
The court's rendition of events was drawn from the police investigation, court testimony and eye-witness accounts.
The narrative offers a chilling account of the violent end of a local senior citizen, and offers some insights into the behavior of Walter.
The history, which follows, was used to bolster the court's decision to affirm both the guilty verdict and sentence of death the defendant:
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On Sunday, March 31,2003, Lock Haven police discovered the body of James Sementelli inside his home. Sementelli, an 83 year-old veteran, had suffered a brutal attack.
He sustained over 60 wounds, 18 fractures and 45 bruises to various parts of his body, many of them to his head, face and neck. He had numerous defensive wounds on his arms and hands and multiple wounds all over his body.
The killer used a hatchet.
Based on a number of factors, including the last time the victim was seen alive, as well as old newspapers found on his porch and another newspaper found near his body, police determined that Sementelli was murdered on Tuesday, March 25, 2003. The investigation soon focused on Walter, a young woman who lived with her mother in a house across the street from Sementelli.
A neighbor, Monica Rupert, told police she saw Walter pacing outside the Sementelli home the evening of the 25th, talking on a cordless telephone. Walter's mother, Judith Walter, told police her daughter was out of the house that evening, only to return later and leave again, taking the telephone with her.
Mrs. Walter never saw her daughter again that night, but when she awoke the next morning she noticed the phone had been returned and Walter had left a note explaining that she was staying at her friend Michelle's house.
The night of the murder, Walter appeared at a house in Williamsport driving the victim's car, with blood on her hands and forehead.
She returned to the scene of the crime with witnesses and she described in detail the murder she committed that night.
Shanee Gaines became the Commonwealth's primary witness against Walter.
Gaines, who lived in Willlamsport, knew Walter through Michelle Mathis, a young woman who was allegedly a member of the Bloods street gang and lived on the same street as Gaines.
According to Gaines, she was at Mathis's home the night of the murder, caring for Mathis's child. While Mathis was elsewhere, Walter appeared at Mathis's Williamsport residence. She was driving Sementelli's white Toyota. Gaines granted Walter entrance and noticed that Walter had blood on her forehead and was wearing rubber gloves that also had blood on them.
Walter promptly went upstairs to shower while Gaines waited downstairs and at some point Mathis returned. Ultimately, the three women left the house and traveled in Sementelli's car to his house in Lock Haven. On the way, Walter told Gaines and Mathis that she had killed the victim and described how she struck him repeatedly with the hatchet while she ignored his pleas that she call for help.
When the trio arrived at Sementelli's house, Walter used a key to enter and showed the other two women the victim's body.
According to Gaines, the purpose of the visit was to dispose of a cigarette that Walter had left at the scene and to remove the body from the house.
Gaines refused to assist Walter and Mathis and quickly returned to the car. Walter and Mathis soon joined her, with Walter carrying a large plastic tub of quarters.
Before leaving, Walter ran into her mother's house to leave a note and get a change of clothes. The women then drove to a grocery store and redeemed the coins, receiving a receipt for $510.25 from a coin machine.
The supermarket video camera recorded the women's visit.
During the drive back to Williamsport, Walter flung the hatchet from the car into a wooded area.
A few days later, Gaines, Walter and others, including her friend Aaron Jones, drove to Philadelphia, where Walter tried to sell Sementelli's car.
Walter told Jones and others that the car belonged to her father, who had died, and she wanted to sell it because she had "bad memories" about it.
When the sale was unsuccessful, the group returned to Williamsport, where Walter permitted Jones to drive the vehicle. Police stopped Jones while he was driving the car.
When Gaines learned of that traffic stop, she feared that Jones, who knew nothing about Sementelli's death, would be implicated in the crime.
She contacted police and told them everything she knew.
Armed with that knowledge, police searched for and recovered the hatchet, which a Williamsport resident found on his property days after the murder and turned over to state police.
Blood on the hatchet matched that of Sementelli.
A friend of Walter's told police that a similar hatchet was stolen from his parents' house years earlier during a party that Walter attended.
The friend's father confirmed that the murder weapon was the one he had owned.
Multiple witnesses connected Walter to the murder weapon, including her own mother. In addition, two fellow prison inmates testified Walter admitted her guilt and described how she committed the murder because she wanted his car, which she intended to sell for money to pay off fines (from earlier crimes). Another inmate/witness testified that Walter said she also killed the victim because she wanted to gain entry into the Bloods street gang.
Those two reports provided police with dual motives for the murder.
Another Williamsport resident told police she had seen Walter wearing a hatchet on her belt in the weeks before the murder. Walter's mother said Walter owned a hatchet, which she kept in a kitchen drawer.
After Walter was charged with the murder of Sementelli and felony theft of his automobile, the Commonwealth gave notice of its intent to seek the death penalty, based on a single aggravating circumstance: a murder committed while in the perpetration of a felony.
