Kill for Thrill (5 page)

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 him. 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.

Regardless of whether John followed or, as others claim, led, the two were destined for infamy from the moment they met.

The two met when both men worked at the Allegheny County Airport. Michael was pursuing training as an airplane mechanic, and both men seemed to find a common bond. Sharing a penchant for drugs and alcohol, the union between these two men forged an alliance that would ultimately lead to the death of four innocent people.

This chance meeting at the Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, would set in motion seven days of pure, vicious evil. Whether it was John’s tortured childhood and cycle of abuse that made him the way he was or whether he was pure and simply born evil, it did not matter—there was something about the derelict and malevolent Edison Hotel that felt like home.

It was this fitting home to which Michael and John were en route when a chance encounter with forty-nine-year-old, unemployed security guard Peter Levato would change history.

As the frigid men walked under the cloudless, coal black city sky, John began thinking about where his next meal was going to come from. Broke, hungry and depressingly sober, they needed some cash—and quick. He sidestepped a tiny bit of debris as it flew past him and then stepped down off the curb onto the street.

They were two blocks from the Edison and gaining ground. The pair crossed the street and picked up their pace.

The hushed pair braced against the stiff east wind. Liberty Avenue ran north and south, parallel to the Allegheny River, and the ancient granite buildings that stood watch on both sides of the avenue had offered at least some shelter from the blistering winds that whipped off the water. Now, heading down Ninth, free of the shadow of the towering gothic stone structures, the walk was more painful. The men surged forward into the cold. They were almost there.

Halfway down the block, the familiar grayish brown stones of the Edison Hotel came into view, and the scattered, impotent light from the few streetlights barely reached the ground long enough for the men to pick their way through the empty bottles and trash. Hunched over, with their freezing fists punched deeper into their jacket pockets, they pushed forward in determined strides. At first, they didn’t notice the gold Ford Grenada as it slowed beside them. The window crept slowly down and Peter Levato stuck out his head.

“You guys want to party?”

Neither man reacted. Seemingly ignorant of the offer, both men continued east toward French Street and the hotel. Peter Levato’s two-door crept along beside them.

John leaned into Michael and, in hushed tones, said, “Let’s have some fun with this queer.”

Michael obviously had a better idea. “Keep walking. I’ve got a plan.”

John continued to the corner and made a quick right onto French Street just beyond the beckoning doors of the Edison Hotel. Michael paused for a moment. The Grenada paused beside him. Stepping into the street and in front of the headlights of Peter Levato’s car, he quickly circled around to the driver’s side. Michael’s lean, wiry frame towered over the open window of Peter’s idling Ford. A warm river of heat spilled out of the car and washed over Michael as he studied Peter Levato’s face.

Without warning, Michael ripped open the door and crammed the barrel of a .22-caliber revolver against Peter’s temple, freezing him in mid-breath.

“Slide over!” Michael barked.

Peter Levato released his grip on the steering wheel and pushed himself into the passenger’s seat with a look of disbelief on his face. In one practiced motion, Michael slid behind the wheel and deftly tapped the horn twice.

On cue, John stepped out from the shadows of French Street into the warm light spilling from the doorway of the Edison. His lean, angular face, half in shadow and half bathed in the warm glow of the Edison, had the appearance of weathered granite as he glanced left, then right. Confident that there were no onlookers, he hustled to the waiting getaway car.

Once John had dropped into the seat beside Peter, sandwiching him between the .22 and John’s own stout frame, Michael gunned the engine and sped out of the city toward the suburbs. He seemed energized.

Heading west on Penn Avenue, Michael deftly navigated his way through the confusing one-way streets of the city like a veteran taxi driver until the looming green entrance ramp to Route 376 appeared on the horizon. Heading east, he eased onto the four-lane expressway and settled in for a forty-mile drive.

Deserted and spacious at two o’clock in the morning, the Penn-Lincoln Parkway, simply the “Parkway” to locals, was a straight shot out of the city past Mercy Hospital and the decaying steel mills that lined the Monongahela River. Bordering Schenly and Frick Parks, during the hectic rush hours in Pittsburgh, the Parkway was a bumper-to-bumper morass of suburburanites making their daily trek from the quiet neighborhoods into the city. At this hour, the Grenada sped along in solitude. Michael relaxed his grip on the wheel.

Once they were far out of the city, Michael pulled the car over. All three men piled out of the car—two more readily than the third. Holding Peter at gunpoint, Michael popped the trunk and motioned to John, who began rummaging through its contents. Moments later, John emerged from the shadows with a short length of rope. The men hurriedly wrapped the rope around Peter’s wrists and cinched it tight.

Michael eyed Peter, and then he rifled through Peter’s pockets, removed his wallet and belongings and motioned for John. The two each grabbed their captive and hoisted the struggling man unceremoniously into the trunk. The hollow thud of Peter’s body hitting the trunk floor, followed by the resonant thud of the trunk slamming, echoed endlessly, and Michael quickly counted Peter’s money—fifty-nine dollars. With their mission only half finished, both men jumped into the front seat of what used to be Peter Levato’s car, and they were once again eastbound into Westmoreland County.

Disoriented and in darkness, fear gripped Peter. The stench of gasoline and Goodyear was overwhelming. His thoughts darted back and forth as he grappled with what had just happened. What
had
just happened?

The Grenada rattled along the winding highway into the rolling hills outside of Pittsburgh. As they sped farther from the city, fear began to fill Peter’s head. He methodically made a checklist in his head: abducted at gunpoint, robbed, tied and heading into the country. He knew that nothing good would come of this. His mind seized on the possibility that death was waiting for him at the end of his journey. He flushed the thought from his mind, determined to think of a plan.

As the car whistled through Five Points and past Shieldburg and New Alexandria, the sounds of the highway and the rhythmic thud of the tires rumbling over the expansion joints were the only sounds that Peter heard. He strained to seize an occasional glimpse of the conversation between his captors, but only wisps of their muffled voices faded in and out of his head. Peter knew that he was alone, bumping along into the night.

As the minutes crept by, Peter’s thoughts continued to ricochet. First he abandoned hope and then almost immediately he envisioned a well-played scenario in which he could overpower his captors and make good his escape into the brush. Each time, the buzzing in his brain bounced him from one extreme to the other. His thoughts offered him no comfort.