Halfway2sane

Joann was born Joanne Marie O’Connor on Oct. 11th, 1968 in Hackettstown, NJ. She was the youngest of 4 children. And according to her mother, the full, fluffy haired girl with olive skin and a pretty face made every effort to look perfectly groomed even when she took out the trash.
She was likable, fun, beautiful and always happy. Her parents were David and Sally O’Connor from NY. David passed away in 1996 and Sally passed away in 2019.

Joann was briefly married to a man, Michael Jack in 1991 but the marriage was short lived. It ended in divorce after only a few months. People have said it was an unhappy and abusive relationship.

In April 1992, 23yr old Joann met 37 year old Andrew Katrinak at a club in Allentown, PA. They quickly fell in love and she moved into his home at Front St. in Catasauqua and they were married by the following spring. Andrew had previously worked as a semi-pro boxer in LasVegas in his youth and later settled into his own construction business. Joann gave birth to their only child, a son named Alex on Aug. 21st, 1994. And Joann and Alex would disappear less than 4 months later.

Andrew was born on Sept. 1st, 1954. His parents were Veronica, who passed away Sept. 10th, 2011, and his father Andrew who passed away Jan. 21st, 2015 at 88 yrs old. He was a retired Bethlehem Steel Foreman and a U.S. Marine who served in the Korean War.

Before Andrew met Joann he was in an on again, off again relationship with a woman named Patricia Rorrer. She was born Jan. 24th, 1964 in Phillipsburg, NJ. She dropped out of H.S. in 1981 at just 17 yrs old and got married to a Landscaper named Gary Gabard. Patricia had a baby but it unfortunately passed away at just 3 ½ months old from SIDS.
Her and her husband worked 12 hour graveyard shifts at a textile factory and her mother cared for their baby Charles while they were at work. Gary said she was a cold woman and always looking for a fight. Once, when a gun yielding farmer and his buddy caught Patricia and Gary riding motorcycles on his field, Patricia got in their faces and argued. And her marriage ended shortly after.

Patrici met Andrew in 1984 at a restaurant. In 1987 she moved into Andrews home and lived there for 2 yrs until they broke up in 1989. But they remained friends and continued to talk on the phone and actually rekindled their relationship 2 times.Once, for about a week in 1990 and another time in 1991 when she showed up at his door unannounced. Patricia had another
boyfriend, Conrad Hewitt when she left Andrew and this boyfriend was once arrested for assaulting her and she had another altercation with him when he was released from jail.
Patricia went to Andrew’s home after this fight and stayed in his home for a few days to recover and hide out. After this she defaulted on her mortgage and she decided to move to Linwood, North Carolina.
Her professional life included short lived gigs as a century 21 realestate agent and an oldsmobile salesperson. In North Carolina she reportedly enjoyed some success as a horse trader, riding instructor and rodeo competitor.

In April 1994, Patricia called Andrew for the first time in over a year. It was during this call Andrew told Patricia about his marriage to Joann. Patricia later called Andrew in December 1995 and she learned on this call about the birth of baby Alex Martin, Andrew and Joann’s son.
Andrew later said that Patricia sounded depressed over this, but stated she was happy for him but also sounded a little surprised. Andrew said he had received one more phone call from atricia after this on Thursday December 12th, 1994, which was just 3 days before Joann and their son Alex disappeared. According to Andrew, Joann answered the phone call and when
Patricia asked for Andrew, Joann told her that he was married and had a child and told her to never call there again and she hung up on her. As for the words exchanged on that call, Joann told Andrew that Patricia had used profanity but later Patricia stated it was the other way around. But both sides do agree that Joann hung up on Patricia. Phone records did show that
the Katrinak’s did receive a call from an unidentified phone number on December 12th, followed up immediately by three unanswered calls from the same phone number. Patricia’s home phone records show numerous daily calls except for Dec. 11th thru the 16th.

On December 15th, 1994, Andrew said goodbye to Joann at 6:30am when he left for work. Joann was to have a shopping trip with her monther in law, Veronica, later that day. Joann called her about 1:15pm to tell her that her and the baby would be leaving soon to pick her up. But,Joann and the baby never arrived. Veronica did try calling their house that afternoon but there was no answer.Andrew got home from work about 6:30pm thinking Joann and the baby were going to be there and when they weren’t he just figured they were help up shopping and assumed there was heavy traffic due to the holiday season. Andrew watched some t.v and drank a few beers and
waited about 2 hours before he called his mother to check on everyone. Veronica told him that Joann never showed up so he began making phone calls looking for her. Both Andrew’s and Joanns parents showed up at his houSE to help him look for her. At about 10:30pm he realized his basement door lock was damaged and he called police.

When police arrived, the families insisted that Joann and the baby had been abducted. The officers said it was more than likely Joann left on her own. They said that maybe she took the money she saved for Christmas gifts
to start a new life with someone else. Andrew showed them the exterior of the basement door, where the lock was pried away from the door frame and had also realized the phone line had been cut. The police didn’t seem concerned and actually had him splice together the phone line. But they were looking closely aT Andrew for why Joann and the baby were missing. The
police refused to search for Joann and baby Alex so the family went out to do so. They found Joann’s 1992 tan Toyota across the street at McCarty’s Tavern parking lot and they called the police back to tell them. The hood of the car was cold indicating it had been sitting there several
hours. And her family noted the car was backed into the parking spot, saying that was something Joann never did. The car was locked and the car keys were left in the car as well as the baby’s car seat and some other items. An officer advised Andrew to drive the car Home and he refused, saying he was worried about it ruining potential evidence. One officer had Andrew retrieve a second set of keys and he opened the car door and reached in to grab something, but Joann’s sister yelled at him to stop, which he did.

The next day Pennsylvania State Police impounded Joann’s car to collect evidence while other officers canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses. No one reported seeing anything suspicious, even though the suspected abduction potentially took place on their busy street in broad daylight. The state police did have luck in finding evidence in the car. They found six, eight inch long blonde hairs on the car’s driver seat headrest. The hair color closer to the root however, was brunette indicating the hair may have been dyed blonde, and that combined with the hairs length meant they most likely came from a female.

Andrew was the investigators primary suspect though. He offered anything he could to clear himself so they could focus on finding his wife and son. Joanne only had a small life insurance policy and they had no debts. There was no activity on her bank account or credit cards after the day she went missing, so investigators dismissed the theory that she took her child and left. And there was no evidence of any affairs outside the marriage. Andrews alibi at the time of the disappearance was that he was working on a home addition with his father and there was no evidence suggesting otherwise. Andrew took two polygraph tests and passed both of them.

Joann’s ex-husband, Michael Jack, in NJ was also cleared by his alibi.

Police visited Andrew’s ex girlfriend, Patricia Rorrer and she gave them information that implicated Andrew. She told police about all the unsuccessful attempts to become pregnant while whe was dating him and she believed he was infertile. She said she couldn’t be, because she already had a child. She claimed Andrew must have killed Joann and Alex because Alex could not have been his. Police decided to conduct a fertility test to which Andrew willingly submitted to. And…Patricia was wrong…Andrew could indeed father a child, so therefore, her accusation about Him killing his wife and son for that reason stuck in investigators minds.

It was five long agonizing months until Joann and baby Alex were found in an extremely remote area in Heidelberg township, about 15 miles west of the Katrinak’s home in Catasauqua. A farmer by the name of Paul Kovalchik, was plowing his land on April 19th, 1995 when he noticed what he first thought was a pile of garbage at the edge of his field. He was used to people dumping things on his property, so he went up to it to check it out and see if there was trash with people’s names or addresses on it, as sometimes there was and he would turn it into police. But, when he reached it he realized it was two bodies. Joann was still wearing her leather jacket and was lying on her back. Alex was wearing a baby blue sleeper and was lying
face down on top of her stomach….one person saying, “almost like putting him back in the womb.: Their bodies were found along a trail used by horseback riders. Investigators say someone drove up to the site and took them fifty feet in. TheRe were various objects nearby, such as Alex’s bottle, a rattle and a diaper bag, like Joann might have dropped them while being walked in. When Andrew seen the area where his wife and son’s bodies were, he remembered that Patricia rode horses on that same trail and that she managed a horse stable about a mile away.

Joann’s identity was confirmed through Dental records. And an autopsy revealed she was shot IN THE FACE, once below her right eye with a .22 caliber gun and she received nineteen blows around her head and face with a blunt object. The shell casing was never found but the bullet that was
inside Joann was warped, making ballistic testing extremely difficult, even if the murder weapon would ever be found. And they say Alex died either from suffocation or exposure.

A forensic team did collect two hairs from the scene and they analyzed insect activity at the site to try and help determine time of death, but they were only able to narrow it down to mid December 1994 thru February 1995. Joann’s Christmas money was still on her so robbery was not a motive.
Alex didn’t make it to 4 months old…coincidently, the same age as the baby Patricia lost a decade before. In April 1995 the family buried Joann and Alex in a single bronze casket.

Patricia NOW quickly rose to the top of the suspect list and her alibi she gave for December 15th quickly fell apart. She claimed she spent the afternoon at a tanning salon, however the salon she claimed to be at was closed that day. She also claimed she spent the evening at a private
dance club, but you had to show your membership ID to sign in and there was no record of her being thee that night. However, her fiance and his friend testified she was there with them that night but there was record of them signing in but not her. Patricia claimed she never owned a gun, but her ex-boyfriend, Walter Baylock said he remembered her buying a .22 Jennings chrome plated handgun at a yard sale for fifty dollars. He said Patricia always had it with her and once pulled it on him during an argument. Walter
Baylock, the man who ran the yardsale confirmed selling Patricia the gun and investigators were able to aquire a copy of the cashed check Patricia wrote him for the gun. Her own mother acknowledged Patricia had a .22 handgun saying Patricia gave it to her in May 1995 but didn’t say why. Her mother also could not explain why she one day decided to take it to work with her and realized she couldn’t because she drove a school bus, so she dropped it off with her sister in law, Sandra Ireland. Sandra said that Patricia’s mother asked her to hold the gun for her. Sandra’s husband was uncomfortable with the gun being there, and buried the gun in the yard.
At some point Patricia’s mother retrieved the gun but no one remembered when or even what happened to it afterward.

Police searched Patricia’s North Carolind home on July 24th, 1995,
but were ot able to find the gun. They did however recover some .22 shell casing in her backyard, but they couldn’t be tested due to the quality of the bullet that was found in Joann’s skull. When police questions her about the found casings she claimed her ex-boyfriend Walter Baylock owned the gun and took it with him when he moved out in December 1994. Also, when
investigating Patricia police uncovered a rather long rap sheep against her which included; breaking and entering, public intoxication, cruelty to animals, larceny and a shoplifting charge she received 12 months probation for.

Patricia was a brunette, however police uncovered a photo that was taken of her just eleven days before Joann and Alex went missing. Patricia’s hair in the photo was dyed blonde. Officer’s obtained a warrant to collect hair and blood samples from Patricia. Her hairs were matched to the hairs found in Joann’s car using Mitochondrial DNA technology. With the technology at the time, only one of the hairs actually had a root attached to it and nuclear testing would have destroyed that one hair. A mitochondrial test required less genetic material and could be used on one of the other hairs to rule Patricia in or out as a potential match. Results concluded that Patricia could not be excluded as the hairs owner. The lab conducted scientific
reliability tests on the results for more than a year afterward to confirm these results since the science was so new And once the lab results verified Patricia Rorrer was arrested at her ome in North carolina on June 24th, 1997.

Sheriff Suzanne Pearson went upstairs with Patricia while she changed her clothes and said goodbye to her infant daughter, Nicole. The sheriff Testified that Patricia began rocking her daughter and apologizing to her and she took Note what Patricia said to her daughter: “Why did I do this Nicole? If I had known I would get caught, I would have never brought you into this world.” As she was being led out, the sheriff as well as other officers reported Patricia saying, “I’m never going to see my baby again, I’m going to the electric chair.”

At trial, prosecutor Mike McIntyre acknowledged from the start that his case was based largely on circumstantial evidence. He called more than three dozen witnesses who testigied to evidence against Patricia in eight different areas: Motive, opportunity, means, science, gun alibi,
lies and statements plus no other suspects. Jurors heard about Patricia’s break up with her boyfriend weeks before Joann and Alex’s murders and they were asked to consider whether she was trying to rebound with Andrew when she made that phone call on December 12th like she had done in the past. Ex-boyfriend Walter Baylock said that Patricia wanted him to be more like
Andrew and another former boyfriend said she talked about Andrew frequently and liked to gaze at old photos of him. The finality of Joann’s rejection is what the prosecution theorizes motivated Patricia to murder. Patricia’s infant died, she wanted to have a baby with Andrew but couldn’t and now she was being cut off from him for good. Patricia became pregnant after she
was reinterviewed in April 1995 and she was accused of getting pregnant in order to gain sympathy.

That’s also when she asked her mother to hide a .22 caliber handgun, like the one Joann was shot with. After the murders she dyed her hair darker in case anyone saw her in Catasauqua. Patricia’s defense emphasized that there was no evidence placing her in the area at the time and dismissed jealousy motive as being ridiculous. The jury disagreed and on March 7th, 2008, after just two hours of deliberation, they found her guilty on two counts of murder and two counts of kidnapping. She received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. After her arraignment she had to walk past a crowd of dozens of locals screeching “hang her” and “baby killer’. Patricia clung to a polaroid picture of her little girl.

She immediately filed a post-sentencing motion citing one hundred and five claims of counsel ineffectiveness and court error, all of which were denied. Then, she filed an appeal stating that her legal counsel didn’t effectively argue all one hundred and five claims in her motion and that
was also rejected.

Then, in 2005 Patricia was successful in an appeal for new nuclear DNA testing for the six hairs found in Joann’s car, as well as a cigarette butt and a fingernail fragment found with Joann’s body. Lab results showed that the hairs were indeed Patricia’s and that the blood on them was Joann’s. The cigarette butt had Patricia’s DNA on it, however there was not enough genetic material on the fingernail fragment to test it. In 2006, Patricia petitioned for a new trial, this time claiming that the state withheld a key witness statement. The court agreed to depose the witness, Walter troupman.

In the 2006 deposition, Walter claimed he saw Joann Katrinak arguing with her husband around the time she went missing. Walter said he reported that to police, but they shoved him out of the station and down the stairs, injuring him. In reality, after Joann and Alex’s bodies were found, Walter Troupman went to the police fifteen times with information about what happened to them. In his first statement, he reported that he saw Joann in her car arguing with a Hispanic man outside her vehicle. His statement changed each time he went to police with information, and when police began to dismiss him, he would scream, act erratically and need to be escorted from the building. The court concluded that Walter’s statement had no evidentiary value and denied Patricia a new trial.

In 2012, Patricia petitioned for a trial review based on two new claims. The first was that the state tampered with the fingernail fragment found with Joann’s body so that it could not be DNa tested. The second was that she should qualify for relief from Miller vs. Alabama, which prohibits mandatory life sentences for Juvenile offenders. Since Patricia was thirty years old when Joann and Alex were killed and no evidence tampering could be proven, Patricia’s appeal was denied.

In 2015, Patricia argued that the microscopic hair analysis comparison testimony used at her trial would be inadmissible by today’s standards. This is true according to the FBi’s own analysis of forensic hair evidence, however, the hairs weren’t just matched. At the tie of the trial, the hairs underwent mitochondrial DNA testing, and in 2005, nuclear DNA testing produced the same results. Therefore, the court determined that a new trial recognizing that the hair matching testimony was inaccurate wouldn’t produce a different verdict. So, Patricia included another point in her 2015 appeal, she accused the state of a conspiracy to convict her, claiming that investigators intentionally switched the hairs collected from Joann’s
vehicle with hairs collected directly from Patricia’s head to ensure a match. According to the lab, there were three hairs from Joann’s vehicle that had roots, and those were sent to the lab in July 1995. But Patricia’s hairs weren’t collected until November 1995, four months later, so the
court denied this part of the appeal as well.
The last part of her 2015 appeal was that of responding officer Joseph Kicska to officer Joseph York, after the fact that he lied about the Katrinak’s basement door being pried open. However, Officer Kicska denies this conversation, and the other officer attests to the basement door
damage. Original statements and police reports show that Andrew alerted officers about the basement door, but they weren’t immediately convinced that it was connected to Joann and Alex’s disappearance. The court determined that Office York’s contradictory claim wouldn’t be enough to warrant a new trial or produce a different verdict considering the overwhelming evidence against Patricia.

Her latest motion was in 2021 when she sought and received all documents related to the chain of custody for the hairs in evidence. It was questioned why Andrew waited so long to report his wife and baby missing. Patricia’s advocates find it suspicious that he called police three times that night to report new information and that his family found Joann’s car. And they find it suspicious that he pointed police in Patricia’s
direction. Her advocated also question the secondary phone line that was cut in the basement. It ran to Andrew and Joann’s bedroom only and it was located in a hard to see area in the basement. Advocates believe Andrew cut the line himself to stage a break in and deflect attention from himself.
Also, after learning how Joann died from a gunshot and nineteen blows to the head and face, officers quickly theorized that her killers gun had jammed after the first shot and then she was beaten to death instead. However, there is no proof that she wasn’t beaten first and shot last.
The gun jamming theory makes Patricia appear more guilty because her ex boyfriend told investigators that her handgun was junk because it jammed after one shot. They are saying that’s not just circumstantial, that’s speculation because there’s no evidence that the gun that killed Joann Jammed.

After Joann and Alex’s deaths, Andrew followed through on the plans he and Joann had to move to Colorado. According to what I could find he currently lives in Drake Colorado. Some news stories say he never remarried where others say he did. It appears he has been running his own construction business, Keystone Construction.