Posted on 07/19/2006 5:35:40 AM PDT by Born Conservative
WILKES-BARRE (PA)– At an age when most career-driven men consider retirement, a then 64-year-old Louis Calvin Patrick sold cocaine to a homeless man, then stabbed him in the stomach.
The homeless man died. Patrick spent the next decade in jail.
More than 13 years after his April 1993 arrest in that drug-deal slaying, Patrick is jailed again. The 78-year-old is now accused of stabbing his girlfriend 69 times with a 5-inch, plastic-handled knife all over her unclothed body, police and the county coroner said.
Police officers found 50-year-old Doris “Peaches” Lemons dead on the dining-room floor of the South Franklin Street apartment she shared with Patrick lying in a puddle of dried blood and exposed intestines, according to the criminal complaint. County Coroner John Consalvo said that, individually, each of the two wounds in Lemons’ heart and five in her liver would have been a fatal strike.
Capt. of Detectives Wayne Cooney said Patrick appeared to be under the influence of something, but what he couldn’t say. Officers cuffed the unresponsive Patrick and medics ushered him to Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre, where he sobered up before his early-morning arraignment before District Judge Joseph Zola, at which he was charged with criminal homicide.
Local police were familiar with Lemons and Patrick well before Sunday. Sgt. Joseph Novak said he visited the couple on at least two occasions on domestic dispute calls, but their histories are also dotted with drugs, domestic violence and bitterness.
According to arrest papers:
Lisa Hunnicutt lived with Lemons and Patrick for two months before Thursday and says she saw Patrick abuse Lemons. She claims he made casual reference to killing Lemons more than once. Lemons left to stay with another man on July 6, Hunnicutt said, but returned to Patrick on Thursday when they went to the Farmers Market on Public Square. Hunnicutt went to the South Main Street apartment that day to hang out with the couple and drink. It was there that Patrick claimed he was going to kill Lemons and then himself.
He said killing Lemons would be simple, but killing himself would be more difficult.
Hunnicutt went back to the apartment between 3 and 4 a.m. Saturday. She smelled something foul and left without entering. She returned to the apartment at about 10:30 a.m. with friend George Woolford and a woman named Sondra. Woolford entered the apartment through the front door and peeked around the doorpost.
Woolford said he smelled something terrible and noticed Lemons lying on her back in the dining room, her stomach bloated. He knew she was dead.
The coroner said her body had lain in the stuffy, unventilated apartment for at least a day.
Lou Cavalari, the superintendent of Patrick’s apartment building, like many, often referred to Louis Patrick simply as “Pops.”
Like most of the people living in the same building, he knew little of Patrick’s criminal past.
Archived news stories reveal Patrick’s nearly six decades of local crime, arrests and run-ins with the authorities.
Patrick returned to Wilkes-Barre in 1965 to work for the American Asphalt Co. after spending 10 years on the West Coast as a soldier in the Army.
Soon after his return, Patrick was arrested on Aug. 27, 1965, after he allegedly beat a 16-year-old boy with a baseball bat on South Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilkes-Barre.
In March 1966, a 37-year-old Patrick became involved with the white daughter of Gustave Wech, the chief of the Fairview Township Police Department. Wech threatened to kill the married Patrick if he continued to see his daughter Bonnie because “you are a Negro and she is white,” according to Patrick’s sworn statement to authorities. The charges led to Wech’s suspension from the police force after he was arrested on a breach of peace and threat warrant.
In November 1967, Patrick was sought in connection with the stabbing of a man in the parking lot of a Drums hotel. He was acquitted two years later.
In April 1975, Patrick allegedly beat a woman and threatened to shoot a man at an apartment at 448 S. Franklin St., just footsteps from where Lemon’s body was found Sunday morning. Police seized a knife and a loaded .22 caliber revolver from Patrick.
Patrick was charged in 1980 with aggravated assault in connection with a June 1979 shooting in a Hazle Avenue bar. He was charged with reckless endangerment and aggravated assault again in February 1988 after a man was stabbed in another Hazle Avenue bar.
This all precedes the April 1993 stabbing death of a 30-year-old homeless man named James Cottrill. Records show Cottrill went to Patrick’s Scott Street apartment to buy cocaine. There the two fought over the size of the bag of cocaine Patrick sold to Cottrill.
Patrick plunged a knife into Cottrill’s stomach and left the apartment, but several witnesses placed him at the scene of the stabbing. Meanwhile, Cottrill bled to death at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital.
Patrick awaited his trial in a jail cell for three years, serving more than half of the minimum sentence he received when, in 1996, he was sentenced to five to 10 years in state prison for Cottrill’s death.
In the years after his release, Patrick met a troubled woman named Doris Lemons.
When officer Erica Oswald of the Wilkes-Barre police entered Apartment 1 at 380 S. Franklin St. on Sunday and found Doris Lemons’ body, Oswald explained to other officers that she had numerous encounters with Patrick and Lemons, court papers say.
So had Sgt. Joe Novak, another responding officer.
“Mostly domestic issues, but you know how it goes; they hate each other one minute and the next minute they’re in love,” Novak said.
The couple were arrested in October last year during a domestic dispute. Six packets of cocaine fell out of Lemons’ coat while she was talking to police. She was charged with possession of a controlled substance and received probation, while Patrick was cited with a public drunkenness charge.
In April, the couple were living at the South Franklin Street apartment when police were called for another domestic squabble.
Lemons tossed a brick through the apartment window into the street, according to police. Patrick struck and broke Lemons’ right leg with a metal pipe.
Patrick was released on his own recognizance and had yet to appear in court on the simple assault charge before his arrest Sunday in connection with Lemons’ death.
Lou Cavalari said Monday that Sunday night and early Monday morning were some of the quietest hours he spent in his building since the couple arrived.
Later Monday, acting on an anonymous tip, city Inspector Frank Kratz shuttered the apartment building for lack of running water.
The building’s owners, whom Kratz didn’t know by name but described as two men from New York City, had to find temporary housing for their tenants.
Kratz was told an accounting oversight caused the water bill to go unpaid and that the situation was being rectified. But as of 4:30 p.m. Monday when he stopped work, the owners had not called him to re-inspect the building, Kratz said.
Oh just yuck. You'd be surprised if you knew how many people like that run the streets :(
Holy Rap Sheet! Holy Overkill!
Gee ... if we ... uh ... if we legalized drugs ... this, uh ... this wouldn't be happening.
At an age when most career-driven men consider retirement,
Is that a fact? What the hell does this have to do with anything? Has the writer taken a survey of 64 year old men and divined the intentions of most of them?
a then 64-year-old Louis Calvin Patrick sold cocaine to a homeless man, then stabbed him in the stomach.
The homeless man died. Patrick spent the next decade in jail.
The crime was more heinous, you see, because the victim didn't have a home that the state could enjoin in probate...
More than 13 years after his April 1993 arrest in that drug-deal slaying, Patrick is jailed again.
Another frustrated Shakespeare defending the world from the use of the past tense...
The 78-year-old is now accused of stabbing his girlfriend 69 times
Not 67 or 70 times, mind you...
with a 5-inch, plastic-handled knife
A cheap knife, dear readers, not the wood or bone handled type that upper-crust Wilkes Barre reporters have in their drawers at home
all over her unclothed body, police and the county coroner said.
The idea of sex-play between the geriatric set (before or after a murder) is key to the MSM's down-the-nose view of the world. "Yeah baby! He stabbed her alright!"
Police officers found 50-year-old Doris “Peaches” Lemons
Peaches? Wonder how she felt about that name?
dead on the dining-room floor of the South Franklin Street apartment she shared with Patrick lying in a puddle of dried blood and exposed intestines,
Exposed intestines? Thanks, I needed that. Shameless 'look at me' journalism. Pathetic.
according to the criminal complaint. County Coroner John Consalvo said that, individually, each of the two wounds in Lemons’ heart and five in her liver would have been a fatal strike.
A sop to the CSI crowd. "Yeah, well Andy, she mighta made it if he hadn't made mincemeat of her liver..."
This whole story is crime blotter BS.
I hope that in my lifetime I live to see the day MSM as we know it will cease to exist.
ne one hurd bout three strikes ur out?
Give me a break. This guy should have been serving a life sentence before he even got to kill the homeless guy.
Once again a disgrace to society and he should have been "taken care of" a long time ago.
I've never understood how people who have purposefully murdered others ever end up out of jail.
If you plan to kill someone, and do, without extenuating circumstances, you should never see the light of day again. If they can't walk around, neither should you.
A few years ago my father, who is a medical examiner, worked on a case in which an elderly man (80's) who had been in prison for twenty years for murder got out of prison and shortly thereafter stabbed his also elderly girlfriend to death.
Sometimes people do bizarre things.
Guess the perp didn't like her apples no mo.
=============
Yeah, guess she was no longer one hot tomato.
Wech threatened to kill the married Patrick (my bold)if he continued to see his daughter Bonnie.
The police chief got a sharp rap over the knuckles in 1966. Patrick likely played the race card. Either the objection to the friendship was race based- or because the father thought a married man should not go with his daughter. Added to that, a man with the experience of Wech, could have seen real danger, whether black or white.
Who knows? Maybe Wech saved his daughter's life.
Soupy Sales:
"My girl Peaches and I go to all the baseball games, and we kiss each other on every pitch. I kiss her on the strikes and she kisses me on the balls."(paraphrased)
FMCDH(BITS)
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