2 arrested in death of man found in cellar
Jeremia...@notaol.com
Wife, her daughter held in '83 killing
Wednesday, August 18, 1999
By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
From his upstairs bedroom window all those years ago, Doug Watt could
hear the nighttime screams and shouts coming from the unkempt farmhouse
across Frye Road in the peaceful Penn Township countryside.
The house was the home of Willis Casteel, a truck mechanic; his wife,
Patricia Sloan; and her quiet and withdrawn teen-age daughter, Bonnie
Marie Neely.
That was more than 16 years ago, but Watt never forgot the sound of
those arguments.
So when a couple renovating the old house at 1053 Frye found a skeleton
buried in the basement last week, his mind raced back to the early
1980s, when he and Bonnie were in high school.
"The first thing I told the police was, 'I know who's buried in the
basement,' " said Watt, 35, who has lived on his family's property along
Frye all his life. "But I thought it was one of the women that was
found."
It wasn't.
The bones, with boots and bits of clothing still attached, belonged to
Casteel, whom police believe was 62 when he died.
Yesterday, detectives charged Sloan and Neely with stabbing Casteel in
the back and shooting him with a shotgun in the late fall of 1983. When
mother and daughter moved out of the rented house nine months later,
police said, they left behind Casteel's skeleton buried under two feet
of clay in the basement.
No one ever reported Casteel missing -- not even the trucking company
where he worked.
"That's one of the series of curious things about this case," said Penn
Township police Chief Michael Mastroianni. "It's hard to believe that
this guy fell off the edge of the Earth and no one put up a red flag,
but that's exactly what happened."
Late Monday, Sgt. Anthony Pecora of the Penn Township police and
Westmoreland County Detective Richard Kranitz arrested Neely, 33, in
Altoona, where she was living with her husband, Ralph, and two children.
Early yesterday morning, the detectives and Mastroianni arrested Sloan,
52, at her apartment in New Brighton.
Both are being held in the Westmoreland County Jail without bond.
In the years since the killing, the women had moved on with their lives.
They were taken by surprise by the arrests, police said.
Neighbors in New Brighton and Altoona said the women kept to themselves.
Sloan lived alone at the Thomas Bishop apartments, a public housing
complex on Sixth Avenue, but other residents there either said they
rarely spoke to her or refused to comment. On Greenwood Road in Altoona,
neighbors said they spoke to Neely on occasion but didn't know much
about her.
Police wouldn't discuss the motive for the killing or what specific
evidence led them to Sloan and Neely, other than what Watt told them
after the bones were discovered Aug. 9.
In 1986, two years after Sloan and Neely moved out, Robert Galet, a
postal worker in Export and a former carpenter, and his wife, Linda,
bought the farmhouse from Bill Frye.
After years of remodeling the upper floors of the wood-and-brick home,
the Galets were preparing to convert from an oil-fueled heating system
to natural gas and were getting ready to put in a new natural gas
pipeline.
On Aug. 9, they were digging in the basement in preparation for pouring
a concrete slab when Linda Galet's shovel struck something hard. It was
Casteel's leg bone. Soon, the couple had uncovered more bones and the
boot tips. They called 911.
Almost immediately, detectives suspected the body was Casteel's, based
on what Watt had told them about domestic disturbances at the house. But
to help them identify the body conclusively, authorities contacted
Dennis Dirkmaat, a professor of anthropology at Mercyhurst College in
Erie. Dirkmaat and a team of assistants spent 8 1/2 hours carefully
removing the skeleton, then took it to Erie to examine.
The examination confirmed the identity and showed Casteel had been
stabbed in the back and shot in the chest. Shotgun pellets were found in
the remaining flesh of the chest, although the body's organs had long
since decayed.
Police were at a loss to explain how Casteel could have been dead for 16
years with no one wondering enough about his disappearance to call
police.
"It was strange to us, too," said Mastroianni. "There are still a lot of
things about this case that need to be nailed down."
Mastroianni said some employees at Consolidated Freight, the
Westmoreland County trucking company where Casteel worked, remembered
that Casteel didn't show up for work one day, but apparently no one
questioned his absence further.
If anyone asked where he was, Mastroianni said, Sloan said he had "up
and took off." In addition, police said, Casteel was a transient sort
who had lived in Ohio and several other states, and for whom it wasn't
unusual to disappear for stretches of time. Police are still trying to
reach his relatives.
casteel...@gmail.com
Puja Seth
Thanks,
Puja Seth
Greg Carr
Rich Cholodofsky
RICH CHOLODOFSKY | Monday, May 14, 2012 12:00 a.m.Support Local Journalism
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An Altoona woman convicted of killing her stepfather and burying him in the coal cellar of the family's Penn Township home in 1983 will serve at least seven years in prison.
Bonnie M. Neely was sentenced Wednesday along her mother, Patricia Sloan, for the slaying of 62-year-old Willis Casteel, whose skeletal remains were unearthed 16 years later by the new owners of the Frye Road home where family once lived.
Sloan, 54, of New Brighton, Beaver County, was convicted of first-degree murder by a Westmoreland County jury in December. Two days later, her daughter, Neely, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder.
In court yesterday, Sloan said nothing when she was sentenced by Judge Richard E. McCormick Jr. to the mandatory term of life in prison.
Neely, 34, of Altoona, Blair County, was sentenced to serve seven to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked McCormick to impose the maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years.
'We cannot avoid the fact you took part in efforts to kill your stepfather, and we cannot avoid the fact you took part in efforts to conceal the crime for 20 years,' McCormick said.
Authorities contend that in October 1983, Sloan and Neely stabbed Casteel about 20 times in the chest, back and shoulder before Sloan shot him twice. The women bound Casteel's body in a blanket and dragged it into the basement, where he was placed in a shallow grave dug by Sloan.
After Sloan and Neely killed Casteel, they told friends and neighbors that he had moved away, prosecutors said. Two years later, Sloan divorced Casteel to further the cover-up.
Sloan moved back to Michigan and eventually relocated to New Brighton. Neely married and moved to Altoona.
Casteel's body was discovered when the farmhouse's new owners unearthed his remains on Aug. 9, 1999, during a home renovation project.
A week after his remains were found, police questioned Neely. She confessed and implicated her mother.
In court, both women told of a dysfunctional family; each fingered the other as the plotter and executor of Casteel's murder.
Sloan initially confessed, but during her murder trial she testified she gave statements to police only to protect her daughter. Sloan maintained that Neely and another person she refused to identify actually killed Casteel.
In a 22-minute taped confession, Neely told police her mother had concocted a series of plans to kill Casteel. Neely once bought amphetamines and Sloan mixed the drug with Casteel's heart medication.
Sloan also proposed chopping up Casteel's body and feeding it to pigs or suffocating him with a pillow, Neely said in her confession.
Yesterday, Neely said it was her mother's idea to kill Casteel. Neely testified that she only participated and stabbed Casteel twice in the shoulder to avoid her mother's wrath.
'If she was willing to do this to him, what was to keep her from doing it to me• I stabbed him to get enough blood on my hands. ... She was in a blind, vicious rage. She definitely would have killed me, too,' Neely said.
Neely testified that she repeatedly was physically abused by her mother and was verbally harassed by Casteel. She described her mother as a violent, domineering woman and Casteel as a 'nasty, crass and rude' man.
'He was rotten and he was vulgar, but he did not deserve to die,' Neely said.
During her 2 &*#189;-hour sentencing hearing, a series of Neely's friends and neighbors from Altoona told the judge that she lived an exemplary life.
District Attorney John Peck conceded that Neely was abused and was under the influence of her mother. It was her cooperation with police that enabled authorities to solve Casteel's murder, he said.
Peck, though, still asked McCormick to give her the maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.
'Bonnie Neely was a full and willing participant in the death of Willis Casteel. She killed him as much as her mother did,' Peck said.
Defense attorney Dave Caruthers said Neely's involvement was only at her mother's urging. He pleaded for a light sentence because of her exemplary life in the years after the murder.
Neely has a 9-year-old autistic son and a 7-year-old daughter. Neely said she has seen neither since her arrest. Her husband has filed for divorce.
'She ended up losing the only family that meant a damn to her,' Caruthers said.
https://archive.triblive.com/news/mother-daughter-sentenced-for-killing/
Health & Science Magazine Forum
Mother, daughter cite emotional torment in admitting '83 slaying
Friday, September 24, 1999
By Ernie Hoffman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A mother and daughter said they killed the older woman's husband and buried him in the cellar of their Penn Township home because he made their lives a living hell with emotional torment.
In separate taped confessions to township and Westmoreland County detectives, Patricia Sloan and Bonnie M. Neely said Willis Casteel had long subjected them to emotional anguish, but they could take no more when he made plans to block Neely's graduation from high school and her impending marriage.
Neely said Casteel never physically or sexually abused her or her mother, although she said the husband and wife argued frequently.
Sloan said the last argument came when Casteel told her that he had a scheme that would put her daughter, then 17, and her boyfriend in jail.
"I just went blind with rage. I had to destroy him," she told detectives "He had made life a living hell for us."
"It was a relief when he died," Sloan said. "He couldn't hurt us any more."
The confessions were played yesterday during a preliminary hearing before Penn Township District Justice Frank DelBene Jr., who ordered both women held for trial on charges of first-degree murder, homicide and conspiracy.
But afterward, defense attorneys J. David Caruthers and Jeffrey D. Monzo said there was physical as well as mental abuse involved, and it went on for years. They said a jury would find Casteel's death was justifiable homicide.
"What you didn't hear today were the details of abuse," Monzo said.
Westmoreland County District Attorney John W. Peck said there was a great deal of evidence that the killing of Casteel was premeditated murder, but he indicated that he probably will not ask for the death penalty when the women come to trial.
In their confessions, Sloan, 52, and Neely, 33, said Casteel, who was Neely's stepfather, was killed in the fall of 1983 while they lived in an old farmhouse on Frye Road.
His almost-skeletal remains were found Aug. 9 -- 16 years later -- by the current owners of the house, Robert G. and Linda L. Galet, while they were doing remodeling in the basement.
With the help of neighbors, detectives were led to Sloan, who now lived in New Brighton and Neely, who was married and lived just outside Altoona. They were arrested Aug. 16 and Aug. 17, and made separate taped confessions.
County Detective Timothy Sethman testified that an autopsy showed Casteel, 62, had died of a gunshot wound of the chest, but there also were numerous stab wounds in the upper torso. Forty-nine shotgun pellets were recovered from his chest.
Neely said they both had hated Casteel because of the way he tried to control their lives. For instance, Sloan said, he would not allow her to take a job outside the house.
As far as her mother was concerned, Neely said, "She is not real wild about men in general."
Neely said Sloan came to her one fall afternoon and said something like: "Let's go. It's time."
Sloan told detectives that Casteel's scheme to put her daughter and the boyfriend in jail before they were married was the last straw.
"I wasn't going to let him mess that up," she said.
They went into the bedroom where Neely said she stabbed Casteel twice with her 12-inch switchblade knife before her mother stabbed him several times.
Sloan said she then got the family shotgun.
"I told him he was going to die ... and I shot him," she said.
"After that, [my mother] told me to go feed the dogs because she didn't want neighbors to know what was going on," Neely said.
Neely said her mother dragged the body to the cellar, but Sloan said both of them did. Then, "[My daughter] went out on a date, and I finished burying Willis," Sloan said.
Neely said Sloan told her that if anybody asked about Casteel's whereabouts she was to simply say, "He was gone," but few people ever asked.
Several months later, Sloan moved to her parents' house in Michigan, where she divorced Casteel and her daughter married Ralph Neely.
Neely said she and her mother had discussed killing Casteel previously and that they tried to kill him on at least one other occasion. Neely said she bought some speed, an amphetamine, and Sloan mixed it in Casteel's heart medication, but it did not kill him.
Sloan also once considered smothering Casteel with a pillow, chopping up his body and feeding him to the pigs, Neely said.
Neely said she once took the shotgun and intended to kill Casteel herself when she was expecting a call from her boyfriend and Casteel took the phone with him when he left the house.
After the killing, Sloan said she never went into the cellar because she was scared.
Sloan said she confessed because she wanted to get the killing off her chest.
Kim Saltsman of Uniontown, who said he was a spokesman for the Casteel family at the hearing, said the family had no comment yesterday.
Saltsman is married to one of Casteel's daughters from another marriage, Patti, who was abandoned by her father when she was 2 months old. He said she was still shocked by the events of the past month.
Caruthers and Monzo said they had not decided whether they will ask for separate trials for the two. But Caruthers said it was Sloan who had actually killed Casteel, not Neely, who is his client.
Peck rejected that. He said the daughter was liable for her co-defendant's actions.
Both are being held without bail in the Westmoreland County Prison.
https://old.post-gazette.com/neigh_westmoreland/19990924skeleton5.asp
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/92131395/willis-leroy-casteel The dead lowlifes grave.
Willis Leroy Casteel
BIRTH
21 Mar 1922
DEATH
1983 (aged 60–61)
BURIAL
Webb Chapel Cemetery
Hazelton, Preston County, West Virginia, USA
MEMORIAL ID
92131395 · View Source
MEMORIAL
PHOTOS 1
FLOWERS 0
Willis Leroy Casteel
Word has been received of the death of Willis Leroy Casteel, of Frye Road, Westmoreland, Pa., who died in the fall of 1983, at home.
He was born March 21, 1922, in Hazelton, son of the late Alva Roy and Margaret Ellen Baugh Casteel.
He was a retired mechanic at Consolidation Freight Co., and a member of Webb Chapel, in Hazelton.
GREG The above is a lie he left the company because he was murdered if he was a member of a chapel why did they not inquire of his sudden disappearance.
He is survived by three daughters and spouses, Mary and Brian Robbins, of Fort Worth, Texas, Connie and Robert Moldovan, of Brownsville, Pa., Patricia and Kim Saltman, of Uniontown, Pa.; two sons and a spouse, Roger Casteel, of Dallas, and Larry and Elizabeth Casteel, of Brownsville; a brother, Junior Casteel, of Burnswick, Ohio; a sister, Beulah I. Lindsey, of Morgantown; two nieces, Crystal Martin, of Morgantown, and Kathy Drvar, of Jane Lew; 22 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.
He was also preceded in death by his wife, Bertha Ellen Detrick Casteel; a daughter, Dorothy Roberts; two sons, William Casteel and Thomas Casteel; and four brothers, Earl Casteel, Everett Casteel, Ralph Casteel and Stan Casteel.
Private burial will be at Webb Chapel Cemetery. Fred L. Jenkins Funeral Home is in charge of local arrangements.
Gravesite Details
Was murdered in the fall of 1983 and buried in the basement of his house. Body was found by new owners. He was buried at Webb Chapel in May 2000.
Family Members
Parents
Alva Leroy Casteel
1885–1959
Margaret E. Baugh Casteel
1888–1986
Siblings
Infant Casteel
unknown–1916
Infant Casteel
unknown–1919
Earl W. Casteel
1910–1912
Ralph M. Casteel
1917–1981
Infant Casteel
1921–1921
Beulah Isabelle Casteel Lindsey
1931–2007
Children
Connie Marie Casteel Moldovan
1951–2018
https://casetext.com/case/sloan-v-attorney-general-of-commonwealth-of-pa Appeal denied in 2010.
Greg Carr
> This is crazy learning on what really happened to my grandfather