Wednesday, January 18, 1989-
It's difficult for strangers to understand the mentally ill, they may write them off as simply "stupid," and expect them to behave or act "normal," as if they're not sick. One such person was a woman who lived on the third floor of a run-down building located at 1516 Arrott Street, that had ragged curtins in the windows and dirty paint that was flaking off the building. It was a three floor apartment building containing three units, with a tenant on each floor, and a 4th unit for the building's manager. The building was Section 8 housing, subsized by the government. A couple tenants of the building had frequent screaming matches and the police were often called because of domestic disturbances. The place had been vacant for years until a new owner purchased it last spring.
(1516 Arrott Street in 1989.)
(Photos of the building today.)
That October Theresa Sciortino, a 29-year-old single mother moved into the third floor apartment. Her birth name was Theresa G. Volio and she was born on August 19, 1958 to Carmen Volio an auto mechanic from South Philadelpha and his wife Theresa M. Volio, who worked as a seamstress. She was described as 5-foot-1, 123-pounds, with chestnut brown hair, which she wore down to her shoulders. She was known to dress in simple clothes, often sweatpants or jeans.
(Possible photo of Theresa Sciortino from a news story.)
There's very little to say about her likes or interests, just the names of family and faces she once knew. It's known that she came from a large Italian family and was the sixth oldest of nine children; five boys and four girls. She had three sisters, Mary, Rochelle, and Josephine, and four brothers; Peter, Carmen, Michael, Robert, and Joseph. It's also known that they were Catholics and had originally lived in South Philadelphia, but the family moved to South-West Philadelphia on Wheeler street when Theresa was a teenager.
When Theresa was 12-years-old her family experienced a terrible tragedy. One day Carol Volio, who was the 24-year-old wife of Theresa's brother Peter, had fallen asleep with her 3-year-old son Robert on the living room sofa. She was then awakened just before noon and found the kitchen filled with smoke and fire and her son Robert was missing. She tried to search the first floor of the home, but couldn't find her son. She then tried to climb the stairs to access a bed-room on the second floor, but flames prevented her, burning her arms. In her panic, she fled to the home of a neighbor. The residents there were William Leonard and his wife, who were both in their 70's and unable to do anything but call for help. When fire-fighters arrived they found Robert dead of smoke inhalation on the second floor.
It's unknown how Robert's death affected Theresa or her family, but around the age of 18 she married a man named Emilio Joseph Sciortino and soon became pregnant, giving birth to a daughter named Rachel. About a year later, Emilio and her had divorced.
Theresa was now a 29-year-old mental patient with a cocaine addiction. Public records show that on February 16, 1985 she was arrested on a series of charges listed as "Simple Assault," "Harassment-Physically Strike Kick etc," and "Terroristic threats." Her daughter Rachel was now 11-years-old and lived with Theresa's parents in Southwest Philadelphia. Despite that her daughter was not in her care, she was very devoted to her and would visit her, but was desperately trying to turn her life around so she could bring her daughter to live with her. She was actively trying to get a steady job as a waitress, but she could never hold onto a job for very long. She was fired from three neighborhood restaurants over the past three months.
According to the owner of the Frankford Colonial Restaurant, located off Foulkrod Street, she had a hard time keeping orders straight, "She couldn't keep up with it." She only worked there for a few weeks in October.
At the Liberty Bell Restaurant on Frankford Avenue near Pratt Street, she only lasted two days according to the night manager. She showed up for work in heels, he knew from her choice in footwear that she had exaggerated about her experience. According to him, savvy waitresses wear rubber-soled, flat shoes.
"You felt like she was a space cadet," said the hostess of the New Riviera Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge, on Frankford near Margaret street, where Sciortino worked as a waitress for less than a day before being fired. "She was out there among the stars. She wasn't on Earth with you."
She had a boyfriend for awhile, but according to her second floor neighbor, Judy Kaiser she would call him at work and repeatedly ask him, "Are you with somebody else?... Are you sure you don't have a girl with you?"
In November she checked into the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute on Henry Avenue for three weeks. She had also been treated at Friends Hospital on Roosevelt Boulevard, and according to her family she suffered from bouts of acute depression, and had been in and out of mental institutions since she was a young adult and was taking medication for her mental illness. She was currently receiving outpatient treatment for psychiatric treatment and receiving social security for mental problems.
"She wasn't a terrible person... She was just a mixed-up person, a troubled person," a family member described her. "[She was] trying to make the best of her life, always trying to bounce back."
"I would describe her as a little bit pathetic but not hopeless. It's a tragedy, really."
Two buildings from Theresa's residence stood the Jolly Post Tavern at 1522 Arrott Street, where she was a regular. Patrons there described her as abrasive and difficult to like. According to Tony Tierno, she would approach men directly, stare until they noticed, then ask if they'd buy her a beer. One of the bartenders, a woman named Cindy considered Theresa attractive, but according to her, men were typically put off by her manner and declined. After rejection, she'd systematically move to the next bar stool, and then the next until she'd approached all twenty patrons sitting around the counter.
(Today the Jolly Post Tavern is a Deli, which sits two doors down from Theresa Sciortino's apartment.)
(Photo of the Jolly Post Tavern,)
"She used to walk in, stand there, and just stare at you, waiting for you to pick her up," said Jim Obst, a regular. "It was a scary look. A weird look. I'd say she had some kind of problem."
"She had a male company every night... She had a lot of company," said Sandra Ward, who shared the second-floor apartment with her roommate Judy Kaiser, directly below Theresa's.
"She's been bringing men up there every day and every night," Judy Kaiser added. "Young boys, older men... We knew something was going to happen."
Following her usual routine of loneliness, Theresa arrived at the Jolly Post Tavern sometime Wednesday afternoon. She drank a few Cokes, conversed with several men, then ordered a Budweiser draft around 6 P.M. according to bartender, Cindy. She ordered another beer from Debbie, another bartender who was just starting her shift.
Theresa then finished her Budweiser, set the glass down, and left alone around 6:30 P.M. A witness then saw her walking toward her home accompanied by a white, middle-aged man.
At some time between 6:40 and 7 P.M., Sandra Ward, the 38-year-old neighbor in the second-floor apartment directly below Theresa's, heard two loud thumping sounds from upstairs.
"That scared me," Ward said at the time. "It sounds like somebody threw her against the door," she told her roommate, Judy Kaiser.
"Nah," Kaiser replied. "She's just moving furniture around again."
Ward described the noise more vividly: "I heard a big thump... and I said to my roommate, 'it sounds like somebody just picked her up and threw her down on the floor.'"
"I said, 'That scares me,'" Ward continued. "She said, 'Don't get involved. Because they might be after us.' And I got scared."
Despite hearing footsteps descending the stairs afterward, neither woman called the police.
It wasn't until 9 P.M. that they notified Rocky Wardell, the 33-year-old manager of the converted four-unit house, about what they had heard and asked if he could check on Theresa.
Thursday, January 19th-
At 12:30 A.M. Wardell went and investigated, finding the victim propped up against a door.
"He found her," Ward said. "He called the police and then came down. He said she was stabbed. A lot... There was blood all over. Rocky was very upset."
Theresa was found naked, face up on the kitchen floor, wearing only her socks. Stabbed 25 times. Blood was everywhere. She was stabbed in the face, slashed in the chest, neck, arms and head, with her stomach ripped open. She had also been sexually assaulted with a 3 1/2-foot-long piece of wood that was found leaning against the kitchen sink. The wood was a piece of the doorjamb from the entrance to her apartment, which had been broken off from the door frame.
(Photo of a kitchen from inside her apartment building. The photo may be her apartment or a photo of Apartment 2, because the same photo is used for both apartments in online listings.)
Detectives were summoned to the crime scene. Reporters soon followed.
Detective Lt. James Henwood of the Homicide Division said there were signs of a vicious struggle. "There was a battle in there," Henwood said. "The fight moved from one room to another. There was a large amount of bleeding."
Plastic bags containing drugs were found in the apartment, along with a syringe. Sciortino had visible needle marks on both of her arms, and had been injecting cocaine.
Detectives had the Water Department employees search the sewers for possible murder weapons, and crime-lab investigators were seen carrying plastic bags filled with items from the building.
A nervous Sandra Ward stood outside the building, speaking to reporters as she smoked a cigarette, "I'm scared," she said.
Joan Kennedy, a neighbor of Sciortino's told a reporter that she had only seen the woman once or twice before, but that she knew a previous victim, Jeanne Durkin, "she used to visit a friend in a building where I used to live."
Friday, January, 20th-
Detectives announced to the press that they're now investigation a connection between the murders of Helen Patent, Anna Carroll, Susan Olszef, Jeanne Durkin, Margaret Vaughan, and Theresa Sciortino. They also inform reporters that Catherine M. Jones might also be connected. Police had earlier tried to link the Jones murder to murderer, Gary Heidnik who had allegedly bragged that he had killed six women.
Speaking of the Jones murder Homicide Captain Robert Grasso stated, "I'd be foolish to say I can rule [the Jones case] out, but there are a lot of circumstances that we uncovered in her background that make me feel as though it is not related."
"We're looking into the possibility that these crimes were committed by the same person," said police spokesman Captain. Richard DeLise. "Like all such cases, we can not positively say it is one person but there is so much similarity that we are very, very suspicious a serial killer could be involved, someone who likes to duplicate his crimes."
"The similarities provide the link. You have multiple stabbings. You have women who have been known to frequent the same bars in one neighborhood, and all the victims were slashed numerous times."
However Captain Grasso was dismissive about the possibility that the crimes were linked. "There are as many dissimilarities among the cases as there are similarities," said Grasso. "There is no signature on each individual one."
Contradicting Grasso, Assistant Medical Examiner Paul Hoyer said there was indeed a pattern to the wounds that linked them all together, but declined to say to the press what it was. Hoyer would also comment that there was a great rage in each of the murders that went beyond just simply killing the victims. "The first four or five [stab wounds] are enough to stop a person from moving," he said. "The other 45 are just from anger."
Hoyer would however downplay the idea that the murders were the work of a serial killer, stating that the frequency of the crimes seemed "way too low" for them to be the work of a serial killer. "It almost makes one think that they might not be related."
Serial killers in his opinion killed "every couple weeks, perhaps even more than that."
Speaking of Sciortino, Detective Lt. James Henwood dismissed claims that Sciortino was involved with prostitution, saying "She did have frequent male callers and did on occasion hustle [for money]," but added that she was not a prostitute.
"I hope they catch this person before he kills more women," said Catherine Jones' mother, Ruth. "It's terrible to think that he's out there alive... just enjoying life."
Monday, January, 23rd-
A viewing is held at 7 P.M. for Theresa at Kish Funeral home located at 6506 Elmwood Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia. A mass of Christian burial was held the next day at 9:30 A.M, at St. Barnabas Roman Catholic Church on 63rd Street and Buist Avenue. She was buried at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery in Springfield, Pennsylvania.
Sunday, January, 29th-
The papers now identify the killer by a series of names, which locals used to label the killer. The most common being "The Slasher." Other names being used were "The Knifer," or "Jack the Ripper." It's unclear how many of the victims were involved with sex work, but prostitutes became the major focus of the case as potentially venerable targets of the "Slasher."
Police sketches of the killer now appeared plastered on city streets, depicting an older middle-aged man who wears glasses. The same individual had been seen with both Margaret Vaughan and Theresa Sciortino just before each victim turned up dead.
(Theresa's sister on Facebook, still mourning her sister.)
Sources-
Philidelphia Daily News Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Friday, January 20, 1989
Philidelphia Inquirer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Friday, January 20, 1989
Philidelphia Daily News Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Saturday, January 21, 1989 part 2
Philidelphia Inquirer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Saturday, January 21, 1989 part 1
The Daily News Lebanon, Pennsylvania · Saturday, January 21, 1989
The Morning Call Allentown, Pennsylvania · Saturday, January 21, 1989
The Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Sunday, January 29, 1989 2
"The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes" - Michael Newton
"Hearts of Darkness: Serial Killers, the Behavioral Science Unit, and My Life as a Woman in the FBI"- Jana Monroe
"From the Files of True Detective Magazine: Bizarre Murders II" Edited by Rose G. Mandelsberg
"Homicide Detective: Volume 1 Number 6, March 4, 2024"- Duke Fox & Editor in Chief Barry Bowe
"TruTV Crime Library: Frankford Slasher" - Katherine Ramsland
