Chapter 11 – Confession
Wednesday September 21, 1966 – Thursday September 22, 1966
As the third day of the trial began, the courtroom, which could hold about 90 spectators, was almost filled. Judge Gates had issued orders that standees would not be permitted.
Mrs. Janice Barczynski, 112 E. Poplar St., Lebanon, had been an employee of the Blue Star Diner, Stouchsburg, on December 24 of the previous year. She testified that Sites and his three companions arrived at the diner around 2:15 AM. “They weren’t loud,” she said. “There was no disturbance except for two wisecracks, which is natural.” Sites had said something about sitting on his lap and about “seeing” the rear seat of his car.
As Sites was leaving she was sitting at the counter with her arms akimbo. He touched her in what she described as an indecent gesture. And Sites left without paying his check.
Under cross-examination, she explained that wisecracks about “taking out the waitresses” are frequently voiced by younger customers.
Mrs. Larry Zeller, 206 E. Linden St., Richland, whose home was across the street from the rear of the Layser home, was the next witness.
She testlfied to seeing a car she thought “belonged to a Sites or Steitz” in the driveway of the Layser home shortly before 7:00 AM on the morning of December 24. She noticed the car, a 1958 Chevy, when she opened her draperies and commented on it to her husband.
Mrs. Zeller was cross-examIned at length by Defense Attorney H. Rank Bickel concerning trees, shrubbery, and lights at the rear of the Layser home.
Next up, Kenneth “Corky” Erdman, Richland, a member of the U.S. Air Force about to be shipped to Vietnam.
Erdman told the jury that between 9:00 and 9:30 AM on December 24 he was driving west on Linden Street when he passed Sites about a block and a half from the Layser home. Sites was driving a 1958 Chevrolet, Erdman said. Erdman said he and Sites waved as they passed.
The next witness was Mrs. U. Samuel Weiss, 104 N. Race St., Richland, the mother of Site’s wife Diane.
Mrs. Weiss testified that her daughter Diane called her about 6:40 AM on December 24 because Diane needed to go to the hospital. Mrs. Weiss told of summoning her husband to take Diane to the hospital while she stayed in the apartment to care for the Sites’s three-year-old child.
George Sites, Sheridan, Sites’s father, told the jury that Sites is one of seven children. He said he went to the apartment home of his son between 9:30 and 9:45 AM on December 24 to let him know that “his wife was having a baby boy in the Reading Hospital.” He said he stood outside the door and told Sites to take his Blue Cross cards to the hospital.
The elder Sites asked where his son had been. He quoted his son as saying “he had tied one on that night” and that “he had been at a stone quarry.”
The commonwealth introduced the majorIty of the approximately 50 tangible bits of evidence accumolated in the investigation of the murder. Many of them were blood stained objects including the mattress from the bed in which her battered and bleeding corpse was found.
James Sagans, State Police Crime Laboratory chemist, told the jury that one of the exhibits—a T-shirt which Sites was allegedly wearing at the time of the killing—contained blood identified as of the same AB grouping in which Mrs. Layser’s blood was classified. Sites has blood of Group A, Sagans said.
State Police Sgt. Joseph I. C. Everly took the stand and took the jury, court officials, and spectators back over the course and route of the investigation into Mrs. Layser’s murder from shortly after the body was discovered until the day after the arrest of Sites for the crime.
Sites was first questioned shortly before noon on Christmas Day when it was learned that a 1958 Chevrolet was registered in the name of his wife, Diane. A car of the same year and make was seen in the driveway of the Layser home the morning of the murder.
The afternoon of December 26, Sgt. Everly and Sgt. Shuck again talked to Sites and this led to Sites giving the first of three stories concerning his whereabouts or actions the morning of December 24.
The first story was to the effect that after he had left three companions with whom he had spent several hours the night of December 23 and early morning of December 24, he got into his car and the next thing he remembered was that he woke up about 9:30 AM at Phillippy’s Quarry.
Sgt. Everly told Sites that was not true since he (Everly) had talked to the Phillippy family concerning cars at the quarry the morning of December 24.
Sites then told police that he had awakened at 9:30 a.m. on December 24 in his car in the driveway of the Layser home, with his right hand covered with blood, and that he didn’t remember what had happened. Sites was further quoted as saying he drove home and had just washed the blood away when his father came to his apartment to tell him that his wife had given birth to a son in the Reading Hospital.
“I feel relieved,” he reportedly said, after giving this statement. He also said that he hadn’t been able to eat and that he had intended to tell someone what had happened after the Christmas holidays.
“I had no alternative but to place him under arrest,” Sgt. Everly said as he told of numerous admonitions to Sites concerning his right to remain quiet and the right to legal counsel. He also related that Sites had willingly signed a consent for the police to search his home without a search warrant and to remove several items of clothing that Sites had been wearing the morning of December 24.
The time of the second confession was listed at about 6:30 PM.
According to Sgt. Everly, he and Sgt. Shuck took Sites to the Layser home where the murder investigation was being centered and after making a tape recording of the second statement he was taken to the Reading Hospital to visit his wife.
The visit, however, did not materialize because of orders given by the attending physician.
According lo the testimony, Sites was then taken to the Reading state police barracks and fingerprinted and photographed.
After being returned to the Layser home about 10:30 p.m., Sites began to recount further details concerning his actions the morning of December 24 and he ended with a complete statement that included his hitting and biting Mrs. Layser.
After Sites broke a glass in a rear window of the Layser home he opened the door, entered, and removed his shoes, jacket, and shirt and then went upstairs.
“He recalled getting to the top and opening and closing what seemed to him a million doors,” the state police sergeant related.
At this point Sites said he didn’t remember anything else, Sgt. Everly continued, and he then told how State Police Sgt. Stanley Pijar, of the Jonestown sub-station, entered the conversation and urged Sites to tell the complete story and “get it off his chest.”
Sites then said that as he opened the door to Mrs. Layser’s bedroom she called out, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” whereupon Sites jumped on the bed “and was hitting and biting.”
Sites said that the next thing he remembered was that it was 8:30 AM, he looked over and saw Mrs. Layser covered with blood and when he touched her leg, it was cold and he thought she was dead.
The policeman said Sites related that he was wearing only a T-shirt, which was bloody, and he went to the bathroom, combed his hair, picked up a pair of panties which he placed on Mrs. Layser, recovered hls wallet from the bed and then went downstairs. The officer said Sites then started to place the broken glass in a pile under the TV set and when the clean-up went too slowly he picked up the rug and sprinkled the glass under the TV set.
After leaving the Layser home, he drove out the driveway and went home. Later that day he hid his bloody T-shirt In a culvert at the Dubbs orchard north of Richland.
The officer also told of having taken Sites there alter his arrest and of the recovery by Sites of the garment from the culvert.
As the recital of events by Sgt. Everly moved to December 27, the officer told of taking Sltes from the county jail to the Reading Hospital to see his wife. As they arrived in front of the hospital, Sgt. Everly related, Mr. and Mrs. U. Samuel Weiss, the parents of Sites’s wife Diane, came out of the hospital.
Sgt. Everly said Mr. and Mrs. Weiss told Sites that he could not see his wife because she had just learned what had happened and was upset and under sedation.
“Did you murder Carrie Layser?” Sgt. Everly quoted Welss as asking his son-in-law.
“Yes, I did!” Sites was quoted as replying.
“Why?” was the next question.
“I thought I was at home,” he answered, the jury was toid.
“If you were at home, I guess the same thing would have happened to Diane.” Mrs. Weiss was quoted as saying.
“I guess so.” her son-in-law was quoted as replying.
Other witnesses Wednesday included Mrs. Catherine Hostetter, a medical technologist at Good Samaritan Hospltal. She told of having been present when blood samples were taken from Sites after his arrest.
Trooper James Rucco, a state police fingerprint expert identified a fingerprint secured from the broken glass at the Layser home as being that of Sites.
In his testimony concerning tests of blood stains and their relationship to the types of blood possessed by Mrs. Layser and Sites, Sagans also told of tests that showed that samples of hair taken from Sites matched hairs found in Mrs. Layser’s bed.
The commonwealth rested its case at 11:44 AM on Thursday morning September 22.
[Portions of this post were transcribed nearly verbatim from the Lebanon Daily News coverage of the trial written by James Shellhamer.]
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