Epilogue
It should not surprise anyone that Dennis Terry Sites probably served the minimum or not much more than the minimum sentence, in other words ten years minus the three he had already served. The reports of his time in the county jail showed that he was a model prisoner, and if he continued in that vein, he may well have been released when he first became eligible for parole after seven years.
Had the original sentence of life in prison been imposed, based on information from the State Parole Board, he may have served only a total of 17 years behind bars, which would only have been seven more years than he apparently did serve.
In any case, in 1980 there is a short news article where he shows up as a pallbearer in his father’s funeral, so he was certainly out of prison by then, which was 11 years after the sentence was passed and over 14 years after the murder of Carrie Layser.
There’s no further word of him until once again he shows up as a pallbearer for brother Russell’s funeral in 1991.
But as far as I can tell, he has never again been in any kind of trouble that required the police to get involved.
He has remarried and as of this writing is 81 years old.
His former wife Diane eventually remarried and created a new life for herself.
Their two children would be in their sixties by now.
Under the terms of Carrie Batdorff Layser’s will, drawn on December 28, 1954, her son, Leon S. Batdorff, and her daughter, Mrs. Darlene Mease, shared equally in her estate, which was estimated to be worth as much as $50,000, or nearly $482,000 in 2024 dollars. Carrie was a very savvy businesswoman.
R. Hart Beaver, who prosecuted Sites at his first trial, is still living in Richland at age 89 and still maintains a law office, although how active he is, I do not know.
His wife Joan passed away in 2009.
In 1976 Ernesto Miranda was stabbed and killed in a barroom brawl.
The man who handed the knife to Miranda’s killer invoked his Miranda rights and was never prosecuted.
His killer fled to Mexico and has never been found.
Judge G. Thomas Gates, possibly in an attempt to prove that one could not always get away with murder in Lebanon County, in 1972 published a book, The History of Hangings for Homicide in Lebanon County. It can still be ordered from the Lebanon County Historical Society.
Judge Gates died in 2001 aged 76.
Lyle Krall, an Elco teacher who was a character witness for Sites, is still going strong at 90. Last summer he attended an Elco teacher’s reunion.
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