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4/21/2009 8:00 PM

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Observer-Reporter

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HARRISBURG – An execution warrant for Roland William Steele, 62, who was sentenced to die for beating to death three Washington County women in their eighties nearly 24 years ago was signed Tuesday by Gov. Edward G. Rendell.

Steele’s execution by lethal injection is set for June 18. He is being held at the State Correctional Institution at Greene in Waynesburg.

In January 1986, Steele was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in the karate-style killings of 88-year-old Lucille Horner, 86-year-old Minnie Warrick, and 85-year-old Sarah Knutz. The women, all of East Washington, were leaving a charity luncheon at the former Club International in the Millcraft Center in Washington June 21, 1985, when Steele conned them into letting him drive their car.

Their bodies were found the next day covered by tires in a remote area of Cecil Township.

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Steele was formally sentenced to death in March 1988, and the state Supreme Court affirmed that judgment in June 1989.

A 1999 execution warrant issued by then-governor Tom Ridge was stayed by the Washington County Court of Common Pleas pending the outcome of a petition for post-conviction relief. The lower court denied post-conviction relief, and the state Supreme Court affirmed that judgment in December 2008 and denied reargument in March 2009, which lifted the stay of execution.

In February, Steele’s attorney, Matthew Lawry of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, filed an appeal in Washington County Court arguing his client is mentally disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty. Lawry was asking to have Steele’s sentence commuted to life.

Rendell has signed 86 death warrants.


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