1985 homicide case resurfaces in Washington County Court after death sentence overturned
Thomas J. Gorby, formerly of Eighty Four, is escorted to court for an appeal hearing in 2002. Gorby was convicted of the Dec. 21, 1985 murder of Drayton Spahr outside Somerset Inn in Somerset Township.
Thomas J. Gorby in 2017
Twenty-eight years after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death, a former resident of Eighty Four was back in Washington County Court.
The stabbing death of Drayton Sphar, then 38, made headlines during the 1985 Christmas season. Police charged Thomas Jeffrey Gorby with the killing, and he was found the next year in Texas. In 1989, a jury convicted Gorby and decided the death penalty was the appropriate punishment, but the case has been back and forth to appellate and county courts sporadically over the years.
Gorby was in Washington County Court Thursday afternoon to enter a guilty plea to a general charge of homicide. Judge John DiSalle ordered a jury to be empaneled to choose the appropriate charge: second-degree murder, which applies to homicide committed during the course of a felony, in this case, robbery; third-degree murder, which is killing with malice; voluntary manslaughter or involuntary manslaughter.
Gorby, now 59, is an inmate at SCI-Fayette.
According to testimony at Gorby’s trial, he and Sphar were drinking at a Washington-area bar the night of Dec. 20, 1985, when Sphar purchased several drinks for Gorby and a third man. Spahr also bought a round for everyone in the establishment, displaying a large roll of bills. Gorby, claiming his car was parked at Somerset Inn in Eighty Four, asked Sphar to drive him there.
Gorby entered the Somerset Inn alone at about 1 a.m. with a large amount of cash and a sharp knife on which there were blood stains. He also had a belt Sphar had been wearing. Gorby asked a Somerset Inn bartender for a lift to the first bar, and the barkeep noticed Sphar’s vehicle parked in the lot when they left the Somerset Inn. Back at the first bar, a woman noticed blood stains on Gorby’s trousers.
On Dec. 21, 1985, Gorby confessed to his girlfriend he had killed Sphar inside Sphar’s vehicle, stabbing him, slitting his throat with a knife, and stealing his money. Some of Spahr’s belongings had been discarded in a pillow case at the former Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge on West Chestnut Street, including a belt buckle on which Spahr’s name had been embossed, and authorities were notified.
Gorby was arrested in the Lone Star State where he had assumed another name, and, after waiving extradition, he returned to Pennsylvania 31 years ago. After his conviction, Gorby in 1991 claimed, among other issues Judge John F. Bell should have granted him a change of venue from Washington County where there was pre-trial publicity; that the girlfriend who testified against him was actually his common-law wife who should have been barred as a witness because of a spousal relationship; and that jurors, who should have been sequestered, were shown gruesome photographs during the trial.
The state Supreme Court first affirmed the jury’s decisions on the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence for the slaying of Sphar, but the state’s highest court later granted him a new sentencing hearing, ordering his lawyer should have raised his mental health as a mitigating factor during his trial. Prosecutors in 2011 opted not to pursue the death penalty and agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment.
Gorby continued to appeal, taking his case to U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.
Federal Judge Joy Flowers Conti last year found Gorby’s attorney provided an inadequate defense by failing to raise “diminished capacity,” in which Gorby could have admitted to committing the homicide while disputing whether he intended to kill Sphar.
Gorby, Conti decided, had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, plus mental health problems, and that he should either be released or receive a new trial. The Commonwealth appealed her decision to the Third Circuit, but on Thursday Assistant District Attorney Jerome Moschetta said the prosecution would withdraw its appeal in exchange for Gorby’s plea to a general charge of homicide.
DiSalle asked Gorby’s federal attorney, Samuel Angell, to attend a status conference next month with Gorby’s new trial counsel.
Gorby’s robbery conviction, for which he served a consecutive 8 to 16-year imprisonment, was not overturned.