Jul 14, 2017 4 min read

Washington County Court will convene in an rare Saturday session for closing arguments, an explanation of applicable law and deliberation of the homicide case of James Bongiorni, who is accused of shooting to death his daughter’s ex-boyfriend, Brian Wilbert of Imperial, Allegheny County.

Testimony in the courtroom of Judge Michael Lucas concluded shortly before 4:30 p.m. Friday, during which Bongiorni spent more than two hours on the witness stand.

Jurors heard the defendant in the Burgettstown slaying describe a series of events surrounding a fatal shooting April 27, 2016.

Bongiorni was taking a therapeutic walk around the Burgettstown High School track that evening when he answered a telephone call from his daughter, Darlo, that Wilbert had recruited former lightweight boxing champion Paul Spadafora to accompany him to carry out a threat against her and her live-in boyfriend.

Wilbert is the father of Darlo Bongiorni’s son, Furio.

Spadafora did not arrive that night, but with Wilbert was Spadafora’s sibling, Charles Marsico, who has since died. Darlo Bongiorni telephoned for her father after he returned from his walk at 9:05 p.m. to defend her against the drunken Wilbert, 38.

Bongiorni, 69, said he confronted Wilbert in the street outside of Darlo Bongiorni’s home, saw Wilbert unsheath a Bowie knife and heard him use an expletive as he said, “I’m going to slit your throat.”

“He was gonna kill me,” Bongiorni testified. “I was scared for my life.”

Bongiorni, a former policeman and retired steelworker, said he fired a derringer into Wilbert’s stomach “so he’d back off.”

The defendant acknowledged a speech impediment causes him to stammer, and in testifying he spoke haltingly and often gestured in response to questions from his attorney, Robert DelGreco.

Deputy District Attorney Jason Walsh, in cross-examining Bongiorni, repeated testimony from Darlo Bongiorni’s live-in boyfriend at the time, David Griffith, and then-neighbor Emily Wysocki, 17, who recorded the confrontation on cell phone video, that they did not see Wilbert in possession of a knife.

“When he flinched forward, I shot him,” Bongiorni said of Wilbert in court Friday.

“The video doesn’t show he still had the knife… After I shot him, I never saw the knife again.”

Suffering from a stomach wound, Wilbert crawled to his car and slumped into the driver’s seat. Police later found an unbloodied, sheathed Bowie knife on the floorboard between the driver’s seat and the door. Wilbert was hospitalized and he died shortly after midnight.

As a rebuttal witness, the prosecution produced Harry J. Fischer, 41, Darlo Bongiorni’s former fiance, with whom she lived in 2002 at an apartment in Burgettstown. To Assistant District Attorney Rachel Wheeler, he described his fiance striking him with a cordless phone, and testified that when he fended off the blows, he pushed her into a door jamb. She called her parents, and James Bongiorni, according to Fischer, showed up with a gun, which he held to Fischer’s head. While she was on the stand Thursday, Darlo Bongiorni didn’t volunteer the alleged incident involving Fischer when Wheeler pressed her about whether her father had threatened any of her boyfriends with a firearm.

Recalled as the final witness Friday afternoon, Darlo Bongiorni said she had been knocked unconscious in the 2002 incident and was unaware of her father’s actions.

The defense began the day with character witnesses who appeared on Bongiorni’s behalf, and Kimberly McLaughlin of Imperial, who filed a temporary protection-from-abuse petition in Allegheny County Court against Wilbert. She initially sought to keep from testifying by invoking her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The judge told her she could not invoke the Fifth Amendment as a means to avoid testifying, determined McLaughlin did not have legal counsel, and directed her to consult privately with Assistant Public Defender Katherine Bacher.

The public defender remained unobtrusively in the courtroom as the witness eventually testified she had made assertions in her petition that were not true.

McLaughlin dismissed her initial allegations, telling the jury, “I didn’t follow through … I needed some distance. I’m not proud of that. Things could be misconstrued.”

The defense also called Lt. Chad Rannigan of Green Tree Borough Police Department, who charged Wilbert with simple assault, harassment and disorderly conduct in connection with a fight at the Ugly Dog Saloon Aug. 2, 2015. The lieutenant testified Wilbert was intoxicated that night.

Online court records show a guilty plea to the harassment charge was negotiated on Wilbert’s behalf in late March of last year, and Judge Donna Jo McDaniel imposed no further penalty. The other two charges were withdrawn.

Lucas plans to return to court at 9 a.m. Saturday.