Dec 15, 2019 4 min read

The triggermen in the murders of Jock Yoblonski, his wife, Margaret, and daughter, Charlotte, fled to the Cleveland area immediately after the shootings on Dec. 31, 1969, and that is where they were apprehended in the days after the killings.

Claude Vealey, Aubran Martin and Paul Gilly were incarcerated in Ohio until Vealey became the first to be brought back to Pennsylvania in the winter of 1970-71, nearly a year after the slayings, and he was the first to enter a guilty plea, doing so in June 1971.

The first of the murderers to stand trial was Martin. Vealey was among those who testified against him. Other trials and court proceedings followed.

While Vealey was incarcerated in the Washington County jail, the county in 1973 hired a former steelworker as a corrections officer, Jimmy D’Alessandro of Washington, who was then in his early 20s.

Although security was a concern, D’Alessandro said in an interview earlier this year that the “secret tunnel” from the old jail – now the Family Court Center – that led to the bowels of the courthouse was not used when the sheriff or his deputies walked the perpetrators to and from proceedings.

“I was in the secret tunnel many times, just giving it a check, making sure things were OK,” said D’Alessandro, who is now 70.

Perhaps because of the presence of television cameras and news photographers, which are still barred from Pennsylvania courtrooms, the “perp walk” footage was as important to both elected and appointed officials as it was to the reporters covering it.

“Claude Vealey was one of the ones that turned state’s evidence,” D’Alessandro recalled. “He was kept in the county jail here in one of the wings. Through the years I got to know him pretty well.”

D’Alessandro would deliver Vealey’s meals to the inmate’s cell.

“I worked 3-to-11 shifts, so 7, 8 o’clock at night, there was really not too much going on,” D’Alessandro said. “He had a TV in there, and I’d make my rounds and after a while, he began to open up about the homicides.

“He told me how they did that. I got to know him that well. We used to sit around and talk. They scouted the area down around Clarksville. Vealey told me when he was looking in one of Jock Yablonski’s windows, that Jock was watching Bill Burns on KDKA News. That was a prior night when they were laying their groundwork. On New Year’s Eve, they had cut the telephone lines down in Clarksville.

“It was dark, and there was nothing going on on the ground floor. They went upstairs. Vealey told me he was getting ready to shoot the daughter and the gun jammed. Aubran Martin grabbed the gun off of Vealey and proceeded to murder the young lady.

“They each had a firearm, from what I was told. They shot Jock and his wife.”

Did Vealey seem diabolical?

“He seemed like a regular guy, but I knew what his crimes were, so I was very aware of his nature,” said D’Alessandro, who retired as Washington County chief deputy sheriff earlier this year.

Matrons, not corrections officers, were in charge of female inmates during a time when few women were incarcerated. Male guards were called in only if there was a problem with a female inmate’s behavior. Of Annette Gilly, wife of triggerman Gilly, D’Alessandro said, “They kept her pretty much secluded at different locations. At Seven Springs. it was my understanding. She entered the witness protection program. I don’t know if she’s still alive.”

Gilly, now 86, is the only one of the trio who is still alive. According to the state Department of Corrections, he is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Albion, Erie County. Six years ago, he sought release, claiming in a hand-printed petition, that he was detained unlawfully because his commitment order does not exist in state prison system. He was sentenced to three life terms.

Martin, who drove the getaway car, died of cancer in 1991, and Vealey died of the same disease eight years later while in prison.