While her husband worked the night shift at an Altoona, Pa., silk mill, Mrs. Margaret Karmendi, 24, liked to step out with her clandestine sweetheart.
But she had a small problem: Her 3-year-old son, Matthew Samuel “Sonny” Karmendi. With no access to a babysitter, she had to bring the child along on her secret dates.
In the spring of 1936, her problem would be solved.
No one saw the car coming, said Roy Lockard, 24, as he described the hit-and-run accident that brought him to Altoona’s Mercy Hospital on the night of April 21, 1936.
Lockard, a WPA sewer worker, was cradling a seriously injured Sonny in his arms. He said he was a family friend and had been carrying Sonny home for his mother, with the boy resting on his left shoulder. A large black sedan sped by, and, Lockard said, a door handle slammed into the child’s head.
The couple rushed to the nearest house, the home of Paolo Iorio and his family. “They brought the baby in,” Mrs. Iorio told police. “He was breathing hard, and his hair was matted with blood. I bathed him and saw he was badly hurt.”
Karmendi stayed at the house as Iorio flagged down a truck to take Lockard and Sonny to the nearest hospital.
Sonny’s father, Matthew Karmendi, had been summoned from his job by a frantic phone call from his wife. His child’s body was cold by the time he got there.
At the hospital, the elder Karmendi did not appear to recognize Lockard until he heard someone call him by his first name — Roy. Then he started to yell, “Hold that man for being with my wife!”
Police dismissed it as an odd reaction sparked by the trauma of seeing his son dead. Later, they would realize that it was an important clue.
The coroner’s examination showed that it was unlikely that a car door handle could have caused Sonny’s injuries. The primary wound, on the child’s forehead, was a jagged hole that penetrated the skull through to the brain. It also appeared as if he had been hit several times.
Police became more suspicious when they noticed discrepancies in the accounts of the boy’s death offered by Karmendi and Lockard.
Recalling the father’s outburst in the hospital, investigators asked him about his reaction to hearing the name Roy.
“Several times recently, Sonny used the name Roy while talking to me,” he said. He suspected his wife was having an affair with someone named Roy.
Police decided to interview Lockard again.
“Two Confess Slaying Child With Iron Bolt,” was the headline of the Altoona Tribune the following day. The story told of an “illicit love affair” that ended in murder.
“Sonny was interfering with our dates,” Lockard blurted out during the questioning. He told police he met Karmendi about a month earlier, and they started seeing each other regularly, careful to always end their trysts before her husband got home from work around 10 p.m.
She brought Sonny along, but the couple soon started to worry that he might open his mouth at the wrong time. “I was afraid he would spill the beans to his dad,” Lockard said.
On the evening of April 21, Lockard and Karmendi took Sonny for a walk along a sparsely populated street and waited for a car to pass by.
Lockard said that Sonny’s mom struck the first blow using a rusted railroad spike they had picked up earlier. Then she handed the spike to Lockard, who hit the boy several times.
Karmendi then screamed, and together, they rushed to the Iorio house with the dying child and their hit-and-run story.
Investigators later found the blood-coated spike in the street. The blood was the same type as Sonny’s. Some blond hairs and fibers might have come from a cap the child was wearing.
Hearing Lockard’s confession, Karmendi poured out her version, denying that she harmed the boy and placing all the blame on Lockard.
They agreed on one thing, though.
“Sonny was in the way when we had our dates,” Karmendi said.
The creepy couple got separate trials, with Lockard going first in June 1936. His attorneys tried to convince the jury that their client didn’t have the brains to plan such a crime.
He’s “cracked — he is not all there — he has the mind of a child,” defense attorney Frank Reiser told the court. The jury took 48 minutes to decide he was guilty of first-degree murder, which meant death in the electric chair.
Hundreds of spectators jammed into the sweltering courthouse when Karmendi’s trial started less than a week later. Lockard was a surprise witness, insisting that the boy’s mother took no part in the slaying, despite his earlier signed confession stating that she struck the first blow.
“I never struck my baby,” she told the court. “Roy Lockard killed my baby.”
After deliberating for two hours and 47 minutes, the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder. She also was sentenced to death.
After a series of appeals and two more trials, she managed to escape the electric chair. In December 1937, she faced a jury for a third time and was convicted of second-degree murder, with a sentence of 20 years. Bad behavior — an escape attempt — stretched it to 25.
“I’m so happy, I could dance,” she bubbled to reporters when she heard the verdict.
There would be no dancing for her former flame. After years of appeals, Lockard went silently to the chair on March 27, 1939. Newspapers reported that he was smiling.