Pitt student’s killer to serve life in prison
Witness after witness stood before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning and described Alina Sheykhet. Compassionate. Beautiful. Loving. Hopeful. Happy. Joyful. And witness after witness told Matthew Darby that, despite what he did Oct. 8, 2017, he would never be able to take away the woman they loved.
“Her love for people has become even stronger. She is more alive than she has ever been,” said Elly Sheykhet, Alina’s mother. “She is even more beautiful and powerful now. Alina is a beautiful angel. She brought so many people together by loving and supporting each other, she is guiding and helping us to make this world a better place. And as long as the Earth rotates on its axis, the world will be carrying her love and her beauty.”
Darby, 22, of Greensburg, pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree murder for killing his ex-girlfriend in her Oakland apartment. He was sentenced to a mandatory penalty of life in prison with no chance for parole.
When Judge Manning asked Darby why he was pleading guilty, the defendant answered, “Because I am guilty.” He said nothing else, but his attorney,
Thomas N. Farrell, said his client had expressed regret for his actions and was remorseful.
“I have presided over many homicide sentencings in my more than 30 years on the bench, and I can say, unhesitatingly, that the taking of the life of Alina Sheykhet compares to none other in its sheer brutality,” Judge Manning said.
Throughout the hourlong hearing, Darby showed no emotion — mostly leaning back in his chair, watching impassively as each person approached the bench to talk about Alina.
The Allegheny County District Attorney’s office announced in February that it would seek the death penalty against Darby, but withdrew the notice after the plea was entered.
Darby killed Ms. Sheykhet, a University of Pittsburgh student, early Oct. 8, 2017, at her house on Cable Place in Oakland. Ms. Sheykhet’s parents discovered their 20-year-old daughter’s body, which had multiple chop and stab wounds to the head and face. Police recovered a claw hammer and two knives they believe were used in the attack.
Judge Manning’s thirdfloor courtroom in the Allegheny County Courthouse, Downtown, was packed with Ms. Sheykhet’s family and friends as well as police officers from Pitt and Duquesne University. Her supporters wore purple ribbons and turned out in force, as they had done in January during Darby’s preliminary hearing.
In addition to murder, he also pleaded guilty to theft, flight to avoid apprehension and burglary, as well as to criminal trespass for an incident Sept. 20, 2017, at Ms. Sheykhet’s apartment.
Darby also pleaded guilty for an incident Oct. 3, 2017, with an underage girl in Elizabeth Township.
Initially, he was going to plead to a count of corruption of minors in that case. But there was a dispute between Mr. Farrell and Deputy District Attorney Janet Necessary about the language of the charge.
When Ms. Necessary defined the corruption of minors count, she said it concerned having sexual contact with the victim. Mr. Farrell said that the plea agreement was that there would be no mention of a sexual assault.
“It’s very significant to my client,” Mr. Farrell said. “Extremely.”
They later agreed that he would plead guilty to two counts of simple assault instead of corruption.
A rape case in Indiana County remains pending as do charges in connection with an altercation with Allegheny County Jail guards on Nov. 4.
After Alina was killed, police quickly focused on Darby as a suspect after learning that he was Ms. Sheykhet’s ex-boyfriend and that she had obtained a protection-from-abuse order against him.
In the hours before the slaying, Darby was on Duquesne’s campus, where he appeared nervous to a university police officer who encountered him. He took a ride service about 4:20 a.m. to a spot near Ms. Sheykhet’s apartment.
Police said between 4:15 a.m. and 4:55 a.m. five calls were made from Darby’s cell phone to Ms. Sheykhet’s. All went unanswered. Investigators recovered video surveillance from businesses in the area of Ms. Sheykhet’s house to try to track Darby’s movements that night. They found video, recorded just before 6 a.m. Oct. 8, showing a man they believed to be Darby putting items down a sewer grate a few hundred feet from the Cable Place apartment.
Officers searching the sewer found two large knives and a claw hammer that had hair and tissue on it.
Witnesses said Darby was abusive and controlling in his relationship with Ms. Sheykhet.
On Sept. 20, 2017, Darby broke into Ms. Sheykhet’s Oakland apartment, which she shared with roommates. They called police, and Darby was charged with criminal trespass and released on bond. Ms. Sheykeht took out a protection-from-abuse order.
Eighteen days later, Darby broke into the house again, about 5 a.m., and killed Ms. Sheykhet. That morning she was supposed to go with her parents and roommate to the Paws for the Cure walk at Hartwood Acres.
Zachary DeReno stayed over at the apartment that night with his girlfriend, who was one of Alina’s roommates. In his victim impact statement, he recounted hearing Alina’s parents enter the apartment that morning to pick her up.
At first, Mrs. Sheykhet was banging on Alina’s locked bedroom door and yelling that everyone had slept through their alarms.
“As I walked out of the bathroom, Alina’s dad was savagely attempting to open the locked door. When he finally broke the door open, her mom walked in and I heard the most piercing scream of terror that I can clearly remember the sound to this day,” he said.
Mr. DeReno walked in, saw Mr. Sheykhet holding his daughter in his arms. He stopped his girlfriend and roommates from going in.
“I couldn’t even fathom what I [had] seen, and I would’ve done everything in my power to make sure those girls didn’t see anything.”
Addressing Darby — the witnesses rarely referred to the defendant by his first name, instead calling him “Darby” — Mr. DeReno said he did not view him as a “scary murderer.’’
“Many of us here knew you before you murdered Alina,” Mr. DeReno said. “Knew the weak, spineless, insecure, self-entitled coward that you still are today and will forever continue to be.”
Alina’s friend Salvatore Desimone also expressed anger at the defendant, calling him “soft and a coward for not being able to let her go.”
While there was a heavy security presence in the room throughout the court session, it grew tense a couple of times, with sheriff’s deputies closing around the defendant and asking Mr. DeReno and Alina’s brother, who had turned to face Darby and moved closer to him, to turn around to speak directly to the judge.
Several witnesses said that when they learned Alina had been killed, they immediately suspected Darby.
“You didn’t want anyone else to have her. From this, you did the most selfish thing to get what you truly wanted,” said Paige O’Neil, Alina’s best friend. “I just want you to know that even though you took my very best friend away from me, you will never kill her soul. Her memory is always here.”
Darby was arrested Oct. 11, 2017, in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and officers there recovered a backpack from him. Inside the backpack was a collared shirt that matched the one detectives said Darby was wearing in the various video recordings taken the morning of the killing.
In the aftermath of her death, Alina’s parents, Elly and Yan, immigrants from Russia, publicly criticized what they viewed as flaws and gaps in the system governing protection-fromabuse orders and are advocating now for stronger laws. They said a temporary PFA that Alina had obtained against Darby was not properly served on him. When she went to talk to police at the Squirrel Hill station to make sure it would be, her parents said, an officer gave her the runaround.
When they left the station that day, Ms. Sheykhet got in the car and told her parents, “’If I only had a chance, I would change the system.’ “
On Wednesday, during the sentencing hearing, Mrs. Sheykhet told Judge Manning that even then — when Alina called the police about the break-in — she had no ill will toward Darby.
“’Mom, I don’t know why he keeps making mistakes in his life, but he still is a good person and does not deserve to go to jail,’” Alina told her mother. “’I want to help him, Mom, I want to protect him.’”
Addressing Darby directly, Mrs. Sheykhet said she believes Alina would want him to live.
“She wants you to stay alive. She wants you to live a long life and think about what you have done ... because death is a part of a human, and she wants you to become a human first, before your soul leaves this world.”
She also said that her family is still hurting.
“But grief, hurt and pain are physical tools that our souls are using as steppingstones to enlightenment,” Mrs. Sheykhet said. “Our family is getting stronger each day.”
Alina’s dad, Yan Sheykhet, told Judge Manning that his anger at Darby is immeasurable.
“He has taken Alina from us in an unimaginable way,” Mr. Sheykhet said. “I truly believe his goal was to destroy our family. The pain and loss that my family has endured in the past year is incomprehensible. He has stolen so much from us, including a future with our daughter.”
But he continued, “My family has chosen to stay strong through this, and we will not give the defendant the satisfaction of taking our lives from us as well.”