Ex-prosecutor announces run for district attorney
The former prosecutor who handled some of Chester County’s most infamous cases of the last 20 years has announced that she is running for election as Chester County District Attorney, citing her work on behalf of crime victims.
Deborah “Deb” Ryan, who had been a deputy District Attorney until she left the office in 2017 and who now works as a coordinator for the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative at the Crime Victims’ Center of Chester County, is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination in the May primary.
If successful with her groundbreaking run, she would likely face her former boss, District Attorney Tom Hogan, in the November election. Hogan is seeking the Republican Party’s nomination to a third consecutive term.
“I have spent the past 15 years working as a prosecutor dedicated to fighting for justice on behalf of all victims, survivors, and their families,” Ryan said in a news release announcing her intention to run for the county’s top prosecutor’s job.. “I want to ensure that all Chester County residents live in the safest and healthiest communities.”
In her 11 years in the DA’s Office, Ryan worked on a myriad of criminal cases, first as a trial attorney assigned to various courtrooms and later as head of the DA’s Child Abuse Unit, the group of prosecutors and investigators responsible for investigating and trying cases of physical and sexual abuse of children. Her work included homicides, child abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, high-level drug trafficking and gun cases — “effectively every type of criminal offense,” according to her release.
Most notably, she was part of the prosecutorial teams that handled three of the most notorious crimes in the county since 2000 — the murder and torture of 3-year-old Scott “Scotty” McMillan at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend; the decades long sexual abuse of children by a former Phoenixville man, whose conviction Ryan won at trial and who was ultimately sentenced to what is believe to be the longest period of incarceration in the county’s history; and the murder of West Goshen father Kevin Mengel by his wife and her younger lover.
In 2015, she was given the office’s “Prosecutor of the Year” award, with her colleagues citing not only her work in the courtroom but also her demeanor in the office, a combination of “tough love” and good humor. She was called an inspiration to the fellow attorneys and law enforcement officers with whom she worked.
At the award’s presentation in Courtroom Number One in the county Justice Center, Ryan paid tribute to the victims that had come forward to tell of their abuse, and of the team of detectives and other professionals she worked with in investigating the cases. “I have never worked with such a great team of individuals,” she said in her remarks. “They are great people with big hearts.”
Dick Bingham, chairman of the Chester County Democratic Committee, lauded Ryan as a choice for district attorney. She has thus far not drawn any opposition in the party’s primary.
“We are certainly excited about Deb Ryan,” Bingham said Jan. 26, a day after Ryan made her formal announcement. A campaign kick off is scheduled for early next month. “She is a highly qualified woman, with expansive experience both as an assistant district attorney in Chester County, and in Philadelphia, and I cannot imagine a more perfect candidate for district attorney.”
Bingham cited Ryan’s “work with the victims of abuse and her ability to fight for justice” as “those things that are so critical for a DA. I am sure she will make an excellent choice for everybody.”
Ryan’s candidacy is a groundbreaking one for the party, since she represents the first former prosecutor to run for district attorney on the county Democratic ticket. Previously, the party’s candidates had no experience overseeing the handling of criminal cases from the prosecutorial side of the courtroom, if at all. Indeed, on three different occasions over the past 30 years, the party’s candidate for DA was a prominent criminal defense attorney.
A graduate of Boston University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Ryan began her career as an assistant district attorney at the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office for approximately four years, and was hired as an assistant district attorney in the county in 2006. She was promoted to deputy district attorney in charge of the Child Abuse Unit and Children’s Advocacy Center in 2013.
It was in that position that she prosecuted both Gary Lee Fellenbaum for the brutal murder of Scotty McMillan and Warren Yerger for his serial sexual abuse of children over two decades.
Ryan was the lead prosecutor in Fellenbaum’s capital murder case as it made its way through the court system from his arrest in November 2014 until she left the office in 2017. Fellenbaum eventually pleaded guilty to first degree in September 2017 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole after the DA’s Office withdrew the death penalty in exchange for the guilty plea.
Yerger, who lived in various locations across the state over a period of years, was charged with molesting four young children along with his wife and girlfriend. In 2014, he went to trial in Common Pleas Court and was found guilty of multiple counts of rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, both first-degree felonies.
At Yerger’s sentencing before Judge William P. Mahon, Ryan said his crimes amounted to “one of the most egregious and horrific cases of child sexual abuse ever seen in Chester County.”
In her presentation, Ryan gave a blistering account of the horrors that Yerger had visited upon each of the victims and the way in which their lives had been altered by his abuse. “He treated these children like sex slaves,” she said, asking the judge to impose a sentence on Yerger that would keep him behind bars for the “rest of his natural born life.
“He has caused a lifetime of pain and misery for these victims,” she said. “It would be just and fitting to sentence (him) to the equivalent of four life sentences, one for each child.”
Mahon sentenced Yerger to a term in state prison of 339 years to 690 years.
In the 2010 West Goshen murder case involving Kevin Mengel, his wife, Morgan Marie Mengel, pleaded guilty to firstdegree murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison in 2013. Ryan served as co-counsel in the case with then-First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Carmody. Morgan Mengel’s lover, Stephen Shappell, who bludgeoned Kevin Mengel to death with a shovel at Morgan Mengel’s instigation, was later sentenced to 40 to 80 yers in prison.
Since leaving the DA’s Office, Ryan has worked for the Crime Victims’ Center on efforts to educate the public about the danger of child abuse and the ways to help prevent it.
“Chester County is the best place to live, work, and raise a family,” she said, in her press release. “We must do more to combat the opioid epidemic and gun violence. We have to devote more resources to protect our children and our environment.
“I will fight to keep our residents safe with programs aimed at both prevention and education,” she said. “I will expand treatment courts and broaden our efforts to protect the most vulnerable populations in Chester County. I will work with law enforcement in a respectful and collaborative manner to ensure that we are most effective in protecting our residents,” Ryan said.
Ryan lives in Birmingham, where she is raising her two teenage children. A campaign kick-off is scheduled for Feb. 7 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Barnaby’s in West Chester. More information is available at www.DebRyan4DA.com