AFTER 46 YEARS, POLICE ID SUSPECT IN MURDER
At 82 years old, he may be too old to stand trial
It’s considered one of the most horrific crimes ever committed in Virginia Beach and spurred perhaps the most intensive police investigations in the city’s history.
It happened in the summer of 1973 at a motel at the city’s Oceanfront.
Janice Pietropola and Lynn Seethaler, two 19-year-old secretaries from suburban Pittsburgh, were found shot, strangled and slashed in a cottage they’d rented across the street from the Boardwalk. Pietropola also had been raped.
Despite the reported involvement of every detective in the
Virginia Beach police department, the case eventually went cold.
Then last year — nearly 46 years after the crimes were committed — police announced they’d finally made an arrest.
Ernest Broadnax, a former Norfolk resident who moved to New York almost 30 years earlier, had been linked to the crimes through advanced forensic technology, police said. Broadnax was 80 when he was taken into custody in April 2019 at his apartment in southeast Queens.
The evidence against him appears to be strong: a forensic
report in his court file says he’s 15 million times more likely to be the source of biological evidence recovered from Pietropola’s body than any other Black man. The report only compared the likelihood to that ethnicity since the person being tested was a Black man.
And yet despite that finding, it’s beginning to look as if the case may never make it to trial.
That’s because, according to the defense, both state-hired and private doctors have diagnosed Broadnax with dementia — a condition that affects a person’s memory, thinking and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily life.
In criminal cases, it also can lead to a defendant being declared incompetent — or unfit — to stand trial. And while competency typically can be restored through things like medication, therapy or education, defendants with dementia are often deemed unrestorable. The condition is irreversible and tends to only grow worse.
The prospect of never seeing Broadnax stand trial isn’t sitting well with Pietropola’s family.
“There is no justice in this for Janice,” said Judy Poklemba, who was 16 when her sister was raped and murdered. “And that just kills us. It absolutely kills us.”
While grateful to all the people who worked to solve the case — especially cold case Detective Kristy Curtis — Janice’s younger brother said he and his sisters are no longer sure it was worth it for police to identify and arrest a suspect if there’s not going to be more closure.
“Knowing what I know now, I’m not so sure,” Michael Pietropola said. “It’s a lifelong sentence for the family whether they caught (him) or not.”
Prosecutors are disappointed, too.
“We are just as frustrated as the victims’ family members,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Colin Stolle said in a statement. “We are bound by the options available under the law in terms of restoration, and we continue to examine all options available to us in seeking justice in this case.”
Annette Miller, one of the public defenders representing Broadnax, said he’s not going to get better.
“Ernest Broadnax is a frail 82-year-old man housed in the Virginia Beach Correctional Center during a pandemic,“Miller said. “Anyone who has a family member suffering from dementia, or watched them die of the disease, is aware that it is progressive, brutal and ultimately terminal.”
The case
It was a random hit on a national DNA database that first linked Broadnax to the slayings. Genetic profiles created with cheek swabs later obtained from him and Pietropola’s three siblings further solidified the finding, records show.
It’s not known when Broadnax’s DNA was added to the national database. He has two convictions from the early 1980s that involved sexual assault, but they occurred at least a few years before law enforcement began collecting DNA samples from convicted sex offenders. None of his convictions after that involved sex crimes.
But in 2012, New York became the first state to pass a law requiring DNA be collected from everyone convicted of a felony, as well as a few misdemeanors. Broadnax was in a New York prison serving time for felony assault when the law passed, according to New York police records.
Pietropola’s family was stunned when they learned police finally had a suspect, according to Michael Pietropola, who was just 11 when his sister was murdered. The family had waited so long, they’d all but given up hope of seeing her killer captured. Both of Janice’s parents died years ago.
“The pain this (crime) has put us all through, it’s just been unbearable for me and my sisters,” Michael Pietropola said. “And once they caught him, it opened up a scab. All of us had to relive it, but it was worth it if it meant we might finally got our day in court.”
Competency
To be competent for trial, a person must be able to understand the charges they face and be able to help with their defense.
In Virginia, approximately 1,000 defendants are declared incompetent each year, said Michael Schaefer, a forensic psychologist and former assistant commissioner of the forensic unit at Virginia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
The most common problems stem from mental illness and intellectual disability, Schaefer said. Medication, therapy and education can usually help those people.
If the defendant suffers from a condition like dementia, however, there’s often little that can be done, he said.
A psychologist determined Broadnax wasn’t competent shortly after his arrest and a judge agreed to send him to a secure state psychiatric hospital for treatment. He remained there for several months until he was deemed competent and sent back to Virginia Beach’s jail.
A preliminary hearing was scheduled to determine whether there was enough evidence to send his case to a grand jury, but it was delayed further by the coronavirus pandemic. Another preliminary hearing was set for earlier this month, but was postponed again as Broadnax’s public defenders once again questioned his competency.
The victims
Pietropola and Seethaler were close friends who graduated in 1972 from Penn Hills High School in suburban P i t t s b u rg h . Pietropola was often described as sweet, quiet and shy, and Seethaler as outgoing and lively.
Both found jobs as secretaries after high school and were still living with their families when they began making plans for their first vacation on their own. They selected Virginia Beach as their destination and invited several friends to come along.
Arlene Schuchman, a former classmate, was among those who’d been asked to join them.
“Back then you had to work practically a whole year before you got vacation,” Schuchman said. “We were all young and single and really excited to get away.”
Schuchman and another friend, however, decided they wanted to go somewhere more glamorous, and settled on Hawaii. Others in the group also backed out, leaving just Pietropola and Seethaler.
The two booked their stay for the last week of June 1973 at Farrar’s Tourist Village, a familyowned-and-operated motel located then at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and 10th Street. The complex had a mix of traditional motel rooms and one-bedroom, whiteclapboard cottages. Pietropola and Seethaler opted for one of the cottages.
During their week-long visit, the friends spent their days tanning on the beach and drinking beer and wine at night with people they met, according to a lengthy story written four years after the murders by Buzz Bissinger, then a reporter for The Ledger-Star, a former sister paper of The Virginian-Pilot.
Bissinger, who would later go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and write the 1990 bestseller “Friday Night Lights,” was given complete access to the detectives’ investigation file while working on his story. The file consisted of more than 1,300 pages at the time.
On the last full day of their vacation, the two went souvenir shopping, the story said. A young man who met them on the beach about 8:15 p.m. told police he invited them to his place, but they declined.
Sometime between 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m., the motel’s night manager saw them walk past the office window. They were alone, he told police, and headed south.
The next day was a Saturday and John Taylor, the then-25-yearold grandson of the motel’s owner, was filling in at the front desk.
As checkout time grew near, he remembers going to look in on the cottage in which Pietropola and Seethaler were staying. He knocked loudly for a while, he said, then opened the door when there was no answer.
“I cracked the door open and I could see a foot, like someone was sleeping on the floor,” said Taylor, now 72.
He started to walk back to the office, but quickly changed his mind and returned to the cottage.
“I was just thinking ’This is not right,’” he said. He tried to open the door wider, but something was blocking it.
“I pushed my way in because by then I had an idea that something serious had happened,” Taylor said. “I wanted to get in there and help them. But as soon as I walked in, I realized I couldn’t.”
It was the stillness in the room — not the blood — that he remembers most.
“It was frightening that it was so still in there when there were two people in there,” he said. “The stillness was very disturbing.”
When police arrived, they found Seethaler’s body by the door, her hands tied. Pietropola’s body was in the bedroom. Outside, they found a screen that had been removed from one of the windows.
Autopsy reports would show that Seethaler had been strangled, shot in the face and head, and slashed across the throat with a broken wine bottle. Pietropola was shot in the head three times and appeared to also have been strangled.
Schuchman, the classmate who had been invited to go on the trip with them, remembers sitting in her family’s kitchen when she heard the news on the radio.
“We were all inconsolable,” she said. “We just couldn’t believe what had happened.”
Hundreds attended the women’s funerals, held on the same day, just a few hours apart.
Pietropola’s mother, Lucille, wrote to the lead detective two months later and asked for copies of the photos her daughter had taken in Virginia Beach, according to Bissinger’s story.
“I know you would understand why I would want those pictures,” she wrote. “I would like to believe that she did enjoy some part of that vacation, and just to see her again as she was before she was taken from us.”
Among the photos sent was one of the two friends standing in front of the cottage, with big grins on their faces and their arms around each other.
Seethaler’s mother, Phyllis, wrote back to thank the detective.
“We received your pictures yesterday. We were very pleased,” she wrote. “I try to accept each day for whatever it may bring. The pictures of the girls as they were — I am sure it will help erase the lingering memory I have of them at the funeral home.”
Pietropola’s mother died in 1994; her father in 2002. Seethaler’s mother passed away in 2011, and her father in 2016.
The suspect
Ernest Jean Broadnax was born in Norfolk in 1938 and spent much of his life there, according to records found online and in court.
He enlisted in the Army in 1955, trained as a medical aidman and earned a marksmanship badge before leaving the service two years later, according to a report from the National Archives and Records Administration.
Marriage licenses found online show he was married in Norfolk three times, in 1963, 1972 and 1975. Among his children, Broadnax has a son who’s on Virginia’s sex offender registry and an adopted son who served time for murder, Norfolk court records show.
His son, Sidney, a convicted sex offender, described his father as an “upstanding” man who loved his children and was there for them when they were growing up.
Sidney Broadnax said he never knew his father to be violent toward him, his mother or siblings. He said his father had a problem with crack cocaine, as did some other family members. He knew his father had a criminal record but was stunned by the charges he faces now.
“All of this is a huge shock,” he said.
Adedayo Peterson, a former stepdaughter, told The New York Times last year that her mother was married to Broadnax briefly in the 1970s. She told The Times he once whipped her mother with a belt and pulled a gun on her brother. Peterson declined to discuss her former stepfather with The Virginian-Pilot.
It’s unclear when Broadnax’s criminal history in Virginia began, or what all it includes, because records compiled before computerization are difficult to locate. Prison records from before computerization also are limited.
But those that could be found show his criminal history is lengthy — and violent.
The earliest case found by The Pilot dates to 1964, when Broadnax was in his 20s and charged with murder. He told police he caught a man who was a visitor in his house watching his wife undress and threw him out, causing the man to fall down some steps and hit his head on the concrete below, The Virginian-Pilot reported at the time.
The man died the next day. Broadnax was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of assault and battery, was placed on probation and fined $200, records said.
Two years later, in 1966, he walked into Norfolk police headquarters and said he wanted to confess to several robberies. He wasn’t even a suspect when he turned himself in.
“He said he couldn’t do anything with these things on his mind,” Norfolk Burglary Squad Detective R. C. Hart said during testimony at Broadnax’s plea hearing. “He said he couldn’t keep a job, was having trouble at home, that he had thought of suicide, that he had thought of going up to a police officer and agitating him so the policeman would shoot him.”
As Broadnax wept on the stand, the judge handed him a handkerchief. He said his troubles began after the fatal fight. His wife left him sometime afterward, he said.
“After that there was no happiness,” he said. “Without her I just went all to pieces.”
The Norfolk judge gave him five years probation for the four cases there, but he got 10 years for one in Portsmouth.
It’s not known how long he actually served because the state Department of Corrections does not have a record of his release date. But he appears to have been out by at least 1972, when he got married for a second time.
Pietropola and Seethaler were killed the next year.
In the early 1980s, Broadnax was convicted in two cases involving allegations of sexual assault, Norfolk court records show.
In the first, he was charged with abducting an 18-year-old woman at gunpoint and raping her. He offered to take a lie detector test and showed deception during questioning, the records said. He pleaded guilty to sodomy, got a suspended jail sentence and was ordered to remain on good behavior for a year.
But just nine months later, in March 1981, he was charged with breaking into a home through a window and sexually assaulting a 27-year-old woman. He later agreed to plead guilty to burglary if the sex assault charges were dropped, records show. He got an 8-year sentence, but was released in 1985 after serving about four.
Sometime after that, Broadnax moved to New York City.
His criminal history there began in 1990 and includes convictions for burglary, criminal trespass, evidence tampering, and criminal weapon possession, according to New York police.
In 2006, he was convicted of beating a man with a pipe, breaking his arm. Broadnax, who was 67 at the time, got an 8-year sentence. He was paroled in 2013 at the age of 74.
A few years after his last release, he moved into an apartment community in southeast Queens that provides affordable housing to homeless veterans and others in need.
Broadnax soon became a regular client at the church food pantry a few blocks from his building and later a volunteer.
Shyremia Latham, a pastor at the church, and other volunteers affectionately called him “Pop.” He became such a reliable member of the team that if he didn’t show up, Latham would walk to his apartment to make sure he was okay.
“One day he came to church and he got up and testified,” said Latham’s husband, Jammy, also a pastor at the church. “He was telling people this was a good place and how it had helped him.”
None of the church staff or volunteers knew much about him, other than that he’d been in the military and had overcome a drinking problem.
“This man had no inkling of a past,” Jammy Latham said. “He never spoke of children, a wife, anything.”
Shyremia Latham said she sometimes wondered if there was something in Broadnax’s past that was troubling him. She figured it probably stemmed from his years of alcohol abuse.
“I never suspected anything like this,” she said, referring to the murder and rape charges he now faces. “Not in my wildest dreams would I ever have suspected something like this.”
What happens next
In competency cases involving unrestorable defendants, what happens next depends on the charges they face and the circumstances, according to Schaefer, the forensic psychologist.
If they’re accused of capital murder or a felony sex offense, for instance, state law allows them to be held indefinitely in a state psychiatric hospital, he said.
Michael Pietropola said he and his two sisters are angry and frustrated by how the case has been handled. They don’t understand why it’s dragged on for so long, or how Broadnax could have been declared competent late last year, then incompetent months later.
“The man was living by himself, he was caring for himself, and he was surviving by himself,” at the time of his arrest, Michael Pietropola said. “So I find it very difficult to believe that as soon as he’s arrested, and when justice needs to be served, he all of the sudden becomes incompetent.”
Michael Pietropola believes that cold cases should get priority in the court system. After waiting decades for an arrest to be made, victims and their families shouldn’t have to sit by and watch a case drag on for as long as this one has, he said.
“I think there were people who took advantage of the process and dragged it out,” he said. “The system failed in this case.”
Jane Harper, 757-222-5097, jane.harper@pilotonline.com