Let’s Look at McEnany’s Alibi
Let’s take a look at McEnany’s alibi for the time of the murder. An alibi is a form of defense used in criminal procedure wherein the accused attempts to prove that he was in some other place at the time the alleged offense was committed. Let’s look at whether McEnany’s alibi was enough to represent “reasonable doubt” that he could have committed the crimes with which he was charged.
Within days of having been at Shane’s Flight Deck, the bar where McEnany and his cousin spent the evening of 3 March 1993, a number of employees provided written statements, placing McEnany at the bar from around 6:30 PM until 1:00 AM (4 March).
This bar, it should be noted, was then located at 2285 W Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA, which would mean McEnany would have to have disappeared from the bar for a minimum of 40 minutes round trip, plus whatever amount of time was necessary to commit the murder, so we’ll conservatively say one hour.
Yet the bartender that night, Holly Mrakovich, stated that she saw McEnany talking with Joe Gusler and Winnie Dixon, up until the time she was relieved at the bar (10 PM) by Shane Mrakovich and Andrea Rotolo (now married to Mrakovich). Additionally, the bouncer, Craig Webb, who arrived at work sometime between 10:00 PM and 10:15 PM, gave a statement that he witnessed his friend, Winnie Dixon talking to two men who fit the description of McEnany and his cousin.
Add to this the written statement of one of the kitchen staff, Robert Brandt, who said that he noticed Tim and Andy at the bar at 10:30, when he left. And the alibi just keeps getting more and more solid.
Andrea Rotolo’s written statement includes recalling seeing the van outside, when she arrived at the bar, around 10:30. Shane Mrakovich, owner and bartender of the establishment, stated in his written testimony that he returned to the bar around 10 PM with Ms. Rotolo.
All of these statements were made within days of the murder, yet as curiously seems to happen when the State Police have an agenda, these same witnesses would recant their statements six months (then one year) later, claiming to have mysteriously developed better recall six months after the event.
One would have to ask where McEnany’s defense team were in court, because I would have questioned those witnesses about other minutia concerning that night, in an effort to demonstrate that their memories were not, in fact, sharper six months later, but were influenced.
Ready to Learn Something Truly Disturbing?
In the vile and corrupt, once-great Commonwealth, where I was born, the Pennsylvania State Police not only control things usually associated with a state police force, but are also the Liquor Control Board, where there have been numerous cases in which bar owners and employees have reported that coercion, threats, and other corruption have transpired, including putting pressure on bar owners and their staff to change their testimonies, in order to prevent “something unfortunate” from happening to the business.
In this case, it’s not difficult to imagine, given that McEnany’s cousin, Andy Reischman, was under the legal drinking age, and that the bar could be shut down, were that to be revealed in the course of their testimony. Now if that doesn’t sound like the perfect set-up for PSP extortion, I don’t know what does!
I believe that the Pennsylvania State Police threatened to revoke Mrakovich’s liquor license and shut the bar down for serving a minor. Mrakovich told the accused’s father, Dennis McEnany, that he was little afraid to give a written statement, because they (the Pennsylvania State Police) had “given him trouble in the past” and that he “knew they could shut down his bar if they wanted to.” I was later able to confirm this was the case, although Mrakovich refused to go on the record with that statement.
We’ll conclude this series with a look at more holes in the supposed “evidence” that resulted in McEnany’s conviction.