Over five decades after committing a horrible crime that shook a Pennsylvania community, John Veltre, now 69, has been re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of two young children and the brutal attack on their mother in 1973. Veltre, who was 16 at the time of the crime, had his sentence reconsidered after the United States Supreme Court ruled that all juveniles serving mandatory life sentences must have their sentences reviewed. Despite this possibility for reconsideration, a Westmoreland County judge agreed with the Office of Attorney General that Veltre’s crimes were too heinous to warrant any type of early release.
Attorney General Dave Sunday said on the issue, “I am an advocate for second chances when they are appropriate—however, some crimes are just too heinous and harmful to the community to warrant relief.” His office contended, and the court agreed, that Veltre had not fully accepted responsibility for his conduct and posed a threat to society.
The circumstances of the crime are as graphic today as they were in 1973, when Veltre broke into a young woman’s home and brutally murdered her and her children. According to the Attorney General’s Office, the children died as a result of blunt force trauma, and their mother was presumed dead. In a statement that reveals the crime’s enduring impact, Attorney General Sunday said, “I cannot fathom acts more violent and vicious than what took place here: a baby and toddler were brutally murdered, and a mother was raped and beaten, only surviving due to her own determination and strength, not because of any mercy shown by a callous killer who left her to die with her children.”
Alicia Werner, Senior Deputy Attorney General, recently handled this post-conviction matter. Her efforts to keep Veltre in prison show the ongoing contradiction between justice for heinous acts and the changing legal landscape for juvenile offenders.
