2 held in 2007 slaying of Port Richmond woman

"Drug-addicted punks" is how a judge described Charles Warenecki and Daniel T. Hart yesterday after holding them for trial in the 2007 slaying of a 90-year-old Port Richmond woman.

"That's the only word I can think of," said Municipal Judge Patrick Dugan, who noted that Alice Thurnau had been alive since Woodrow Wilson's presidency and was still attending church before crossing paths with the two defendants.

Warenecki, 31, of Gaul Street near Cambria, and Hart, 23, of Bowman Street near Vaux, are charged with murder, aggravated assault, conspiracy and related charges.

Thurnau was entering her home on Thompson Street near Ontario on Sept. 20, 2007, about 8:50 a.m. when the defendants roughed her up and stole her purse, police said.

The heroin addicts targeted Thurnau to get money to feed their habits, Hart told police Detective John Cummings, who yesterday read Hart's police statement given last Dec. 19.

They got away with $185, then bought four bags of heroin, the statement said.

Thurnau, who was proud to live on her own, was found alive by police with a fractured skull and broken jaw, hip and rib bones. She died in a Bucks County nursing home a month after the attack, never having returned home.

Before spotting Thurnau, the defendants tried to rob another woman on Somerset Street, but she fought them off, according to the statement.

" 'Detective, is there any way we can get this over with and I can go straight to prison?' " Cummings said, reading Hart's words.

The defendants' court-appointed attorneys, Gregory Pagano for Hart and Lee Mandell for Warenecki, said their clients were not responsible for Thurnau's death.

An autopsy by the Bucks County Coroner's Office listed the manner of death as undetermined and found that Thurnau had suffered from heart disease and chronic pulmonary embolism, Pagano said.

"I don't dispute that a crime was committed. [But] is it a homicide or a robbery?" he asked.

He suggested that the District Attorney's Office was "doctor shopping" by submitting as evidence a Philadelphia deputy medical examiner's opinion - based on the autopsy - that concluded homicide.

"That's going to be a vital issue at trial," Warenecki's attorney said after the hearing. "And hopefully a jury will see that he or she who sees the body most closely is in the better position to make that determination."

He added that Warenecki was not with Hart during the robbery. (Chrissy Reiss, Warenecki's girlfriend, testified that he had been at home, a contradiction of what she told police last year.)

Pagano said after the hearing that Hart disavows his police statement because he was high at the time and hadn't been at the robbery.

Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber said the statement puts them at the crime scene.

"They were essentially going out, riding around looking for easy targets," she said. "And little old ladies are easy targets."