Daugherty, who was mentally disabled, was humiliated, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered by a group of individuals she considered to be her new circle of friends.
Her body was wrapped in Christmas decorations, placed inside a trash can and discarded in the parking lot of Greensburg-Salem Middle School.
The case garnered national attention for its brutality and led to proposed legislative changes, such as “Jennifer’s Law,” which would criminalize failing to report violent crimes witnessed in the state of Pennsylvania.
[4] Peggy Miller and Robert Masters were roommates of Ricky Smyrnes and had minimal contact with law enforcement prior to the murder.
He suffered abuse and neglect until he was taken in by the Smyrnes family in North Huntingdon at age 10, according to testimony by forensic psychologist Alice Applegate.
[5] His lawyer, Terri Fayes, told the jury that Smyrnes suffered sexual and physical abuse from his father and his uncle.
Smyrnes invited Meidinger and Knight to stay at his apartment at 428 N. Pennsylvania Avenue in Greensburg, where the murder would occur three days later.
[7] Daugherty's last recorded words were a note to her mother that said, “Mom, I hope you have a good day at work, and I love you very much.
[8] Meidinger told jurors, "at some point, she [Daugherty] trusted me because she knew me from the West Place (a center for people with special needs)."
The friendship led to Daugherty traveling from her home in Mount Pleasant to Smyrnes' apartment on Monday, February 8, 2010.
[2] According to his testimony, Masters helped Daugherty retrieve her clothes that Knight and Smyrnes had stripped from her and tossed out a window on the first day of the beatings.
Before Daugherty could get her clothes and get out, Knight and Smyrnes returned to the apartment at 428 N. Pennsylvania Ave.[13] As a result, the group voted to kill her.
Tina Warrick testified Marinucci told her she was disappointed with the type of Christmas garland Miller purchased to tie Daugherty up and dump her body.
The appeal included statements and claims that jurors acted with passion and prejudice and arbitrarily imposed the death penalty.
[28] "Following our thorough review of the record, in this case, we conclude that the appellant’s sentence of death was not the product of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor, but rather was fully supported by the evidence that (Knight) and his co-defendants held the intellectually disabled victim against her will for several days, during which time they continuously subjected her to myriad forms of physical and emotional torture, eventually stabbing her in the chest, slicing her throat (and) strangling her"On August 3, 2011, Marinucci was formally given a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole after being found guilty in May of first-degree murder.
[29] Marinucci had her life without possibility of parole sentence revoked, due to the 2012 and 2016 Supreme Court rulings Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v.
[34] Meidinger filed paperwork in November 2019 with the state's Board of Pardons, seeking early termination of her 40- to 80-year prison sentence.
[41] Forensic pathologist and former Allegheny County Coroner Cyril H. Wecht, who had conducted and reviewed thousands of autopsies of homicide victims, stated, "...
This is one of the most horrific cases I have seen... You have one young, defenseless woman, six people who are keeping her captive and doing all of these things, knowing she is [mentally challenged].