Faces from the past were dragged into the present.
Oil portraits in City Hall of three former Philadelphia mayors were defaced on Sept. 27, 1978.
Around 4:30 p.m., a former city employee smashed the portraits that were hanging in a gallery on a lobby wall outside the second-floor Mayor’s Reception Room. The gallery features stately portraits of the city’sdozens of former mayors.
A 21-year-old recently fired city carpenter, Russell Byrd from Ogontz, pulled four framed, two-foot-by-three-foot portraits off the wall and smashed three against nearby railings and stairs. He left a fourth portrait — of John Barker, mayor from 1808 to 1812 — unharmed.
A cop on duty watched Byrd suspiciously pacing the stairway and went to investigate. He found the portraits in the second-floor stairwell, and followed Byrd into a men’s room and placed him under arrest.
Byrd was charged with theft, burglary, receiving stolen goods, and criminal mischief. He pleaded guilty to the mischief count in June 1979 and was sentenced to two years of probation, court records show.
The damaged paintings were of Isaac Roach, who served in the 1830s; Robert Conrad, who led the city in the 1850s; and William Smith, who helmed the big desk in the 1880s.
A descendant of Conrad, his great-great-grandson Wendell W. Oberholtzer, read about the destruction the next morning in the newspaper.
After the City Hall portrait-defacing in 1978, Wendell W. Oberholtzer holds a book with an engraving of his ancestor, Mayor Robert T. Conrad.Robert L. Mooney / Staff Photographer
Oberholtzer called City Hall and offered to help.
He said he would lend the city a personally owned portrait of his famous relative, or he could supply photos, for an artist or engraver to useto create a replacement portrait.
But the donations were not necessary. Robert Silver, commissioner of public property, said conservators from the Philadelphia Museum of Art sized up the situation and decided the portraits were not beyond repair.
Silver told The Inquirer that he could have the portraits restored to “practically their pre-smash condition” within a few months.
And the honored could once again return to their rightful places in history.
Fifteen acres of undeveloped land in Upper Darby Township face an uncertain fate as environmental groups rush to secure funding to purchase and protect the site.
Upper Darby residents and environmentalists are working to pull together $8 million to secure the purchase of the Mozino Tract, a parcel of land in Drexel Hill that, until recently, was slated to become a mixed-use housing and retail development.
Upper Darby’s council in August voted to table a proposal to rezone the land, currently zoned for residential use, to allow for a blend of single-family homes, townhouses, apartments, commercial spaces, and community gathering spots. Township staff at the meeting said they worked with the developer to create the mixed-use zoning proposal, a plan they said would help meet core township goals of increasing tax revenue and adding diverse housing options far more than an initial proposal to put 56 single-family homes on the site.
Now, developer Greg Lingo of Rockwell Development Group says he has abandoned the plans to build the mixed-use development and is giving organizers a chance to purchase the land for open space preservation.
If they can’t pull the money together, Lingo will go back to his original plan to put 56 single-family homes on the Mozino Tract, a proposal that is already permitted under the current zoning and won’t require special approvals.
As the high price tag looms, organizers say they’re confident they can find the money to keep the Mozino Tract wild.
What is the Mozino Tract?
The Mozino Tract is a 15-acre wooded parcel located between State and Township Line Roads in Drexel Hill. The land is currently owned by the Peter S. and Catherine G. Mozino Deed of Trust and is under contract to be sold to Lingo’s Rockwell Drexel LLC.
At an August meeting, Upper Darby residents packed the council chambers, urging the township to reject the plan for a mixed-use development and asking council topurchase the land to preserve it as open space. Many described spending time in the wooded area that, while not officially a public park, has been a place to commune with nature.
Amid pushback from residents, Lingo at the meeting said he would be willing to sell the property to the township, despite thinking that it would not be “a great use,” and approximated the cost of the sale at $8 million. Council unanimously tabled the zoning ordinance and voiced an openness to purchasing the property if funds could be raised.
The property’s assessed value is $446,920, according to Delaware County property records.
Lingo in an email on Sept. 15 wrote that it was immediately clear when he first met with neighbors that “they did not want any development” of the Mozino Tract, so he thought it best to work with thetownship on the mixed-use plan to “maximize open space, introduce different housing types across different price points, improve pedestrian mobility, maximize taxable income to the township and to dedicate a public park.”
Lingo’s email affirmed his commitment to Upper Darby, where he grew up, and said it was his “fault for assuming that I knew what was best” in proposing the mixed-use project.
If the environmental groups can’t find the funding to purchase the property, Lingo plans to enter into an agreement with a public or national homebuilder to build the 56 single-family homes.
Rockwell Development Group is “communicating regularly” with the environmental groups, Lingo wrote.
Organizers ‘have all confidence’ in raising funds
Bonnie Hallam, an organizer spearheading the effort to preserve the Mozino Tract, said local environmentalists “have all confidence” that they will be able to raise the $8 million.
“We really believe that this is going to be conserved, and we want the township to get on board with that,” Hallam said.
Hallam said she and other organizers submitted their first grant application on Sept. 25 to the Open Space Institute and have been in conversation with local and national funding groups, including the William Penn Foundation and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The group is going to start a community fundraising effort through the Foundation for Delaware County, she said.
The environmental leaders are also hoping to secure money through an open space referendum on the ballot in Delco this November. If the referendum is approved by voters, the county could spend $120 million financing land conservation projects, including “protecting natural areas from development.”
“We’re really going to work hard to secure that because we feel that the county is very much interested in this piece of property as well,” Hallam said.
Delaware County “has not had any conversations with Mr. Lingo regarding the purchase of the tract,” according to county spokesperson George Basile.
Hallam hopes Upper Darby Township will agree to be the title holder for the land, an agreement they have not made yet.
Upper Darby Township is “exploring its options right now” and “hoping for a resolution soon” regarding the Mozino Tract, public information officer Rob Ellis said in an email.
For Hallam and her co-organizers, preserving the open space — its wildlife, tall trees, and bubbling creek — is priceless. The Save The Mozino Forest group is organizing a rally on Saturday at Collenbrook Church.
“We have a really unique piece of property here that’s doing hard-working environmental services for the township,” Hallam said.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
NEW YORK — Francis Lee Rogers was a fixture in Central Park’s Ramble, a wooded area that is popular with birders.
She spent her days painting the Ramble’s birds and kept her homemade network of feeders filled with seed, as legions of bird lovers walked by hoping to catch a glimpse of warblers and sparrows.
For years, Rogers, who was homeless, brushed off concerns about the perils of a woman in her 60s — or anyone, for that matter — spending nights in and around the Ramble as she largely had for decades.
Last Sunday morning, Rogers, 63, was found dead, beaten and stabbed in the rustic wooden gazebo where she spent her nights, a short walk from the Central Park Boathouse, an upscale restaurant known for leisurely lunches and weddings.
She was found barefoot and covered in dirt, her body stabbed repeatedly and her head severely beaten, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the matter.
Chillingly, her long graying hair, which she wore in signature tight braids, had been shaved off.
Shortly after the attack, Jonathan Robles, 36, walked into the Central Park police precinct and told officers that a woman in the park had threatened him, one of the officials said. Robles later told investigators that he killed Rogers.
The police charged him with murder and possession of a weapon. Robles, who was living in transitional housing in a midtown hotel, had been arrested twice in New York City, both times for nonviolent crimes, including leaving an IHOP without paying the bill, the official said.
Murders are rare in Central Park, a haven for tourists and New Yorkers alike. There were none this year through Sept. 20, and none last year during the same period, according to police data.
In a city where people largely go about their lives in anonymity, especially the homeless population, Rogers stood out as a familiar figure in the park.
Known as Lee, she chatted with rich and poor, native New Yorkers and foreigners and tourists. She had hardy mountain-woman looks, with her long braids spilling out from her wide-brimmed birder’s hat, running down over layers of wool sweaters.
She carried a large rucksack filled with her watercolors, oils and paintings and sketches in progress. And she was never without her crooked walking stick or her sketchbook of pencil drawings of birds and notes about their colors.
She was devoted to the network of bird feeders she had rigged in the Ramble by hanging them with lines looped over high branches.
“For years, she was the only person maintaining those bird feeders in the Ramble,” said Lincoln Karim, a wildlife photographer who knew Rogers for about 25 years. “She would spend hundreds of dollars on birdseed and suet.”
In the perhaps three decades that Rogers had been living largely in and around the park, she sold hundreds of paintings, her friends said.
Most of the sales came by word of mouth among local birders. But she also gained a following among those who saw her working on her small, nearly pointillist renderings at her regular table in the Boathouse restaurant at the Ramble’s eastern edge.
In this affordable cafe section, Rogers could nurse a cup of coffee for hours, often using the cup’s plastic lid as a palette. It was her atelier, surrounded by large windows overlooking the Ramble and the lake.
“She was a fixture — she came by the same time every day, carrying a big backpack, and she was always welcome,” said Dean Poll, who operated the restaurant from 2000 until 2022. “I gave her her space and she never bothered anybody.”
“She was like family,” he said. “She made us Christmas cards that were beautiful. We still have them.”
Rogers, who also went by the name Elise Bainbridge Hill, told the New York Times in 2012 that her sleeping spots varied from the steps of local churches to a women’s shelter near Park Avenue in cold weather. She told a documentarian in a film released in 2016 that she ran away from her abusive childhood home in New Jersey and initially became a prostitute in New York.
Painting was her escape from life on the streets, she said, with Central Park as her oasis from Manhattan’s bustle.
In conversation, Rogers would often slip seamlessly from detailed discussions about bird species to digressions about conspiracy theories.
“She knew a lot about a lot of things but then she would just slip into outrageous stuff, like her flying in spaceships,” Karim said. “But she was a damn good painter, I have to say.”
Karim said he helped Rogers sell several works, with smaller ones fetching $300 and a large oil painting going for $1,200. “She had enough money to get off the street,” he said.
Joe Lopez, 64, of Manhattan, a caterer who knew Rogers for 15 years, said he bought several of her illustrations for as much as $400, including one of Pale Male, the celebrity red-tailed hawk that captivated the city’s bird-watching community from his nest on a Fifth Avenue luxury building.
Rogers, who used a public bathroom in the park to wash up, took pride in keeping a neat appearance. But more recently she would go barefoot, Karim said, or sometimes wrap her feet in cardboard.
The gazebo had become her regular sleeping spot. Just before her death, she weathered the nor’easter that buffeted the region by sleeping on a bench beneath a green tarp, with her belongings and painting supplies around her.
On Monday, some of her friends trudged through the rain to pay their respects. One of them, Moises Diaz, 71, of the Upper East Side, lit a candle for Rogers, whom he had seen for years on his daily walks.
Diaz, who is also an artist, played a recording of a conversation he had with Rogers about six months ago. She had asked him about his recent work, a wall hanging he had made out of foam.
“She had a beautiful voice,” he said as he listened to the recording. “There’s a lot of mean people that come to this place — a lot, but not her.”
Lopez came by, too. He brought along a satchel of drawings by Rogers, including the one of Pale Male. He called it “a masterpiece.”
“To me, I was buying something beautiful, but it was also money I knew she needed,” Lopez said. “She wasn’t a homeless person to me, she was a genuine special character. The birders really respected her.”
HARRISBURG ― Pennsylvania’s Judicial Conduct Board on Thursday urged a judicial disciplinary court to permanently remove a Philadelphia judge from the bench, saying he had displayed a pattern of unethical and “boorish” behavior that culminated in an effort to influence a colleague’s decision in a criminal case last year.
Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio showed “little respect for the court and little respect for the rules of the court,” said Elizabeth Hoffheins, deputy counsel for the Judicial Conduct Board.
DiClaudio had a history of disciplinary issues, she said, and he had not taken adequate responsibility for his actions.
“Anything less than removal would fall short of restoring the public’s trust,” Hoffheins said.
The board’s request came after two days of testimony before the Court of Judicial Discipline, which is expected to determine DiClaudio’s fate as a judge in the coming months.
DiClaudio acknowledged Thursday that his remarks to fellow Common Pleas Court Judge Zachary Shaffer were improper, but insisted it was a complete misunderstanding and was never meant to tilt the scale of justice.
“I wish I never said it. I regret ever saying it,” DiClaudio said of the comments to Shaffer. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Shaffer testified that he was on the bench in his courtroom on June 12, 2025, when DiClaudio’s personal assistant, Gary Silver, walked in and said DiClaudio wanted to see him.
Shaffer said he and his clerk, Nicole Vernaccio, had been in touch with DiClaudio that week about buying T-shirts from the cheesesteak shop owned by DiClaudio’s wife. They assumed the request was to go pick them up.
The exchange occurred in the robing room of DiClaudio’s former courtroom inside the city’s criminal courthouse. Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
The two walked to DiClaudio’s courtroom, then gathered in his robing room. They spoke for several minutes about various topics, he said, before DiClaudio asked Vernaccio to leave. Vernaccio also testified that she was asked to step out.
Shaffer said DiClaudio then pulled out a piece of lined paper with “Dwayne Jones, courtroom 905, and Monday’s date” written on it.
DiClaudio held it out at his side, he said, then looked at him and said, “OK?”
Shaffer said he was confused, and hesitantly said, “OK.”
He said DiClaudio ripped up the paper and threw it away.
As Shaffer started to leave, he said, DiClaudio told him: “‘You probably would have done the right thing anyway.’”
Shaffer said he was shocked and believed DiClaudio was suggesting he should give a favorable sentence to Jones, who was scheduled to appear before him in the coming days on charges of illegal gun possession connected to a fatal shooting.
Shaffer reported the conversation to his supervisors the next morning, and they referred the matter to the Judicial Conduct Board. He recused himself from Jones’ case.
The board charged DiClaudio with multiple ethical violations last September. He was later suspended without pay.
All of this came to be, DiClaudio said, after he attended the Roots Picnic in June 2025 — where he said he hung out backstage with Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill. In the common area, he said, Jones approached him and said he had a forthcoming sentencing before Shaffer.
DiClaudio said he didn’t know Jones, and told him only that his colleague was “a good judge who would do the right thing.” When Jones handed him his business card, he said, he put it in his wallet, not wanting to be rude.
DiClaudio denied that he later summoned Shaffer to his courtroom, despite an audio recording that showed that shortly before his assistant went to retrieve Shaffer, DiClaudio asked: “Is Judge Shaffer on the bench right now? Can you call down there and see if he’s still on the bench please?”
DiClaudio said he only asked about Shaffer because he had just addressed a case where a defense attorney Shaffer is dating did not appear in court. He said he wanted to ask Shaffer why she didn’t show. (The courtroom audio confirmed that DiClaudio addressed the woman’s case just before inquiring about Shaffer.)
He said he did not instruct Silver to visit Shaffer, and was surprised when the judge walked in.
Once inside the robing room, DiClaudio said, he, Shaffer, and the clerk discussed various topics. It was only as Shaffer went to leave, he said, that he picked up his phone and wallet holding Jones’ business card, and remembered the concert exchange.
He said he took out the card and told Shaffer: “I saw this guy at a concert. I told him you’re a good judge and you’d do the right thing.”
Then, he said, he tossed it into the trash.
“It was improper and wrong. There was no good reason to say that even though it wasn’t my intention to influence the case,” he said Thursday, adding: “I never wanted him to do anything with that statement other than to say thank you.”
The board had initially said that DiClaudio sought to sway the case because Jones was a friend of Meek Mill. Jones, in an interview last year, also said he was a friend of the artist’s.
DiClaudio, too, is close to Mill.
But Hoffheins did not introduce evidence of that during Thursday’s hearing. She said this week that the board still believed that to be true, but did not need to prove a motive in its case.
Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio speaks with rapper Meek Mill on Facetime outside the Philadelphia courthouse on Sept. 16, 2025. DiClaudio, while on the call, approached the family of Tyree Musier, whose murder conviction was overturned, and said he thought they would appreciate Mill saying hello.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
“This remark was not simply a compliment, not simply an off-the-cuff remark,” she said. “It was calculated to occur three days prior to this man’s sentencing.”
DiClaudio was elected to Common Pleas Court in November 2015, and took the bench in January 2016. Before his suspension last year, he mostly heard cases filed by people seeking to have their murder convictions overturned.
He presided over many high-profile exonerations and wrongful-conviction cases, and approved the release or resentencing of dozens of people who had been serving life in prison.
DiClaudio was known for working long hours, moving cases efficiently, and thoroughly explaining his decisions to the families of victims and the defendants. But he was also unconventional in his at times brash communication style on the bench.
That was on display again Thursday. He often rambled in a stream of consciousness from the stand, breathlessly veering between accepting responsibility, disputing Shaffer’s testimony, and even relaying his colleague’s dating history. His attorneys, Samuel Stretton and George Bochetto, struggled to reel him in.
“Just stop,” Stretton interjected several times.
Hoffheins pointed to the display, as well as DiClaudio’s previous disciplinary record, as proof of a pattern of misconduct.
Before becoming a judge, DiClaudio was censured by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for “serial misconduct,” including violating legal ethics rules. Shortly after he took the bench in 2016, Hoffheins said, the Judicial Conduct Board sent him a private disciplinary letter for engaging in “boorish behavior” toward his court staff.
Then, in 2020, the Court of Judicial Discipline determined that he violated the code of conduct for judges when he failed to report debts on annual financial disclosure forms and repeatedly defied a judge’sorders to pay thousands of dollars in overdue bills to a Bala Cynwyd fitness club. He was suspended for two weeks, and placed on probation through 2026.
And last April, the Judicial Conduct Board accused him of using his position as a judge to promote his wife’s cheesesteak shop, eroding public trust in the judiciary, and abusing the prestige of the office for personal gain. DiClaudio has denied the allegations, and the case remains ongoing.
“What I am hearing, what I am feeling, is a persistent theme of your doing things and saying things … that are not wise,” said Judge Charles L. Becker, of the disciplinary panel.
Judge Carolyn Nichols called it “a painful trail of incidents.”
In a final plea, DiClaudio, 63, said if he returned to the bench, he would only work the few weeks necessary to secure his pension and lifetime health insurance to support his wife and two young children. Then he would retire, he said.
He teared up as he spoke of his children and defended his integrity and career.
“I talk a lot, but it’s my greatest strength and my greatest weakness,” he said. While he might be a “crazier judge,” he said, he’s “a judge who makes the right decisions.”
“That may be an explanation,” Becker said, “but, frankly, I’m not sure that’s a defense.”
Stretton, in his closing remarks, asked the panel for mercy.
“Yes he did something bad. And some of his conduct here can get a little rambunctious,” he said. “… But I see a great, decent judge. He’s done a lot of good in the community and on the bench. He’s well-respected.”
The tribunal will now weigh the matter, a process that could take months.
New Jersey farmers whose fruit crops were damaged or destroyed by an unexpected four-day freeze last spring could apply for grants to help them recover their losses under new legislation that would earmark $60 million in state funding for such relief.
The late-April cold snap zapped peach, apple, pear, cherry, and other early-blooming trees, as well as shrub, vine, and ground crops like blueberries, strawberries, and grapes at farms both statewide and throughout the eastern U.S. from Virginia to Michigan. Many growers lost 30% or more of their fruit crops, with some reporting total losses. Officials estimated damages in New Jersey would top $300 million.
Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R., Sussex) applauded the state and federal response, with both Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture making statewide disaster declarations that cleared the way for farmers to apply for emergency loans and other relief assistance.
But in the weeks afterward, farmers called for direct financial aid, with many saying the freeze was the most catastrophic of their lifetimes. So Fantasia recently introduced a bill that would allocate $60 million for grants impacted farmers could apply for, with priority given to those hardest hit. The bill would require the state agriculture secretary to report within a year how the money was spent and advise if more aid is needed.
Seven Republicans signed on to co-sponsor the bill. Sen. Parker Space (R., Sussex), who’s also a farmer by trade, will sponsor the bill in the upper chamber, Fantasia said.
Fantasia said $60 million in aid for farmers is far from the controversial budget add-ons that annually bloat the state budget and make GOP legislators howl in protest.
This year, state budget appropriations critics deride as “pork” included $500,000 for pickleball courts and millions for other “really beautiful things that are absolutely wants and not needs,” Fantasia said. Farm relief “is not a want. It’s a need,” she added.
Farming has a sprawling footprint in New Jersey, she said. Almost 10,000 farms generated nearly $1.5 billion in sales in 2022, federal data shows. They employ about 25,000 farmworkers, the bill says.
“We can sure as hell take $60 million from the general fund and give it to an industry that spans the entire state and brings in over a billion dollars to the state of New Jersey,” Fantasia said. “We’re talking about people’s livelihoods and ability to keep jobs and stay in their homes.”
April’s freeze came as farmers already were struggling with rising labor, fertilizer, and fuel costs. Some smaller farms rely on a single season for their annual income, prompting industry observers to predict the freeze would force some growers to cut staff, sell off acreage, or quit farming altogether.
For those reasons, Fantasia expects legislators from both sides of the aisle will support the bill.
“There’s no question here: Severe losses happened. No product to sell. Devastating to the economy. Devastating to the jobs in New Jersey. I think it’s a no-brainer,” she said.
Hunterdon County farmer John Melick lost much of his peach, apple, cherry, plum, and pear crops to the April freeze.
Crop insurance has helped him recover, he said. But he welcomes any assistance the state wants to offer the fruit-growing industry, noting it would be most beneficial for smaller farmers, those without diversified crops, and the few who couldn’t afford or thought they didn’t need crop insurance.
“It’s not going to put me out of business if I don’t get it, but I won’t turn it away either,” Melick said of state aid.
He’d be more excited for Trenton’s intervention if legislators could control the weather, he joked, because the recent rainy stretch has kept customers away.
“I’m hoping for sunny weekends for October, so that the 30% crop that I do have I can sell to pick-your-own customers,” Melick said. “When it rains every Saturday and Sunday, they’re not coming out.”
John Baer was the son of a Harrisburg newspaperman. He literally grew up in the Pennsylvania state Capitol. And he never left.
His father, John H. Baer, was a political reporter for what is now the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, and Mr. Baer spent many Sunday afternoons hanging around the old Capitol press room while his father worked on stories. Decades later, in 1972, Mr. Baer joined the Evening News in Harrisburg as a reporter and went on to work for nearly 50 years in that same press room.
“I’m probably unique in Pennsylvania politics and journalism,” Mr. Baer said in a 2020 oral history interview for Pennsylvania State University. “I dare say there probably aren’t any who can say they worked in the same state capitol newsroom that their father did.”
In 1987, the Daily News hired Mr. Baer to cover state politics in Harrisburg. He became a political columnist for the newspaper in 2000, and his plainspoken, no-holds-barred stories later appeared in The Inquirer as well. Before he left the papers in 2019, he covered hundreds of political campaigns, conventions, and elections, and wrote about thousands of local, state, and national politicians.
Mr. Baer’s column on politics appeared in The Inquirer and Daily News from 2000 to 2019. Newspapers.com
“He was the most feared reporter in my eight years in Harrisburg,” former Gov. Ed Rendell said. “He did his work. He did his digging. He really cared about the issues.”
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Mr. Baer died of cancer at his home in New Cumberland, Pa. He was 79.
For 32 years, Mr. Baer was a hard-hitting, award-winning political reporter and columnist for The Inquirer and Daily News. He was also a columnist for PennLive and the Patriot-News, onetime public TV producer and show host, former press secretary, author, teacher, and mentor.
Many of those Mr. Baer covered in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Washington praised his “deep integrity” and “fierce independence,” and called him a “keen observer of Pennsylvania politics” and “a heavyweight in Pennsylvania political reporting” in online tributes. State Rep. Ben Waxman called Mr. Baer a “legendary Capitol journalist.” U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans said he was “authentic and a one-of-a-kind journalist.”
Mr. Baer told Penn State he wanted to “let people see the inside of the game in Harrisburg.” His Inquirer.com online profile reads: “John Baer has written about politics and government since 1987. Neither subject ever fails to provide him with stories of policies and politicians walking on or skirting by paths to perdition.”
In addition to covering nine Pennsylvania governors, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, and the ascensions of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Mr. Baer wrote about the execution of serial killer Gary Heidnik, the pleas for more research funding by a cancer victim, and the battle of a state policeman’s widow to receive her husband’s pension benefits.
He said some of his favorite columns were the mea culpa pieces he wrote at the end of each year that highlighted things he got wrong. “I truly just had a ball at the Daily News,” he told Penn State. “I just loved it. … I’ve always said I had no adult supervision, and it was wonderful.”
Mr. Baer joined PennLive in 2019, and his last column was published in July. “The depth and breadth of his knowledge was beyond compare,” said Amy Worden, his editor at PennLive.
Mr. Baer and his wife, Rosemary, married in 1969.Courtesy of the family
Before the Daily News, Mr. Baer spent 14 years in total as a reporter for the Patriot-News, an award-winning public TV producer and show host for WITF in Harrisburg, and a press secretary during Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton’s unsuccessful run for governor in 1986.
He wrote freelance stories for Philadelphia Magazine and national publications. He was a frequent guest on political TV and radio shows and moderated several statewide candidate debates.
A lifelong foodie, he also reviewed Harrisburg-area restaurants for a magazine under the pseudonym “the Phantom Diner.” His book, On the Front Lines of Pennsylvania Politics,was published in 2012.
“He was so good at writing strong opinions with depth,” Paul Vigna, a retired Daily News editor, said.
Mr. Baer earned awards for his journalism and was inducted into the Pennsylvania News Media Hall of Fame in 2024. He was cofounder of the Pennsylvania Press Club and onetime president of the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association.
In tributes, colleagues praised his “sharp wit” and called him a “journalism giant,” “terrific writer,” and “mentor to many of us.” The internship program at the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association is named in his honor.
“He was an All-Star, a Hall of Famer,” Vigna said. Rendell said: “He didn’t take any BS.”
John Baer was born June 25, 1947, in Harrisburg. He graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School in 1965 and earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland and a master’s degree in education later from Temple University.
He coached basketball and football teams while teaching English for three years at Trinity High School in Harrisburg after college. He married Rosemary Ruggieri in 1969, and they had sons Johnny and James.
Mr. Baer and his wife hosted many memorable Christmas parties and enjoyed road trips to Georgetown University basketball games, New York Mets baseball games, and their sons’ many sporting events. He played racquetball and tennis, and ran a marathon at 50.
He was a longtime member of St. Theresa Catholic Church in New Cumberland. “He liked interesting people and had lifelong friendships,” his family said in a tribute. “He loved his friends.”
On Facebook, colleague Diana Robinson said: “Here’s to you, John Baer. You’ll always be The Most Interesting Man in Harrisburg.”
In addition to his wife and sons, Mr. Baer is survived by three grandchildren and other relatives.
Services were held earlier.
Donations in his name may be made to Vickie’s Angel Foundation, 511 Bridge St., Box 174, New Cumberland, Pa. 17070.
A 13-year-old boy was charged with murder and related crimes after fatally shooting a 16-year-old boy in a Norristown home, authorities said Thursday.
The shooting happened the morning of Sept. 22 at a residence on the 700 block of Arch Street, where prosecutors said Daniel Hawkins-Boyce fatally shot the victim, William Boyd.
Hawkins-Boyce came into possession of a Ruger .380 handgun a week before the shooting, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. It was not clear how he did so. He told police he “found” it, the document said.
Hawkins-Boyce and Boyd were hanging out in the home’s basement and had recently smoked marijuana when he accidentally discharged the firearm, striking Boyd in the face, the affidavit said.
Hawkins-Boyce called 911, and detectives arrived to find him on the front porch with his mother, where he told them he was responsible for the shooting.
Hawkins-Boyce did not live at the home where the shooting occurred, authorities said. He told investigators that he’d taken the gun to meet Boyd, and that he’d checked to make sure it wasn’t loaded.
In the basement, he told police, he left the gun unattended when he went to the use the bathroom for 10 or 15 minutes.
When he returned, he said, he noticed the gun was in a different position than where he left it.
Hawkins-Boyce told police he began scrolling the social media app TikTok and tapping the gun’s trigger with his index finger, and the gun went off.
After the shooting, he ran home and awakened his mother to tell her what happened, the affidavit said.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said in a statement Thursday that evidence showed the teen had “recklessly fired the firearm at the victim.”
The firearm was reported stolen in Philadelphia in June, according to the affidavit.
Steele said Hawkins-Boyce was charged as an adult in accordance with state law, but he said the case would likely move to juvenile court after a review from a judge.
The teen was arraigned on Sept. 30 and is being held at the Montgomery County Juvenile Detention Center on a $200,000 bail.
He is expected to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Oct. 14.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been ordered not to engage in high-speed car chases and to make vehicle stops only if they have completed specific training, under new internal guidance issued after several drivers were shot in encounters with ICE.
A memo sent to officers in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division and obtained by The Associated Press warned they are not authorized to chase vehicles that fail to pull over under any circumstances. Instead, officers should take down the vehicles’ information for further investigation, according to the memo signed by ICE’s executive associate director Marcos D. Charles and dated Wednesday.
The new guidance comes after ICE-initiated vehicle stops have repeatedly escalated when drivers have refused to cooperate or tried to flee. ICE agents have fired their guns during more than a dozen such encounters since last year, killing at least four people and wounding several others.
President Donald Trump’s administration has faced internal tension over how to handle traffic stops, which are seen as particularly high-risk encounters.
After fatal shootings of drivers in Maine and Texas in July, ICE officers were directed to temporarily pause most vehicle stops. But the next day, Trump went on social media to direct the agency to continue traffic stops, calling them “one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.”
ICE has faced intense pressure from the White House to deport more people who are in the country illegally, and its arrests have reached record numbers. At the same time, the agency’s rapid hiring spree last year resulted in some poorly vetted and trained officers hitting the streets.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security had no immediate comment on the policy guidance.
The new memo outlines steps intended to improve the safety of vehicle stops for ICE officers, drivers they are targeting, their passengers, and the public.
The memo told ICE’s field office directors that they must ensure vehicles used for traffic stops have lights and sirens that let the public know they are law enforcement vehicles when activated. All officers on the scenes of vehicle stops must wear and activate their body cameras, under the guidance.
In addition, only officers who have completed one of five specific agency training courses can conduct vehicle stops. Officers who have not completed the training courses can only participate in vehicle stops “in a support capacity” as passengers and cannot be the drivers of any of the vehicles involved.
The guidance says ICE officers can continue to use a controversial technique known as pinning, which is defined as “using a vehicle or physical barrier to trap or stop a car,” but only if they have received special training. Similarly, only trained officers can use spike strips that deflate tires to prevent drivers from fleeing.
The memo came the day that courtroom testimony highlighted ways in which two ICE officers involved in a vehicle stop, pursuit, and shooting that wounded a delivery driver in Austin last month would not have complied with the new guidance.
During a bond hearing for Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, testimony showed that the officer who shot him wasn’t wearing a body-worn camera. The ICE officer who did have a camera was driving in a separate car and turned it off during the pursuit.
Prosecutors presented surveillance video that showed an ICE agent chasing Garces Perez at high speeds through residential streets after he fled an initial traffic stop.
Garces Perez faces federal assault charges after investigators say he struck an ICE officer with his driver’s side mirror. That officer then shot into Perez’s vehicle, lodging a bullet in his back, officials say.
Attorneys for Garces Perez have called the charges against him “retaliation” and have argued that the camera footage was inconclusive because it didn’t fully capture the moment when he allegedly tried to flee.
All seven justices rejected District Attorney Larry Krasner’s argument that the law unconstitutionally strips the authority of an elected district attorney by granting jurisdictions to crime “within” SEPTA to a special prosecutor appointed by the Pennsylvania attorney general. But they did not unanimously agree on the reason.
The special prosecutor can investigate crimes in all counties in which SEPTA operates, but can take over cases unilaterally only in Philadelphia.
Chief Justice Debra Todd wrote in the majority opinion that the part of the special prosecutor law specific to Philadelphia serves a “legitimate state interest: promoting public safety through the protection of SEPTA employees and riders by supporting the prosecution of crimes within SEPTA, and specifically, SEPTA-related crimes in Philadelphia.”
The law responds to “public safety concerns regarding increased SEPTA-related crime in Philadelphia, and the belief that such crimes were not being sufficiently prosecuted,” Todd wrote.
State Attorney General Dave Sunday, who is authorized to appoint the special prosecutor, said the law “has paid great dividends in holding violent offenders accountable” for crimes on SEPTA.
“Our mass transit prosecutor will continue to prosecute criminals who have killed and assaulted other individuals, perpetrated acts of gun violence, and stolen SEPTA property,” Sunday said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office did not return a request for comment.
The special prosecutor’s office has become more active in the last year after a slow start. The office initially hired a sole attorney and did not prosecute a case until 2025, two years after its creation. The office has since taken on a portfolio of around two dozen cases, a spokesperson for the attorney general said. Serious crime on SEPTA has trended downward, according to the agency, falling around 20% in mid-2026 compared with the same period the previous year.
Earlier this year, the special prosecutor,Michael Untermeyer, took on an assault case involving a woman accused of pepper-spraying and punching a conservative influencer during a viral confrontation on a SEPTA bus. And a representative for Sunday’soffice said the prosecutor was preparing for a homicide trial in November, and the office was recently referred a case involving an assault on a SEPTA bus driver.
The ruling is the latest in which the Supreme Court has shown willingness to take away from Krasner functions that county prosecutors traditionally havehad sole discretion over. The justices in June found that Philadelphia prosecutors had engaged in a pattern of misleading judges when seeking to overturn murder convictions, and instructed judges to notify the state attorney general’s office so it can review cases when Krasner’s office makes such requests going forward.
But the ruling on the SEPTA special prosecutor might be short-lived.
Krasner’s lawsuit called the law an “unconstitutional, radical, and unprecedented measure” amounting to a “shocking usurpation of power.”
In June, Commonwealth Court issued a 4-3 decision against Krasner, finding the law constitutional. In the majority opinion, Judge Anne E. Covey said the act “does not clearly, palpably, and plainly violate the Pennsylvania Constitution.”
In a Thursday concurring opinion, Justice David Wecht emphasized the ways the special prosecutor law was tailored to Krasner specifically.
The law disqualifies anyone who worked at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office as of roughly the beginning of Krasner’s tenure from serving as special prosecutor, the justice noted. And the measure was set to expire a year after Krasner’s second term ended (he has since won a third, which began in January).
The special prosecutor law is “tailored to hamstring Philadelphia’s thrice-elected and sitting District Attorney’s customary prerogatives relative to crime within the jurisdiction that office serves,” Wecht wrote.
“But none of that matters,” he said, because since 1951 the Pennsylvania Constitution has allowed for laws ”regulating the affairs of the City of Philadelphia.”
Over five days in August, Pennsylvania health officials called the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office at least three times and sent an email asking to discuss the death of an infant who had tested positive for measles.
They did not connect with coroner Stephen Diamantoni before Gov. Josh Shapiro came to the county to announce at an Aug. 25 news conference that two unvaccinated Lancaster residents had died in a growing measles outbreak, the state’s first measles-associated deaths in 35 years.
Soon after, the county coroner — an elected Republican who has presided over the office for nearly two decades — was telling reporters the state had not talked to him directly, raising questions about the state’s communications.
His comments, coupled with his position that he did not believe one of the two infants affected had died from measles, kicked off a viral exchange of misinformation cited by anti-vaccine activists — and spiraling up to federal health leaders — to discredit the dangers of Pennsylvania’s growing measles outbreak.
Now emails from the coroner’s office, obtained by The Inquirer through an open-records request, show that state officials made significant outreach to Diamantoni, far beyond his prior statements acknowledging only that his deputy spoke with state officials shortly before the news conference.
In fact, doctors from the state health department had tried to contact his office about the case for days, with increasing urgency. At one point, a doctor told one of Diamantoni’s staffers that they were ready “24/7” to speak with someone from the office.
Yet two weeks after the announcement, he continued to emphasize the state’s lacking communication in an in-person interview with The Inquirer. “I have not received any information directly from the state [health] department,” he said on Sept. 9.
By then, his statements had enabled President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to question whether the deaths reported in Pennsylvania were real.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for weeks omitted the first two deaths and those subsequently reported by the state in its national reporting, marking an extraordinary departure from public health norms. As of Thursday, the agency had updated its tally to recognize two deaths nationally this year, while Pennsylvania has reported five measles-related deaths.
Lancaster County coroner Stephen Diamantoni poses for a photo in his office in September.Gillian McGoldrick
Asked to comment on the records, Diamantoni said he was not aware of the state’s outreach ahead of Shapiro’s announcement.
He said state officials should have been more explicit in the calls they made to his office staffers, who sent him and his deputy emails relaying messages. The communications did not make it clear that they needed to speak to him about a measles-associated death, Diamantoni said, adding that he is easy to reach.
“It didn’t sound like there was urgency. It didn’t sound like anyone indicated that there was a measles death that we want to talk to the coroner about,” he said.
Public officers like Diamantoni have an obligation to ensure staff can get timely messages to him, especially in a public health emergency like a measles outbreak, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director emerita of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Likewise, she noted, state officials must ensure communications with the public are transparent and easy to understand.
State officials did not immediately say how they define a “measles-associated death” and have provided few details on the deaths themselves, leaving county coroners to fill in the blanks.
Public health experts have noted that the politically charged back-and-forth and competing narratives around the deaths risks confusing the public at a time when clarity is crucial — amid the largest measles outbreak in the country, with state officials reporting nearly 1,000 cases and five measles-associated deaths.
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The contradictory communications from the state and the local coroner’s office around the initial Lancaster deaths set the stage for Kennedy to attack Shapiro in an X post, claiming the Democratic governor may have “fabricated” two of the deaths in Pennsylvania.
Shapiro has sharply criticized Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccination advocate, for spreading misinformation about vaccine safety and Pennsylvania’s outbreak, now the largest in the nation this year, with the most deaths reported by any state since 1992.
Asked for comment on communications with Diamantoni, state officials provided a statement by email saying Pennsylvania law bars them from providing further information on the initial measles-associated deaths.
The health department’s epidemiology team “thoroughly investigates and verifies” measles-associated deaths to ensure that they meet the state’s definition, and does not announce deaths until they have finished an investigation, health department press secretary Neil Ruhland said in an email.
He said state law does not require the department to report deaths to a coroner’s office; rather, coroners and “other certifiers” report deaths to the state health department.
“PA DOH has followed this explicit process for all measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania,” Ruhland wrote.
‘No one looks good’
News outlets began calling Diamantoni as soon as the first measles-related deaths were reported in Lancaster, where he is a family medicine doctor and former Lancaster City Council president. First elected to the coroner’s office in 2007, he said he views his duties as apolitical and describes himself as a strong advocate for vaccination.
He told media outlets he had been surprised by the state’s announcement, as his office had not identified any deaths from measles.
The office had investigated the death of an infant who tested positive for the disease, but Diamantoni has maintained that the child had died from a lacerated spleen, not the highly contagious illness.
Diamantoni told The Inquirer repeatedly that state health officials had never spoken personally with him about the death of an infant later identified as Ivan Miller, who was hours old when he died on Aug. 14.
He said that state health officials had only reached out hours before their news conference, and that his deputy, Eric Bieber, had spoken to them.
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Internal office records reveal that five days before the news conference, a staffer in the coroner’s office e-mailed Diamantoni, saying that an infectious-disease doctor with the state health department was looking to speak to “one of you” about “the positive measles case with the infant we just had.”
The state health department followed up on its initial Aug. 20 call with subsequent emails and calls on Aug. 21, a Friday, and Aug. 24, the following Monday, records show.
One doctor included his state-issued cell phone number in an email to a coroner’s office staffer and Bieber and emphasized that he was available “24/7” to discuss the case.
When Bieber spoke to representatives from the state health department on Aug. 25, the office did not realize that the state was about to announce two measles-associated deaths, according to Diamantoni.
Diamantoni added that since he did not believe Ivan Miller’s death was caused by measles, he had not been expecting any outreach from the state.
“I don’t think it would have brought a red flag to me. It just looked like a request we usually receive from different individuals, different agencies, requesting cause and manner information,” Diamantoni said.
Yet it is the responsibility of public officials to establish communication procedures at their offices, especially when a contagious disease is spreading and the public needs clear information, according to Penn’s Jamieson.
In public offices, she said, “you shouldn’t be seeing a situation in which the person doesn’t get the information, or is able to say, ‘I didn’t get it.’”
State officials could have communicated more clearly in announcing the deaths as well, she said, noting that they did not immediately define “measles-associated death” in an initial news release.
Jamieson said it is important for health officials to explain “what we know, what we don’t know, and how we’re finding out what we don’t know” in terms the public can understand.
“Anytime the public is listening to voices that are supposed to be speaking with authority, and the public, instead of hearing a clear message, is confused, you have a problem,” she said. “No one looks good.”
Measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania
State officials have repeatedly cited state privacy laws in response to criticism of their communications, saying they cannot provide detail about how they investigated the measles-associated deaths.
The state defines a measles-associated death as one that occurs within 30 days of symptom onset in a person with clinical evidence of infection and a positive laboratory test for measles, and who did not die of another unrelated cause, like a car crash.
Officials have provided little information beyond the fact that none of the five people who have died were vaccinated, and their county of residence.
Local coroners like Diamantoni have offered more details.
For example, in early September, Jefferson County’s coroner, also an elected Republican, confirmed the death of a 40-year-old woman from measles. He disclosed that the woman also had severe respiratory conditions, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, that made her vulnerable to serious complications from a respiratory illness like measles.
Later in the same week, the Mifflin County coroner, another Republican, confirmed that an unvaccinated 18-year-old had died from a rare neurological complication of measles.
Diamantoni has shared that Ivan Miller, who died at a birthing center in Lancaster County, tested positive for a measles infection acquired before birth. His family, who is Amish, told the Atlantic that his mother had a severe case of measles and gave birth early.
Although Diamantoni did not consider measles to have caused the death, he said, measles was included on the boy’s death certificate in a section that lists “significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause.”
Physicians have noted that measles can weaken the spleen, putting it at risk of rupture. Diamantoni cited a lacerated spleen as the primary cause of death.
The second death, another Amish infant, was not initially reported to Diamantoni; Lancaster’s Clinic for Special Children, which treats Amish children with genetic conditions, had treated the baby until her death.
Diamantoni’s office investigated the death about a week after the state’s news conference; he later told reporters that the baby was 6 weeks old and had Amish lethal microcephaly, a fatal genetic condition that makes respiratory illnesses particularly risky. Diamantoni said measles caused the baby’s death.
On Wednesday, state health officials announced a fifth death, a Lancaster County resident who tested positive for measles and died. Diamantoni told The Inquirer that he had not handled that death, but that state health officials had informed him about it. He said they provided no further information.
State officials did not say whether the person, who was unvaccinated, died in Lancaster County.
Diamantoni told an Inquirer reporter in early September that he was proud that his office was one of the first in the country to be certified by the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners.
“People may not always agree with our findings, but they’re well investigated and well thought out,” he said.
Staff writer Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.
