The case
Stanley Detweiler, 41, set up banquets at a Holiday Inn and shared an apartment on South Fifth Street in Reading, Pennsylvania, with David Lutz. In July 1987, Lutz mentioned the apartment’s stereo and cash to 16-year-old Michael Boettlin Jr. Boettlin passed the tip to John Calvaresi, 22, and the two decided to rob the place that night, believing no one would be home.
Early on July 25, 1987, the two kicked in the door. Detweiler was there and fought back. Calvaresi tackled him and Boettlin kicked him repeatedly in the face. Calvaresi then took a knife from the kitchen, killed Detweiler and cut off his head. Using the victim’s blood, he wrote “REDRUM” on the wall, the backward word from The Shining, which had aired on cable days earlier, along with “LSD.” Police arrested both suspects within days, and Calvaresi told a newspaper from jail that he had done it while high on LSD.
Calvaresi pleaded guilty but mentally ill to first-degree murder and received a life sentence. He died in a Pennsylvania state prison in 2015. Boettlin, 17 at trial, was convicted of first-degree murder in August 1988 and sentenced to life without parole. After the U.S. Supreme Court limited mandatory life terms for juveniles, he was resentenced in October 2017 to 40 years to life, which left him eligible for parole about a decade later.
Case photographs
Where it happened
South Fifth Street in Reading, where Stanley Detweiler lived