Like Mother, Like Son

Ben Amato lived near Effort, in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, and had been in a relationship with Cheryl Kunkle. In November 2001, state troopers checking on him found him dead at the bottom of his basement stairs. He had been struck on the head several times and had been dead for about five days. For years, nobody was charged with killing him.

In May 2004, Kunkle’s son, Gregory Rowe, killed his former girlfriend Kristin Fisher, 17, and their seven-month-old daughter, Kaylee, at the Fisher home in Greentown, Pike County. He tried to make Kristin’s death look like a suicide, and Kaylee was drowned in a bathtub. A jury convicted Rowe of both murders in January 2006, and he received two life sentences. While awaiting that trial, Rowe had described his mother’s role in Ben’s death, including how she stripped off her clothes and threw them, along with a bloodied bat, from the car on the ride home.

Rowe testified against his mother at her trial in Monroe County. In February 2007, jurors found Kunkle guilty of first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and related charges, and in June 2007 she was sentenced to life without parole. Rowe was never charged in Ben’s death. Both have since lost their appeals: a Pike County judge rejected Rowe’s bid for a new trial in 2011, and Kunkle’s state and federal challenges were turned down.