Jul 14, 2020 5 min read

Drayton Sphar’s daughter was 14 when she found out just a few days before Christmas 1985 that he had been stabbed to death.

In Washington County Court on Monday morning, Shannon Sphar spoke at a plea hearing and resentencing for Thomas J. Gorby, the man who admitted to the killing.

“Thomas Gorby took a lot from my family when he brutally stabbed and killed my father and was convicted,” she told the court.

“My family finds itself back in court year after year” due to a series of appeals. “When is enough enough?” she asked. “Do you believe he needs to be out in society, someone who went around flaunting my father’s belongings and a sharp knife?”

She referred to Gorby’s admission that he had a rough childhood and said, “Mr. Gorby, I had a rough childhood and my brother had a rough childhood. You took so much from us.”

Judge Valarie Costanzo acknowledged that it was difficult for the victim’s daughter to appear in court.

Watching via video from the State Correctional Institution at Fayette, Gorby did not apologize or respond to the victim impact statement, but answered, “Yes, your honor,” when the judge asked him if took responsibility in admitting to the crime.

Thirty-one years ago, a Washington County jury determined Gorby, who had lived in Eighty Four, deserved to die for the first-degree stabbing death of Sphar and also found him guilty of robbery.

A series of appeals resulted in Gorby winning the right to a new trial, and on Monday, he entered into a third-degree murder plea negotiated by his pro bono attorneys and the Washington County district attorney’s office.

The maximum sentence in Pennsylvania in 1985 for third-degree murder was 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment, and Gorby has been incarcerated since 1986, when he was arrested in Texas.

The judge sentenced him to that amount of time in a state prison. Incarceration for robbery resulted in a maximum of 18 to 26 years.

A recent law allows the completion of a sentence to be followed by a year of supervision, and Gorby’s attorney, John Giselson, questioned if the law could be applied retroactively.

Costanzo ordered Assistant District Attorney Nathan Michaux to research the issue.

Giselson said after the hearing that his client’s maximum sentence would end April 24, 2022.

He called the plea to third-degree murder and resentencing a compromise. Witnesses have since died, and Gorby is now more than 60 years old. He has been educated in prison and is now, according to Giselson, drug- and alcohol-free.

According to testimony at Gorby’s 1989 trial, he and Drayton Sphar, 38, were drinking at a Washington area bar the night of Dec. 20, 1985, when Sphar purchased several drinks for Gorby and a third man.

Spahr also bought a round for everyone in the establishment, displaying a large roll of bills. Gorby, claiming his car was parked at Somerset Inn in Eighty Four, asked Sphar to drive him there.

Gorby entered the Somerset Inn alone about 1 a.m. with a large amount of cash and a sharp knife on which there were blood stains. He also had a belt Sphar had been wearing. Gorby asked a Somerset Inn bartender for a lift to the first bar, and the barkeep noticed Sphar’s vehicle parked in the lot when they left the Somerset Inn. Back at the first bar, a woman noticed blood stains on Gorby’s trousers.

On Dec. 21, 1985, Gorby confessed to his girlfriend he had killed Sphar inside Sphar’s vehicle, stabbing him, slitting his throat with a knife, and stealing his money. Some of Sphar’s belongings had been discarded in a pillow case at the former Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge on West Chestnut Street, including a belt buckle on which Sphar’s name had been embossed, and authorities were notified.

Gorby was arrested in the Lone Star State where he had assumed another name, and, after waiving extradition, he returned to Pennsylvania to stand trial.

After his conviction, Gorby in 1991 claimed, among other issues, that Judge John F. Bell should have granted him a change of venue from Washington County where there was pretrial publicity; that the girlfriend who testified against him was actually his common-law wife who should have been barred as a witness because of a spousal relationship; and that jurors, who should have been sequestered, were shown gruesome photographs during the trial.

The state Supreme Court first affirmed the jury’s decisions on the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence for the slaying of Sphar, but the state’s highest court later granted him a new sentencing hearing, ordering his lawyer should have raised his mental health as a mitigating factor during his trial. Prosecutors in 2011 opted not to pursue the death penalty and agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment.

Gorby continued to appeal, taking his case to U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.

Federal Judge Joy Flowers Conti found Gorby’s attorney provided an inadequate defense by failing to raise “diminished capacity,” in which Gorby could have admitted to committing the homicide while disputing whether he intended to kill Sphar.

Gorby, Conti found, had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, plus mental health problems, and that he should either be released or receive a new trial.

The defendant requested a jury trial, then a nonjury trial, before formally agreeing Monday to plead guilty to third-degree murder.