Redstone Township man ordered to stand trial in fatal shooting
Police says suspect, victim knew each other through business dealings
A day before Anthony Dicenzo was shot to death April 12 while sitting in his car, his wife heard him arguing with a man over the phone about an agreement to buy a bar, but which had apparently soured.
Constance Dicenzo remembered hearing her husband call Norman Pennington to ask him about the status of the transaction after he had already paid him $30,000 and had nothing to show for it.
“It started with talking about buying a bar in Republic. … There was a deal,” Constance Dicenzo testified during Pennington’s preliminary hearing Tuesday in Fayette County Central Court on homicide and other charges.
But Pennington apparently had reneged on the deal and refused to give back the money to Dicenzo, she said about that April 11 phone conversation.
“The deal had not gone through. It was still pending. He was not happy about it,” she said about her husband.
The following day, her husband of 62 years left their Brownsville home and never returned, so a missing persons report was filed with state police in Belle Vernon in the early hours of April 13. But less than 10 hours later, Dicenzo’s body was found covered by a tarp in the backseat of his white car, which was parked alongside Riffle Hollow Road in German Township.
State police Trooper Tyler Shutterly testified Dicenzo, 83, had been shot twice in the right side of his head at close range. There was blood on the front seats and a trash bag and blanket had been placed over the driver’s side seat, indicating Dicenzo had been shot at a different location before someone drove the vehicle to that area.
Inside the vehicle, Shutterly said they found a shell casing from a handgun and four scraps of paper, including one with Pennington’s name and phone number written on it. That prompted investigators to speak with Pennington, who claimed he was at his barbershop in New Salem on the day of Dicenzo’s killing and went home after working, Shutterly said.
But during a subsequent interview with state police on April 16 in which he was read his Miranda rights, Pennington confessed to killing Dicenzo and driving the car to the German Township site, Shutterly said. However, he claimed it was in self-defense since Dicenzo drove to Pennington’s home in Redstone Township, where the shooting occurred. Shutterly testified that investigators did not believe that account since Dicenzo had no weapon on him and Pennington had no defensive wounds.
Shutterly said Pennington also misled investigators when he told them that he discarded the .380 handgun in Dunlap Lake. But police had already spoken to John Preston, who owned the property where Pennington had his barbershop, in which he told them that Pennington asked to borrow the handgun on April 11 and then returned it the next day with a cryptic message.
“He brought it back (wrapped) in a blue shop towel and said he didn’t want his fingerprints on it,” Preston testified at the hearing.
When Pennington saw Preston again on April 14, he allegedly told him to “keep that thing hidden,” Preston testified, referring to the handgun.
Pennington’s wife, Donna, also testified during the hearing, saying that her husband asked her to meet him at Bunker Hill, where he showed up in a white sedan and told her to follow him to the Riffle Hollow Road location in German Township.
“He was dropping the car off,” she said.
Fayette County District Attorney Mike Aubele questioned her whether she had ever seen the white sedan before or if her husband had ever driven it in the past.
“Was it unusual to see your husband drive a white car?” Aubele asked.
“Yeah,” she responded, although she appeared to pause before answering.
Pennington’s public defender, Nicholas Clark, then asked whether Aubele had offered her immunity in exchange for her testimony, which she said was indeed the case.
Pennington, 65, sat at the defense table just a few feet away wearing shackles and an orange prison jumpsuit while watching the proceeding and at times staring at witnesses as they testified.
After hearing testimony for about 45 minutes, District Judge Richard Kasunic II ordered Pennington to stand trial on felony charges of homicide and prohibited possession of a firearm, along with one misdemeanor count of evidence tampering. Pennington has been held at the Fayette County jail without bond since his arrest on April 17, and Kasunic denied his request to be offered bail.