Chesco judge admonishes Phoenixville man for locking his grandmother in a basement, feeding her stale pizza as he stole from her
Judge Alita A. Rovito told Christopher Ruse “it’s easy to be remorseful when you’re out of options," before sentencing him to county jail.
A Chester County judge on Monday rejected a Phoenixville man’s profession of remorse for locking his grandmother in her squalid basement while he and his friend siphoned her Social Security benefits.
Judge Alita A. Rovito admonished Christopher Ruse for “emotionally, financially, physically and psychologically” abusing his 62-year-old grandmother, the woman who raised him, before sentencing him to 11½ to 23 months in county jail, followed by five years of probation.
“You didn’t want to be here,” Rovito told Ruse, who absconded twice from drug-treatment facilities in Chester County since his arrest in this case in 2023. “It’s easy to be remorseful when you’re out of options.”
Ruse, 27, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and reckless endangerment before going on the lam for nearly 12 months, until his arrest in Pottstown earlier this summer on drug charges.
Deputy District Attorney Bonnie Cox Shaw said Monday that Ruse and his longtime friend David Frame, 37, conspired in 2021 to take Paula Diarcangelo‘s benefits and attempted to steal her home on Ridge Road in Phoenixville from her by coercing her to transfer the deed to them.
Cox Shaw said Ruse had been raised in that home by his grandparents. He had been welcomed back there, even after being jailed for using his grandmother’s credit cards without her permission and threatening to “kill his whole family,” when she confronted him.
Frame pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment and possession of an instrument of a crime in August 2024, and is serving a 23-month sentence in county jail.
During their scheme, the two men forced Diarcangelo to live in her home’s basement, broke her cell phone, fed her nothing but stale pizza and confined her to a mattress propped up on paint cans just feet away from open sewage.
Meanwhile, the two men renovated and moved into the top floor of the home, and used Diarcangelo‘s money to rent furniture and electronics.
The abuse was reported to police in March 2022 by Diarcangelo‘s daughter, Christina, whose other sister had overheard their mother screaming for help during a phone call with Ruse.
The woman was rescued from the basement by police. She later died of a heart attack, which her daughter said Monday was brought on by complications from the stress she was put through during “the desecration of a lifetime of memories.”
“Frame and Ruse stripped her of her dignity,” the younger Diarcangelo said. “They did not just steal money and things.”
In the months before Diarcangelo was rescued from the basement, the two men sold and discarded her “treasured possessions” and left the home her husband left for her in ruins, according to her daughter.
Ruse apologized for everything he put his grandmother through, and lamented that he has ruined relationships with many of his family members. His attorney, Timothy Deyrup, urged Judge Rovito to consider his history of drug abuse and childhood trauma, including watching his grandfather die.
But Rovito was not swayed.
“I can’t imagine how hurtful this whole thing was for her,” Rovito said of the victim. “She didn’t just open her home to you, she opened her heart to you. And you brought a stranger into her life who also took advantage of her.”