Kensington man gets jail for killing father
Christopher Kitcherman was sentenced to 20 to 40 years plus time for chopping up the corpse.
A Kensington man who chopped up his father and put the man's head and limbs in a freezer on a hot July day was sentenced yesterday to 20 to 40 years in prison.
A bearded Christopher Kitcherman, 31, who sported a long-sleeved, white T-shirt that hid many of his tattoos, listened impassively as Common Pleas Court Judge Shelley Robins-New pronounced the third-degree-murder sentence.
The judge also tacked on one to two years in prison for abuse of his father's corpse, which was found July 15, 2005, at the home in the 900 block of East Ontario Street. The body had been hacked into eight pieces, with half in the freezer and the other half in the basement.
Three witnesses testified at the sentencing for Kitcherman, 31, who had the word berserker tattooed on his forehead. He was convicted of strangulation and dismemberment in June.
The witnesses and attorneys battled over who was to blame for the mutilation: the father as a drunk and alleged abuser or the son, who had numerous run-ins with the law.
"I think it's despicable the way the victim was put on trial today," an assistant district attorney, MK Feeney, said after the hearing.
The younger Kitcherman has a lengthy criminal history, including three drug-dealing and possession convictions, as well as convictions for attempted theft and criminal conspiracy, receiving stolen property, unauthorized use of a vehicle, corruption of a minor, and criminal mischief.
His sister, Linda Raughley, 34, defended him, saying he grew up in "a hellhole" dictated by an abusive father.
Raughley testified that their mother, Naomi Kitcherman, who later died of emphysema, toasted the death of her 66-year-old husband at a reception after his funeral by calling him a "maggot."
In the end, she said, father and son fatally clashed when the father refused to allow his son to move back into the house after he had been evicted from another home.
Raughley said the elder Kitcherman - who was strangled with electrical wire - "was not the father of year," having once held Christopher's hand over an open gas flame to discipline him. Their father, she said, was usually drunk, failed to support the family of seven, and physically abused them.
Raughley, who flew in from Florida to testify, said she had to raise her siblings herself because of her father and because their mother was bedridden on illegal drugs. Even so, she said that Christopher was extremely close with their mother and had her name tattooed on his stomach.
Alleging that their mother fed the children drugs from an early age, Raughley said that she believed "in my heart she initiated the strangulation."
Meanwhile, Clarence Kitcherman's niece Dorothy Femley and her husband, James, said Clarence was the victim of a domineering wife and a succession of renegade, criminal sons who robbed and often abused him.
"He drank his worries and troubles away," said James Femley.
At one tense moment, Femley glared across the courtroom at the son, who sat impassively, and said: "If you did this to your father, I hope every day you close your eyes and know that he was not an animal . . . He was a good guy. He did not deserve this."
One of two attorneys for Kitcherman, Marc Bookman, said "the case is mitigating because of the upbringing and devastation wrought in [the killer's] life."
But prosecutor Feeney countered that was similar to the story about the man who kills his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.
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