Lawyer for Unity man charged with girlfriend's killing claims authorities can't prove crime was committed

The lawyer for a Unity man charged with killing his former girlfriend more than four years ago said authorities may not have jurisdiction to prosecute the case in Westmoreland County.

Thomas Stanko maintains he did not kill Cassandra Gross, said his attorney, Marc Daffner, during a pretrial hearing Monday.

Gross, of Unity, was last seen in April 2018 and was declared legally dead a year later.

“They have jurisdiction problems. Thus far, no one has been able to say for certain that anything has occurred or where it occurred,” Daffner said.

Stanko, 53, was charged a year ago with criminal homicide, reckless burning, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence in connection with Gross’ death. Her body has never been recovered. She was last seen April 7, 2018. Her Mitsubishi Outlander was found burned days later in a wooded area near Twin Lakes Park, east of Greensburg.

Prosecutors claim Stanko killed her and covered up the crime. Through evidence presented at a preliminary hearing last year, they suggested he burned and discarded her remains.

“We will file pretrial motions but, ultimately, it will be a trial,” Daffner said. “He denies he had anything to do with any of this. There is no body and no forensic evidence. A lot of that you’d see in a homicide case. We don’t have it here.”

During the preliminary hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that Stanko and Gross communicated a day before she went missing. Days later, Stanko appeared to have burn injuries, police said.

Stanko currently is serving a seven-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in November 2021 to federal weapons offenses.

The federal charges stemmed from the discovery of 17 guns that state police said they found on a Unity property and a storage unit he rented while they were investigating Gross’ disappearance.

Prosecutors said authorities were led to the firearms through jailhouse phone calls Stanko made to his mother and a girlfriend during which Stanko used “coded language” about the weapons. State police found four guns at the White Fence Lane home where his mother lives and 13 more at a Greensburg storage unit.

At that same time, Westmoreland County prosecutors filed a series of charges against Stanko related to gun possession, theft of an all-terrain vehicle and an alleged assault as authorities continued to investigate the circumstances of Gross’ disappearance.

A Westmoreland County judge later dismissed those state charges based on defense claims that Stanko’s speedy trial rights were violated.