Thomas G. Stanko ordered to stand trial in death of Cassandra Gross

Homicide charges against a Unity man suspected of killing Cassandra Gross were held for court Friday, despite unsuccessful searches for her body or remains in the last four and a half years since the Unity woman went missing.

“Can you tell us how she died?” asked Marc Daffner, defense attorney for Thomas G. Stanko, 52.

“I cannot,” replied Trooper James McKenzie.

“Can you tell us where she died?” Daffner asked.

“I cannot,” McKenzie said.

Daffner pointed to the difficulty in prosecuting a homicide case without a body in arguing that the charges against Stanko be dismissed, but Assistant District Attorney James Lazar said he and fellow attorney Katie Ranker presented “very powerful pieces of the investigation” that showed Stanko and Gross planned to be together the evening she went missing — April 7, 2018.

Lazar said a text message Stanko sent to Gross’ phone on the morning of April 9, 2018, was meant to cover his tracks. The message, read by McKenzie from the witness stand, stated in part: “Hey, hon, I usually hear from you by now. … This ain’t like you not to get a hold of me. … I hope you’re OK.” Stanko ended the message by telling Gross he loved her.

“He knows exactly where she is, he’s sending those messages to cover for himself,” Lazar said.

Stanko was charged Oct. 27 with homicide, reckless burning, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. He became a potential suspect in Gross’ disappearance almost immediately and has been incarcerated on unrelated charges since. McKenzie said troopers never looked at anyone else.

“All evidence pointed to Mr. Stanko as being the actor,” he testified.

Friday’s preliminary hearing was attended by a group of Gross’ family and friends who packed District Judge Tamara Mahady’s courtroom. They wore T-shirts bearing a picture of Gross that said “Justice for Cass.”

Security was tight as onlookers were wanded by metal detectors before entering the courtroom and bags were forbidden inside. Nine witnesses testified over two hours. Stanko didn’t say anything to reporters outside court.

Gross’ mother Kathe Gross testified that the abrupt end of communication with her daughter was unusual as the pair typically talked regularly throughout the day. Cassandra Gross called her mom April 7, 2018, while driving on Route 30, headed to her apartment. She’d just finished lunch with a friend at the Parkwood Inn in Southwest Greensburg.

After that call, Gross’ phone connected to cell towers near Stanko’s Macey Road home.

On April 9, 2018, her father Harry Gross realized something was amiss when he went to his daughter’s Unity home to take out her blind, diabetic dog Baxter while she was at work. But she never made it to work and Baxter’s insulin vial was gone.

“It’s unusual because if she didn’t go to work, she would call me and tell me,” he testified.

Kathe Gross immediately directed troopers to Stanko and testified that her daughter had been stalked and threatened by him. Both she and McKenzie testified that there is no indication from bank records that Cassandra Gross is still alive. A Westmoreland County judge declared her dead in January 2019.

In the days after Gross was reported missing, Baxter was found by a motorist on Carney Road in Unity and her Mitsubishi Outlander was found burned along a rail line near Twin Lakes Park by an off-duty state trooper who lives in the area, according to testimony.

Police have never found Gross’ cell phone but carrier records showed Gross and Stanko, who had dated, talked throughout the day April 7, 2018, according to testimony.

Gross gave Stanko a list of grocery items to pick up — a couple lemons, potatoes, flour, slices of ham, onion and milk.

McKenzie testified the communication “tells me she was giving him a list of items for her to prepare” what he believed to be potato soup.

When troopers searched Stanko’s property, they found Coach eyeglass frames, a Michael Kors clothing tag and what appeared to be an insulin bottle partially destroyed in a burn barrel at his Macey Road home. McKenzie said Gross bought a pair of Coach eyeglasses about a month earlier.

Stanko appeared to have burn injuries to his face on April 12, 2018, when state police interviewed him at the Greensburg station. He claimed during a visit to an emergency clinic that he had fallen out of a pine tree, but a doctor told police the injuries were consistent with burns, McKenzie testified.

“You can tell on the left side that the eyebrow has been singed away,” McKenzie said, referring to photos of Stanko from that time period.

Police said they found makeup and applicators in Stanko’s medicine cabinet, along with a receipt from after Gross’ disappearance for the purchase of medication used to treat burns. DNA testing on some of those makeup applicators showed that Stanko could not be excluded as a contributor, according to testimony.

Daffner questioned whether the crime alleged even happened within the state or county during his arguments to Mahady, suggesting prosecutors continue investigating.

“There’s been no actual direct evidence that Mr. Stanko had anything to do with it,” he said.

Lazar argued that the text message conversations showed Gross and Stanko planned to be together that evening. The “items that are vital to Ms. Gross’ life” found in the burn barrel, combined with his facial injuries, indicate his level of involvement, Lazar said.

“All of these things taken together … is very damning evidence that the defendant is responsible for this,” he said.

Stanko is at the Westmoreland County Prison serving a seven-year federal gun sentence stemming from weapons police found during their searches. Gross would have turned 56 this year, on May 17. Baxter has since died.