Woman in prison for threatening to kill Westmoreland judge pleads guilty to doing it again

A woman already serving up to four years in prison for threatening to kill a Westmoreland County judge two years ago pleaded guilty Tuesday to again issuing a similar threat to the same judge last year.

Rebecca Elizabeth Gardner, 31, is expected to be sentenced this year under terms of a plea bargain that will require her to serve an additional five-to-10 years in prison.

Assistant District Attorney Jim Lazar said the sentence will be in addition to the two-to-four year prison sentence Gardner received in 2018 for threatening the life of Common Pleas Court Judge Christopher Feliciani.

Feliciani in March 2018 sentenced Gardner to prison after she pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of simple assault in which authorities said she punched two woman during her stay in 2017 at Torrance State Hospital in Derry.

Police said two months later Gardner wrote a note to Feliciani in which she threatened to use a knife to kill the judge and gasoline to burn down his house. Gardner signed the note “Sincerely your killer” along with her name, according to court records.

In December 2018, Gardner pleaded guilty to the threats and was sentenced by Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio to serve another two-to-four years in prison for the threats against Feliciani.

A year later, almost to the day, police said Feliciani received another letter from Gardner, sent from SCI-Muncy, where she is an inmate, in which she made another deadly threat. Bilik-DeFazio, in court on Tuesday, said Gardner threatened to “run a knife across his throat and burn down his house.”

Gardner pleaded guilty to a felony count of retaliation against a prosecutor or judicial official and making terroristic threats. Sentencing was delayed to allow Feliciani, who was not present in court, to make a victim impact statement.

Gardner, according to court records, previously served a two-to-four-year prison sentence after she pleaded guilty but mentally ill in 2008 to charges of arson and aggravated assault for setting fire to a group home for troubled juveniles in Hempfield. In that case, police said Gardner, then 17, was accused of setting fire to a bed as part of a plot to kill another resident of the home.

According to court records, a charge of attempted murder was dismissed.