By Megan Guza, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nov. 14—When Fayette County District Attorney Mike Aubele asked Billie Pokopec how she knew the women in court accused of killing her 9-year-old niece — specifically how she knew Sarah Shipley — her response was venomous.
“She’s my sister,” Ms. Pokopec said, nearly sneering.
Ms. Pokopec was the last witness to testify Friday in the hourslong preliminary hearing against Ms. Shipley and her partner, Kourtney Eutsey.
Both women are charged with homicide in the death of 9-year-old Renesmay Eutsey, as well as charges related to alleged abuse of other children in their Dunbar home.
Ms. Shipley’s sister spent a few tearful minutes on the stand in the Fayette County Courthouse; her testimony offered few new details about the hours before and after Renesmay’s death.
But it proved to be one of the most emotional moments in a hearing that brought one devastating detail after another.
When Ms. Pokopec stepped off the stand and walked past the prosecution and defense tables, she jabbed a finger at her sister.
“I hope you rot,” she said.
Bit by bit, testimony from close to a dozen witnesses over nearly three hours pieced together for District Judge Nathan A. Henning the series of events in early September that led to the discovery of Renesmay’s body in the Youghiogheny River.
The judge ultimately held for trial the more than two dozen charges against Ms. Eutsey, 31, and Ms. Shipley, 35, both of whom were Renesmay’s legal guardians. The girl’s biological mother was a relative of one of the women. Formal arraignments are scheduled for next month.
“This is the first step in the very long process of getting justice for Renesmay,” Mr. Aubele said.
Ms. Shipley sobbed silently throughout the hours-long hearing, sometimes looking up with her face twisted in anguish. A table away, Ms. Eutsey mostly kept her head bowed and bounced her legs up and down.
Six Pennsylvania State Police troopers testified about their individual roles in the events that unfolded the afternoon of Sept. 3 into the early morning hours of Sept. 4.
Ms. Shipley called 911 to report Renesmay missing around 2 p.m. — more than 12 hours after she’d allegedly last seen the child. She and at least one of the children in the home reported they believed she might have run away. An 11-year-old girl who shared a bed with Renesmay said she’d heard her open a window in the middle of the night, and then snapping twigs as she climbed out.
That story unraveled over the next 12 hours as the 11-year-old confided first to a family friend and later to at least two different state troopers that her sister “was in heaven” — and that she’d seen her mother, Ms. Eutsey, put the girl in a tote, witnesses testified.
Erica Umensetter, a friend of the family, said that when she got to the Third Street home shortly after 2 p.m., the 11-year-old initially told her what she’d told police: That Renesmay ran away.
“She kept repeating that Renesmay ran away,” Ms. Umensetter said.
The woman began to weep on the witness stand. It took her a long moment to bring herself to speak.
“[She told me], ‘Mommy put Renesmay in a tote,’” she finally said. “Mommy told her to go back in the bedroom and she would be back. She said Renesmay was in a bag.”
Later, in the backseat of Trooper Thomas Hisker’s patrol car, the girl expressed worry that she would get in trouble for lying earlier. She expounded, the trooper said, that she missed her sister, who was in heaven now.
She asked if she would get new, good parents, Trooper Hisker said — he said he assured her that she would.
“She was scared … [she] didn’t want to end up like Renesmay,” he said.
The girl told Trooper Nicole Sigwalt that she saw her parents — Ms. Eustey was “mommy” and Ms. Shipley was “dad,” she said — kicking and hitting Renesmay the night she was killed. When Ms. Shipley saw her watching, the girl told the trooper, she punched her in the face and told her to go back to bed. Before she did, she said, the women put her sister in a garbage bag and then into a gray tote.
“She said [Renesmay] ‘looked like she was sleeping,’ and her lips were white,” said Trooper Sigwalt, who at times wept on the stand.
The girl was too scared to sleep, the trooper testified, and she was still awake when Ms. Eutsey left the house and when she got home around 6 a.m. She told police the women cleaned up with bleach and wiped the tote.
Much of the testimony from other state troopers mirrored what was written in the initial criminal complaints.
Ms. Eutsey ultimately told investigators that Renesmay had died — she speculated that a severe burn on her back had become infected — and, out of fear of losing the other children, she’d driven miles along the Youghiogheny before she put the bag with Renesmay’s body into the river.
Investigators noted they found six large rocks inside the bag with the girl’s body.
She had a significant wound on her backside, authorities said, a large cut beneath her chin, and other injuries to her right eyebrow, legs, and feet.
An autopsy report is still pending.
Dr. Margaret Russell, a UPMC pediatrician who specializes in child abuse, testified via video about the trauma she saw in at least two of the other children in the home.
Her diagnosis for a 6-year-old boy was “torture.”
She said he was so malnourished that he was at risk for “refeeding syndrome” — that is, food could shock his system to the point that it killed him. He looked like a toddler, she said. His affect was so flat when she first encountered the boy, Dr. Russell said, she believed he’d been sedated.
The 11-year-old girl — Renesmay’s sister — told Dr. Russell that Ms. Eutsey and Ms. Shipley beat her, she said: They’d punch her, kick her, choke her, and stand on top of her. She said they withheld food as punishment, the doctor testified. Later, one state trooper testified that the women would put hot sauce on the food they did give her, often sardines or Pop Tarts.
All of the children were homeschooled. Dr. Russell said that didn’t spark concern; but the girl told her she was responsible for her own schooling, and that she’d ask for help but never receive any. At 11, she didn’t know how to read, and her eyesight was poor, the doctor said.
The girl also said Ms. Shipley had pulled one of her teeth with pliers. Fragments remained in her mouth, Dr. Russell said.
Defense attorneys questioned relatively little, often probing only whether certain interviews were recorded.
Nicholas Clark, the acting chief public defender for the county who represented Ms. Eutsey, told the judge that prosecutors had given little evidence.
“There is no non-hearsay testimony that establishes my client did anything to kill Renesmay Eutsey,” he said.
Mr. Aubele said the testimony from Ms. Eutsey herself indicated that she “knew the child was dying” and didn’t seek medical help.
“They let this child die and put her in a garbage back in a tote,” he said, telling the judge that the evidence “screams of intentional, deliberate homicide.”
“This was not an accident,” he said.
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