[PA] Susan Louise Fyock (Burkhart) 12/16/1968 - 6/10/2002

...Police say the killing came moments after Fyock, a divorced mother of three, appeared briefly on her front porch and announced to a neighbor that she was "throwing Craig out." Then, in the kitchen of the home, Knepper shot Fyock and began sobbing as the youngster screamed, "Why did you kill my mommy?"...
JOHNSTOWN OFFICER HELD IN SLAYING OF HIS GIRLFRIEND ARRESTED AFTER FLEEING WITH BOY, 4, LEAVING HIM WITH GRANDMOTHER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Tom Gibb
June 12, 2002
[Excerpts] The sign is half the size of a checkerboard, hand-lettered with a wood burner. "Craig & Sue's Place," it says... Monday night, Craig - veteran Johnstown police Officer Craig Knepper, 35 - exploded during an argument with Sue -- divorced mother of three Susan Louis Fyock , 33. As Fyock 's 4-year-old boy watched, Knepper aimed a handgun from little more than an arm's length away and killed the woman with a gunshot to the head... Within three hours of the shooting, before Knepper could cross the few hundred yards to U.S. Route 219 and go north again, a local police officer stopped the car - with a man officers won't identify at the wheel and another man riding with Knepper. Yesterday, Knepper, a police officer with 12 years on Johnstown's 46-person force, was in Cambria County Prison without bail, facing charges topped by first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence... Neighbors and friends told of police coming when Knepper and Fyock tangled before, of Fyock 's lament that Knepper would drink too much. Asked if Knepper was under mental health care, Johnstown's recently hired Police Chief William Clark refused comment. Asked if Knepper approached anyone in the department about getting care for himself, Clark replied, "It's conceivable, but I'm not going to comment on it." -- "I was told that last week, he pulled out a gun and put it to his head," said Bruce Fyock, father of Fyock's former husband... "The police were called up there a couple times, maybe three times," 16-year-old neighbor Nicole Furnari said... The final turn in the relationship came just before 10 Monday night, when Fyock came out of her half of the duplex and told Daria Auguste, the resident of the other side, that "she had enough of Craig and was throwing him out," a police affidavit says. Then, Fyock went back inside... Coroner Dennis Kwiatkowski said Knepper fired into Fyock's head and thigh. Investigators haven't determined yet if he was using his .40-caliber police gun...

FORMER JOHNSTOWN POLICE OFFICER TO FACE TRIAL IN GIRLFRIEND'S KILLING
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
TOM GIBB
July 19, 2002
[Excerpts] A former Johnstown police officer was ordered yesterday to face trial on murder charges in the death of his live-in girlfriend last month in front of her 4-year-old son at the duplex they shared. While they've made no move to dispute that 12-year veteran officer Craig Knepper is the killer, his lawyers are angling toward a defense in which they would claim that mental health problems and possibly other factors left the 35-year-old defendant unable to properly form the intent to kill. If the strategy works, it could erase the chance that Knepper would be convicted of first-degree murder and risk the death penalty or life in prison without parole... State police say that moments after Fyock emerged momentarily from the house and told a neighbor she planned "to throw Craig out," an argument broke out, followed by gunshots and the sound of Fyock's crying son pleading, "Craig, take me to my grandma's, take me to my grandma's." Knepper, too, was crying -- and still crying when he phoned his 75-year-old mother, pleading for help but refusing her offer to come to the house, telling her, "I don't want you to see what I did," police say. Defense co-counsel Arthur McQuillan said after the hearing that Knepper, who resigned from the police force shortly after the killing, was under care from a psychologist and a psychiatrist at the time of the homicide. "The defense position is that he couldn't form the specific intent to kill," McQuillan said...

DEATH PENALTY WON'T BE SOUGHT
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
TOM GIBB
August 14, 2002
[Excerpts] Prosecutors said yesterday that they will not seek the death penalty for a former Johnstown police officer charged with killing his girlfriend two months ago... That means that, if he goes to trial, Craig Knepper's greatest risk is life in prison without parole if convicted of first-degree murder. Knepper's attorney could be counting on far less than that -- not contesting that Knepper was the killer but considering a defense that Knepper was drunk at the time and not able to clearly form the intent to kill... Police say the killing came moments after Fyock , a divorced mother of three, appeared briefly on her front porch and announced to a neighbor that she was "throwing Craig out." Then, in the kitchen of the home, Knepper shot Fyock and began sobbing as the youngster screamed, "Why did you kill my mommy?" police say.... Knepper, a 12-year veteran of the Johnstown police force, resigned from jail, where he has been held without bail since he was arrested several hours after the killing.

FORMER JOHNSTOWN POLICEMAN PLEADS GUILTY IN GIRLFRIEND'S FATAL SHOOTING
Jan 12 2003
[Excerpts] A former Johnstown police officer pleaded guilty to fatally shooting his girlfriend... By pleading guilty, Craig Knepper, 36, avoids the possibility of a life sentence for first-degree murder. A plea agreement worked out with prosecutors calls for him to face 20 to 40 years in prison - the maximum sentence for third-degree murder. The 14-year-police veteran was drinking heavily and taking anti-anxiety medication when he shot Susan Fyock, 33, in the head in June. Fyock died in the kitchen of the Johnstown duplex the couple shared... There were no officers from the Johnstown force present when Knepper pleaded guilty this week. Knepper acknowledged that he has a history of mental illness and had been treated by psychiatrists for anxiety and a panic disorder. "He was drinking heavily that day and also taking Xanax and several medications," Gleason said. "That combination clouded his judgment, as well as his anger and restraint in firing the weapon." District Attorney David Tulowitzki said the plea agreement was acceptable to Fyock's family. "The family wanted closure, which is what they received," Tulowitzki said.

JOHNSTOWN POLICE OFFICER SENTENCED FOR MURDER
Post-Gazette
By Tom Gibb
March 11, 2003
[Excerpts] A veteran Johnstown police officer was sentenced today to 20 to 40 years in state prison for killing his live-in girlfriend last spring - a shooting that his defenders say came after a psychological collapse brought on by work and family stresses. Craig Knepper, 36, originally charged with first-degree murder that could have gotten him life in prison, pleaded guilty in December to third-degree murder. That was prosecutors' concession that Knepper had downed a bottle of vodka and a high dose of his prescription tranquilizer Xanax and may not have been able to form the intent to kill that is needed to buttress a first-degree charge. Police say that after a brief, loud argument on June 10, Knepper shot his girlfriend, Susan Fyock, 33, as they stood in the kitchen of the duplex they shared in Johnstown. Fyock's 4-year-old son watched... The defendant's brother, the Rev. Roger Knepper, dressed in his clerical garments as a Church of the Brethren minister, told of times when Knepper would arrive home after seeing a teenager who committed suicide or handling a child-abuse case. "He'd be emotionally distraught. He couldn't eat," Roger Knepper told the hearing. "He would throw up."

PERSONALITY CHANGE TURNS JOHNSTOWN COP INTO INMATE
Post-Gazette
Tom Gibb
March 12, 2003
[Excerpts] There was the Craig Knepper of a decade ago - religious, trying to be both standout police officer to the city of Johnstown and stand-up father to his two daughters - his clergyman brother told a Cambria County court yesterday. Then there was the Craig Knepper of a couple of years ago - drinking, out of his 13-year marriage and into an erratic relationship with a live-in girlfriend... By his brother's account, it was the second Craig Knepper, primed with vodka and prescription tranquilizers, who climaxed a loud argument with girlfriend Susan Fyock, 33, by shooting her to death in June in their Johnstown duplex. Yesterday, as relatives of both gunman and victim watched and wept, Cambria County Common Pleas Judge Thomas Swope sentenced 36-year-old Craig Knepper, who had pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, to 20 to 40 years in state prison. But the case won't end here. Pittsburgh lawyer Timothy Schweers promised that he would file a federal lawsuit on behalf of Fyock's estate, charging that the city of Johnstown failed to protect the mother of three, despite indications that Knepper was veering out of control... "He had a hard time establishing the boundaries between his emotional life and the people he served," [his older brother] Roger Knepper said...

JOHNSTOWN, POLICE, OFFICIALS SUED OVER KILLER OFFICER
Post-Gazette
Tom Gibb
March 21, 2003
[Excerpts] When he was a Johnstown police officer, Craig Knepper was a violent man with a drug and alcohol problem, and things only got worse before he murdered his girlfriend last year in the duplex apartment they shared, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday. What's more, police should have known of Knepper's mean bent; he showed it on the job, and police were called to his home when it flared, according to the complaint. But Knepper never was suspended, taken off active duty, stripped of his weapons or required to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, the lawsuit charges. For that, murder victim Susan Fyock's estate faults Knepper's former bosses in the city of Johnstown. The lawsuit, a civil rights action filed in federal court in Pittsburgh, asks for undisclosed damages from city government, its police department, then-Police Chief William Clark, Mayor Donato Zucco and Knepper himself, who was sentenced last week in Cambria County court to 20 to 40 years in state prison. "It seems to me that everybody in Johnstown who knew him knew he was a danger," Timothy Schweers, the Pittsburgh attorney who filed the lawsuit, said yesterday... After a brief argument in June, Knepper shot Fyock in their home as her 4-year-old son watched. Johnstown police were so concerned when Knepper fled the duplex and briefly disappeared that they posted armed officers at a parking garage overlooking the building housing city police offices. Asked at the time if Knepper approached anyone in the department about getting psychiatric care, Clark replied, "It's conceivable, but I'm not going to comment on it." The 15-count lawsuit charges constitutional rights violations that include Johnstown officials' failure to rein in a law officer known for violence and substance abuse...
 [police officer involved domestic violence oidv intimate partner violence ipv abuse law enforcement public safety lethal fatality fatalities murder pennsylvania state politics]