Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating
new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help
the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm
to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.
In 1995, Edwin Romero
and three other men murdered Allentown architect David Bolasky.
Romero and George
Ivan Lopez were both given the death penalty for co-defendant Edwin
Rios Romero. The other 2 men were sent to prison.
Bolasky, 41, was
killed in January 1995 after he went to an apartment building he
owned to collect rent from a tenant, Miguel Moreno. There, Bolasky
was robbed.
In March 1996, a
jury convicted Lopez and Romero of 1st-degree murder. The jury also
sentenced both men to death. The other 2 defendants were spared the
death penalty in exchange for their cooperation with prosecutors.
George Ortiz
Barbosa pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received a life
sentence. Moreno, who admitted to setting up the robbery, was
sentenced to 20-40 years.
Bolasky, of
Macungie, was an architect nearly 15 years. He was vice president of
Wallace & Watson Associates, Allentown.
Governor Rendell Sign 77th Death Warrant
Jan.
29, 2008
Edwin Rios Romero, 43, who strangled David Bolasky on Jan. 3, 1995,
in Allentown, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 25.
Romero’s death warrant is the Governor’s 77th.
Officials say the New York City-born Romero strangled Bolasky to
death as part of a scheme to get money for a return trip to Florida.
Romero and two other men had arrived in Allentown the day before to
see one of the other men’s nephews, Miguel Moreno.
The
plot involved luring Bolasky, who then was a landlord and a vice-president
and project manager for the architecture firm of Wallace and Watson
Associates in Allentown, into Moreno’s apartment to steal the rent
he had collected from other tenants.
Bolasky had only collected $300 by the time Moreno found the man and
told him he wanted to pay two months of rent, but that the rest of
the rent was in his apartment.
When
Bolasky entered the apartment, Moreno introduced him to his uncle,
George Lopez, who was sitting on the couch in the living room.
Moreno excused himself, saying he needed to go downstairs because he
had forgotten some of the money. While the landlord waited for
Moreno’s return, Lopez pulled out a gun and forced him to the back
of the apartment where Romero and the other man, Jorge Barbosa, were
hiding.
After
failing to strangle Bolasky to death with a rope, Romero switched to
a towel and he, Barbosa and Lopez took turns tightening the towel
around Bolasky’s throat until he died.
Three
days later, on Jan. 6, 1995, police found Bolasky’s body in the
woods near a secluded road; his corpse frozen and the towel that had
been used to strangle him was still tied around his neck.
On
March 19, 1996, a jury found Romero and Lopez guilty of first-degree
murder, robbery, theft by unlawful taking. It returned death
sentences for both men a day later.
Two
warrants were issued in Romero’s case, but his execution was stayed
the first time to allow the filing of a petition for a writ of
certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court; the second time was to allow
post-conviction proceedings in the Lehigh County Court of Common
Pleas.
Post-conviction
relief was denied by the lower court on Sept. 15, 2000, and the
state Supreme Court affirmed that decision last month, thus lifting
the second stay.
