Feeling pain three times over

Frances Kitowski remembers the phone call like it happened last night.

“Donna didn’t come back from the store.”

The words are branded in her memory like a bad dream.

On the night of July 20, 1986, Donna Marie Kitowski went to a market to buy ingredients to make cookies for her 18-month-old son, Brad, and her boyfriend.

She was found the next afternoon in the desert near Nellis Air Force Base. It was 115 degrees that day. Her hair was tied to a piece of rebar. She had been raped, robbed and choked.

Donna, 20, was barely alive. She died two days later, 27 years ago this past Tuesday.

As Frances Kitowski, 74, and her husband, Joseph, 75, have endured the anguish of their only daughter’s murder for nearly three decades, they also have had to watch her killer win appeal after appeal.

In May, Donna’s parents for the third time watched as their daughter’s killer, Richard Haberstroh, asked a jury to spare his life.

Frances described the path to justice.

“It’s hell,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes.

■ ■ ■

Donna’s killing went without an arrest for nearly a month.

Investigators quickly realized Haberstroh, then 31, was responsible for two other robberies and sexual assaults at the Albertsons at Lake Mead and Nellis boulevards. But he had disappeared.

In August 1986, authorities tracked Haberstroh down in New Jersey. He had robbed and sexually assaulted women there, too, authorities said.

They extradited him to Las Vegas, where he would stand trial twice for Donna’s murder the next year.

In March 1987, Haberstroh defended himself and denied killing Donna. He told the Review-Journal during a jailhouse interview that a person would have to be “idiotic or retarded” to kill someone and leave “evidence under people’s noses.” He added that his IQ “is a little higher than that.”

Haberstroh confronted eyewitnesses, including one of his victims, during cross-examination. He pointed out that the witnesses failed to state that he had noticeable tattoos on his arms.

He won a hung jury when one juror refused to convict him.

The next time, Haberstroh wasn’t so lucky. Prosecutors presented witnesses, including a man who testified that Haberstroh had bragged to him about robbing a woman in the Albertsons parking lot. The evidence also showed Haberstroh had given his sister some of Donna’s jewelry. Later, DNA evidence would confirm Haberstroh’s guilt.

In October 1987, he was convicted of Donna’s murder and sentenced to death.

Donna’s parents attended both trials. Joseph recalled having to work the night shift at a Safeway and spending all day in court.

“When he walked around that courtroom, I had to control myself. I wanted to jump right over there and beat the hell out of him,” Joseph said.

Haberstroh was sent to death row in Ely, where he would spend the next two decades filing appeal after appeal.

Meanwhile, Frances and Joseph adopted their blond-haired, freckled grandson Brad and raised him as their own. They eventually moved to Pahrump.

■ ■ ■

In 2003, Haberstroh won an appeal for a new penalty hearing.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled that the jury was not given proper instructions regarding one of five aggravating factors they found when sentencing him to death. The problem revolved around the prosecution’s use of three words: “depravity of mind.”

Prosecutors failed to tell the jury that there had to have been torture or mutilation in order to enact “depravity of mind” as an aggravating factor. The prosecution did not argue there was torture or mutilation.

Prosecutors argued that the jury had found four other aggravating factors, but the high court held the death penalty hearing must be heard by a new jury.

The case lingered in court for 10 more years.

Haberstroh’s defense lawyers offered a deal: drop the death penalty and he will take a sentence of life in prison.

The deal would save lots of money and time.

Prosecutor Giancarlo Pesci went to Pahrump to visit the Kitowskis and discuss the offer.

Joseph couldn’t agree to it.

“To me, being able to go out in the prison population, that would be a reprieve,” he said. “I know he’s never going to be executed. Nevada don’t execute people that much. I want him isolated.”

There was also an added incentive to go forward with the penalty hearing. Under the law in 1987, a life sentence still allowed for an inmate to become eligible for parole. While it was unlikely Haberstroh would ever get paroled, the possibility existed.

■ ■ ■

Haberstroh was back in Clark County District Court in May.

He’d changed.

The 58-year-old was bald and overweight. He suffered from diabetes.

The Kitowskis were there again. Their two sons also attended the hearing. Donna’s son Brad couldn’t bring himself to come, Joseph said.

Unlike Haberstroh’s two trials in 1987, which had garnered a throng of media attention, the courtroom was all but empty.

Frances said Haberstroh would turn around and look at them and flash a grin. It sickened her.

Prosecutors Pesci and Danielle Pieper presented the case anew for the jury.

The evidence included autopsy photographs of Donna’s body.

It was devastating for Frances and Joseph. While both had attended the two previous trials, neither had seen the photographs before. In 1987, autopsy photographs were passed from juror to juror. With today’s technology, the photographs were put on large high-definition video monitors in the courtroom.

Frances wept. “I didn’t know her back was in such bad shape. I could have gotten up and killed the guy right then.”

During his weeklong penalty hearing, defense lawyers argued that Haberstroh functions with the brain of a 7-year-old, despite his statements to the Review-Journal in 1987.

Deputy special public defender Randy Pike argued that Haberstroh suffered from fetal-alcohol syndrome while in his mother’s womb and other abuses.

During his closing arguments, Pike told the jury Haberstroh is not the man he was in 1986. “What you have left to sentence is about a 60 year-old man who suffers from a great deal of issues.”

Pike said it would be cruel to have Haberstroh executed.

Pesci implored the jury for justice and asked for a sentence of death for Haberstroh.

“Donna’s not coming back. Her son grew up without a mother. And no matter how much he might like a do-over, the defendant, it’s unchanging and unbending what he did,” Pesci said.

Haberstroh was given a chance to ask the jury for mercy. He declined.

■ ■ ■

The jury didn’t take long to reach a verdict. Haberstroh was sentenced to death again. Following the conclusion of the hearing, the Kitowskis thanked and embraced the jurors.

Haberstroh will appeal again. Appeals are filed automatically after someone is sentenced to death.

Donna’s parents know they may never get to see Haberstroh die.

“He’s 58. I’m 75. I don’t think so,” Joseph said. “At least I know he’s stuck in that little cell by himself. I’m satisfied with that.”

Life has moved forward for the Kitowskis. Brad has had a child of his own. They still remember every day the blonde girl with freckles who was reserved and quiet and loved animals.

“She was loving, everything a parent would want,” Frances said.

But Frances and Joseph will never be over the loss of their daughter.

“If you have a child killed in an accident, that’s one thing. But to have one killed like this, you don’t get over it,” Joseph said. “You really don’t get over it.

“But you have to live.”

Contact reporter Francis McCabe at
fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.