A Murrysville man was charged Thursday with the 2017 killing of his estranged wife, and detectives laid out in court papers a circumstantial case based on cell phone records, missing text messages and what police said was the couple's “tumultuous” relationship.
Police took Antonio Vecchiola, 34, into custody at a Monroeville strip mall at 4:40 p.m. Thursday and transported him to the Allegheny County Jail to be arraigned on one count of homicide. He was also charged by Allegheny County police with a firearms violation; police said he had a legally owned handgun in the center console of his car but did not have a concealed carry license.
On the evening of Feb. 6, 2017, police responded to the Penn Hills home of Jessica Vecchiola, 29, on Loretta Drive after her mother found her unresponsive.
Ms. Vecchiola, a mother of two, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Two days later the Allegheny County medical examiner's office ruled she was killed by an injury to the ligaments in her neck — sometimes called an internal decapitation — that occurs when the head is snapped back and forth while the torso remains still.
The medical examiner's office said a "substantial amount of force" was necessary to cause her death. But the manner of her death remained pending until Jan. 25, when it was changed to homicide.
The affidavit supporting Mr. Vecchiola’s arrest does not contain any indication of how homicide detectives believe he killed his wife.
Investigators uncovered through Verizon Wireless records several text messages between the Vecchiolas from Feb. 5, 2017, the day before Ms. Vecchiola’s death, although her husband told police he last spoke with his wife on Feb. 4, an affidavit said. The couple had taken protection-from-abuse orders out against each other and were in the midst of a divorce and a custody dispute over their young sons.
The two discussed arrangements for Ms. Vecchiola to pick up one of the children. But Mr. Vecchiola, who had a key to his wife’s home, appeared to stop responding to her texts late that afternoon. Her last message to him was "I'm home and you can come knock on the door like a normal person because the garage is locked up ..."
Police also discovered calls Ms. Vecchiola made to her husband’s work phone on Feb. 5 around 4:20 p.m. One such call lasted a little over a minute. An analysis of cell tower data showed that Mr. Vecchiola's phone hit off a sector of a tower that also encompassed Ms. Vecchiola’s address, the affidavit said.
At the time, according to police, Mr. Vecchiola was living with his parents in Plum. The cell tower information “means that the phone was physically located within that sector and NOT around” the Plum address, the affidavit said.
After Ms. Vecchiola’s death, her mother, Elizabeth Arrington of Trafford, bought a new cell phone after police collected the original device.
Once the new phone was activated, Ms. Arrington restored cell phone service to her daughter’s number, as well as data and text messages from the phone's last cloud backup.
But of the 69,000 text messages that were restored from the old device — including old and previously deleted conversations — none of the text messages between the Vecchiolas were downloaded, police said. Police said either someone who had access to Ms. Vecchiola’s cloud account deleted messages there, or someone deleted messages directly from her phone prior to the cloud upload.
Detectives said Verizon Wireless records ruled out someone accessing Ms. Vecchiola’s cloud account.
Several days before her death, on Jan. 30, 2017, Ms. Vecchiola was assaulted by two women while on her way to get gas with her 2-year-old son after a driver began tailgating her along Leechburg Road, police said.
A woman got out of the car and banged Ms. Vecchiola’s head on the ground in the dark, Ms. Arrington said. Ms. Vecchiola told her mother that the women demanded that she leave "Tony" alone.
Ms. Arrington said her daughter recognized the woman and told police about the assault the next day.
Ms. Vecchiola was treated at a hospital, her mother said, and was told her neck was sprained. She was given a neck brace — found near her feet when her body was discovered.
Dr. Ashton Ennis of the Allegheny County medical examiner's office said the injury that resulted in Ms. Vecchiola’s death was not a result of that incident.
Lacretia Wimbley: 412-263-1510, lwimbley@post-gazette.com or follow @Wimbleyjourno on Twitter.
First Published: June 7, 2019, 9:43 p.m.
