Late on Monday afternoon, Castor made a difficult decision. “I knew that we had Fairley and that he had scratches on his face. We knew that he was the person in charge of the store at which Devon and Lisa were last expected to go to, and their car was parked there, so we knew that they’d gotten there. I was confident that he was the right guy, but there was not enough evidence to hold him. I knew that the killing of Devon had occurred on Sunday, sometime between 3 and 7 PM. If we didn’t do something soon, and if Lisa’s body was exposed to the elements, it would deteriorate. I theorized that the scratches on Fairley’s face would match up to skin under her nails. I was afraid that the DNA evidence under her fingernails would be consumed by animals.”
Castor discussed an idea with Woodward. “This was going to involve the murder of a child, which made it a death penalty case. It was by strangulation, which has to be a first-degree case, because it’s almost impossible to have a strangulation that is not premeditated. So I knew I had an aggravating factor for the death penalty. I surmised that Lisa Manderach had also been murdered, so now I had multiple killings, which made it a second aggravating factor. I knew I had a bargaining chip with the death penalty, so I came up with idea of bargaining it away in exchange for the location of the body. To us in law enforcement in Pennsylvania, this is not really giving up anything, because no one has been executed in Pennsylvania against their will since 1962.
“I knew that Steinberg thought that Lisa’s body might turn up, so he had a chance to get his guy off the death penalty. The risk for me was that Fairley agreed and showed us the body, but it was decomposed or there was no forensic evidence, or it had been destroyed in some other fashion. So, I would have bargained away the death penalty and got nothing in return. But their risk, if they said no, was that I’d find the body anyway and now I can use the death penalty. Plus, I’m pissed off at them.”
But Castor had to consider the ramifications for the DA, too. “It was an unusual time in our careers. Marino was a shoe-in to be re-elected because he was enormously popular, but he had announced that he would not be running for re-election and he had laid groundwork for me to run in the next one. Well, I knew that the public would go nuts if they found out we’d bargained away the death penalty for the killer of a mother and little girl. I called and asked him to come to the police station.
“To my recollection, it’s the only time I can remember that I bothered him on an investigation. But someone had to do the deal and it wasn’t going to be me. I knew this was a huge political decision and he had to make the final say.”
In addition, perhaps Jimmy Manderach, or Lisa’s family, who waited with Jimmy for news, would not accept it. There was little time. Castor called Marino on his car phone, and he returned to the station.
“We were sitting in the lieutenant’s office,” Castor recalled. “It was probably seven or eight of the investigators, from the chief to all the county detectives, me and DA Marino. And he asked everybody’s opinion about what we should do. I was the last one. Marino was sitting there. He leaned forward, with his elbows on his thighs, and he covered his face with his hands. He slowly straightened up and ran his hands down his face toward his chin and said, ‘The public will never understand.’”
“To his credit,” Saville added, “he went around room and said, ‘Tell me why I should or should not take this deal.’ He listened to what everyone had to say. And he turned his back to us and was looking out the window. He knew it might be political suicide.”
“We were unanimous that he should make the deal,” said Peffall. “We needed the body now.”
Marino told them to make the deal. Castor left and went down the hall, to the room where Fairley was being held. “I told Steinberg what the deal was,” he said.
Steinberg listened. He, too, was under pressure. He knew from Fairley that the body was within a 10-minute drive and that a large-scale search was underway. As he would later state, with discovery a likely occurrence, he’d figured this was the best thing he could do for his client. He accepted and agreed to minimize the political impact; he’d tell reporters that the deal had been his idea.
Peffall remembered the moment Steinberg came among them. “He walked out and asked for a Yellow Pages. He opened it up to the fitness centers. He put his finger on Valley Forge Fitness Center.”
Castor recalled that Steinberg tore the page out. On it was a map that featured the health club—a club that Fairley’s mother had made him join so he would lose some of his 250 pounds. Thus, he knew the area. Next to it was an abandoned industrial warehouse. “It was in an obscure corner of the township that bordered on the turnpike,” Castor explained. “There was all this brush and debris and fencing. He said, ‘She’s back in the woods here.’” They were stunned to learn that it was but a mile from where they were.
Industrial park (aerial view)
Saville and Peffall raced to the area and parked to look around. Although workmen were there for a trucking company in the next building, no one had noticed a body. The detectives walked about 40 feet into a wooded area, and there she was, not far off a path. They called it in.
Lisa Manderach lay on her back in the weeds, nude except for her black bra and a black lacy top. These items had been pulled up around her neck. Her legs were splayed and her long, dark hair had been pulled over her face. She looked posed. Attesting to her life-and-death struggle were bruises on her ribs and around her neck. In fact, she’d tried so hard to resist her killer’s grip that she’d dug her fingernails into her own throat. Several nails were broken and bloodied.
Castor and Marino arrived within moments. It looked as if their gamble might pay off, but they weren’t yet certain. As soon as the body could be moved, it was taken to the morgue. By this time, Jimmy, along with Lisa’s family, had learned about the controversial deal and its result. They were aware that Lisa was dead. While they were grateful to have her found, they weren’t so sure that her killer should be spared. Some thought they should have been consulted first.
It was a deal that would have repercussions across the community for several months. However, Castor knew that they could now arrest Fairley.
“We then had a press conference and disclosed what we had done,” he stated. “Before we could explain our reasoning, one of the reporters broke into the local programming to say we had done this. Even my wife called me and asked what I was doing. It took us weeks to dig out from negative publicity.”
Marino said repeatedly that it was the most difficult decision he’d ever made, “but it was clearly the right thing to do.”
It was time to execute the searches.