A 70-year-old woman who was found guilty of killing a man by stabbing him with a blade hidden inside her cane will spend between 20 and 40 years behind bars for the crime.
Renee DiPietro was sentenced Monday after being found guilty of third-degree murder in the death of 31-year-old Michael Sides in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
Investigators learned DiPietro stabbed Sides on June 10, 2023, following an incident in which her son “sucker-punched” one of Sides’ friends at a bar for flirting with his girlfriend.
DiPietro’s son was kicked out of the bar, so he called his mother and father to pick him up. Prosecutors said Sides, who was bartending at a nearby pub, heard about the fight and went outside to find the guy who punched his friend.
Sides confronted DiPietro’s son just as he was getting into his parents’ car and started fighting him.
DiPietro intervened in the fight, pulled a 16-inch blade from her walking cane that doubled as a sheath and stabbed Sides.
Prosecutors said surveillance video showed DiPietro stabbing Sides once after he confronted her son, and then another time after he fell to the ground.
A jury convicted her of murder in January and rejected her claim that she was acting in defense of herself and others.
“He came at me. I never came at him. I’m sitting in jail. What did I do?” DiPietro said from her wheelchair at the defense table during her trial. “You don’t think I hurt? I see his (Sides) face every day. I am sorry for what happened to that young man.”
She maintained her self-defense claim even after a judge announced her decades-long sentence this week.
“I apologize for what happened to him, but I did not kill him,” DiPietro said as she was wheeled out of the courtroom. “I did not take his life. He came upon me.”
The judge rejected the notion that DiPietro was acting in self-defense. Prosecutors played surveillance video in court that showed no one in DiPietro’s party called police or tried to help Sides after he was stabbed.
“Nothing justified the murder of Michael Sides. The video does not lie. You looked like a cold-blooded killer in that video,” Judge Wendy G. Rothstein told DiPietro while referencing the surveillance footage. “You, not Michael Sides, escalated the situation. You stabbed Michael and stood over him and taunted him.”
Prosecutors weren’t gunning for the maximum sentence in this case. They wanted DiPietro to serve a standard prison term of seven to 20 years.
During DiPietro’s sentencing hearing, her attorney tried to get her sentence reduced, citing her age, failing health, and remorse, but the judge turned him down.
“Murder is murder, no matter the age of the defendant,” Rothstein said, telling DiPietro directly that she was only “remorseful” for her situation, not for what she did.
DiPietro will be incarcerated at a state institution with a medical department that can sufficiently address her medical needs as she ages.
The 70-year-old has vowed to appeal her conviction.
