To Love and to Perish

Nearly three years had passed since Blairsville dentist John Yelenic was savagely murdered with a knife in his home.  A jury decided the fate of accused murderer Pennsylvania State Trooper Kevin Foley, the live-in boyfriend of John's estranged wife Michele.  But even with the verdict, John's friends and family wondered if justice had been completely served. What was Michele's role in all of this, if any?  Should she have faced some consequence for the literal death of her husband and the figurative death of her lover? Those questions linger today.

Friends and family of murdered Blairsville dentist John Yelenic were frustrated. A year had elapsed and still there was no arrest in the brutal slaying. It seemed to them the logical suspect was right under the nose of Blairsville police and, later, state police investigators who took over the probe. State Trooper Kevin Foley had motive, means and opportunity to kill John in his home on April 13, 2006. Kevin lived with John's estranged wife, Michele, and he told anyone who listen that he wished John would die. John's cousin Mary Ann Clark approached then-Attorney General Tom Corbett and asked him to take over the probe. Corbett, who knew Clark through politics, agreed. Six months later, Foley was arrested in the homicide.

A year had passed since beloved Blairsville dentist John Yelenic was savagely murdered with a knife in his home on April 13, 2006. There had been no arrest -- this despite the fact that state Trooper Kevin Foley, the live-in boyfriend of John's estranged wife, Michele, and a knife aficionado, had openly and often said John should die.  On the anniversary of John's death, more than 130 friends and family held a vigil outside his home. Amid the sadness was the haunting feeling that maybe justice would never be served on an officer of the law.

Generous, kind and funny, John Yelenic had dated regularly but never felt he had met the woman to marry. But with his mother's wish and at the age of 29, John thought maybe it was time to settle down. Why not with Michele Magyar Kamler,  the 25-year-old woman he was dating? Friends quickly ticked off the reasons for their concern, but the couple wed anyway. John would learn all too soon this would be no fairy-tale marriage.

"To Love and to Perish," Season 2 of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette True Crime podcast, examines the stranger-than-fiction tale of how a love triangle and its infidelity, greed and hatred led to a gruesome murder. Why was a beloved small-town dentist brutally killed in his home?  And who wanted him dead? Find out when the first episode is released Sept. 12.