Will confessed killer Andrew Gesslein get away with Michael Randolph's murder?

April 4, 2013 Verdict: GUILTY  
[UpDated: Aug 17, Judge Donna Butler emails LVS, see comments]
Although we hope we're wrong, it appears shamefully obvious to LVS that ...
from day 1, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin has been positioning the Andrew Gesslein case and manipulating his local media lapdogs not towards a trial, and justice for the grief-stricken Randolph family, but towards a 'bargain' plea deal for confessed killer and licensed NRA firearms instructor Andrew Gesslein [Criminal Docket]  as is DA Jim Martin's longstanding route of choice to low- or no-maintenence criminal case resolution.

LVS attended the curiously inept June 28 bail hearing charade and the equally suspect July 6 preliminary hearing for Michael Randolph's confessed killer and licensed NRA firearms instructor Andrew Gesslein, pictured above here appearing to be defiantly demonstrating his shooter's stance and dead-eye aim for Morning Call photographer Donna Fisher outside Lehigh County Courthouse on Friday following a preliminary hearing on his 'professional courtesy' wrist-slap charge of voluntary manslaughter [Watch 69 "News" arrest report].

Clearly, the fix is in on this case, and chiefly among the many things we're concerned about is this.

According to The Express-Times, July 6:

Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin previously said authorities could not prove or disprove whether Randolph reached for a gun because most witnesses inside the club were uncooperative, and the only security cameras were outside the club, not inside.

Martin, who was not present for Friday's hearing, previously said that was the primary reason Gesslein is charged with voluntary manslaughter and not murder.

Well, so apparently the DA's office was able to locate some almost unbelievably cooperative witnesses from inside the club; three of them testified at Friday's eyebrow-raising preliminary hearing, and, by the way, LVS knows of at least one other eyewitness to the shooting, T-Tom Hawkins, whose testimony is being ignored by both the prosecution and our local media.

The only thing that seems clear after the muddled preliminary hearing on July 6 is that no witnesses saw Michael Randolph "reaching" for a gun-- only publicly exposed liar Andrew Gesslein "saw this."

In not filing a murder charge against Andrew Gesslein, DA Jim Martin is relying only on the testimony of publicly exposed liar Andrew Gesslein for his excuse.

Additionally, according to oath-sworn eyewitness testimony on Friday that was originally made public by North End Republican Club president Robert E. Smith in an LVS exposé exclusive, Andrew Gesslein and Michael Randolph had had a prior run-in. The next night, Andrew Gesslein brought a gun to work and killed Michael Randolph.

Andrew Gesslein's killing of Michael Randolph was clearly murder of either the third degree (see page 3 for the legal definition of malice), second degree, or first degree.

Consider ...

All of last Friday's preliminary hearing eyewitnesses testified that when Andrew Gesslein stepped back and drew his gun, Michael Randolph and his friends all immediately ran for the door, and for their lives. We don't care how many more times WFMZ-TV 69 "News" helpfully broadcasts this picture of Michael Randolph for jury pool viewers and reports there was marijuana in Michael Randolph's bloodstream that night, it completely defies logic, and a human being's involuntary instincts to stay alive, that Michael Randolph would have stopped, interrupting himself from being in flight for his life, turn around, and then "reach" for a gun that he knew wasn't there, as licensed NRA firearms instructor Andrew Gesslein simultaneously started shooting. It's a joke that DA Jim Martin and First Assistant DA Steven Luksa don't think they could convince a jury that Andrew Gesslein is lying about having seen Randolph "reaching" for a gun. This was murder.

Consider ...

Andrew Gesslein got off 3 shots (all direct hits) without ever seeing a gun get reached out from Michael Randolph's waist area. Q. How come Andrew Gesslein didn't stop shooting after the FIRST shot, which, no doubt, would have terminated any perceived threat to Gesslein's life, and would have spared Michael Randolph's life? Isn't that what a licensed NRA firearms instructor would have been trained to do?

DA Jim Martin has stated to the press that it's "impossible to determine the sequence of those shots." Really? "Impossible?" In 2012? Or does DA Martin just not want anyone to know that the right thigh shot was maybe first, the abdomen shot was possibly second, and the shot in Michael Randolph's back was logically the third shot. Come on, Jim. This was murder and you know it.

Quite simply, DA Jim Martin is either too crooked, too lazy, too racist, or too pussy to prosecute Andrew Gesslein for the crime he committed against Michael Randolph, the same way DA Jim Martin was too crooked, too lazy, too classist, and too pussy to charge malice-sodden, remorseless, and homicidal drunk driver Robert LaBarre with the crime he committed against my daughter Sheena.

There are so many aspects of DA Jim Martin's apparent special handling of the Andrew Gesslein case that don't pass the smell test that it's challenging to decide where to even begin cataloguing them all. We'll do our best. Hold your nose ...

* Despite an April 29 killing confession from licensed NRA firearms instructor Andrew Gesslein, and peaceful, well-attended public protests, DA Jim Martin callously dragged his flat feet for 40 days in filing any criminal charges whatsoever against Andrew Gesslein who remained free. Simultaneously, DA Jim Martin's local media lapdogs not only kept a tight lid on the protests, they proactively and blatantly deceived the public about how much citizen support Michael Randolph really had. See: LVS, May 4, 2012

* For nearly a month, DA Jim Martin's local media lap dogs The Morning Call "newspaper," 69 "News," and The Express-Times, in lock-step, stubbornly and curiously concealed two highly inconvenient yet relevant facts about Andrew Gesslein from the public. Find out what they were, see: LVS, May 11, 2012

* By late-May, the putrid stench emanating from DA Jim Martin's special handling of the Andrew Gesslein case had wafted from the Lehigh County Courthouse over to Allentown City Hall, prompting popular and visionary Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski to phone LVS on a Saturday and voluntarily go on the record, exclusively at LVS, as being suspicious about the Andrew Gesslein case. It wasn't the first time Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski had initiated a phone call to LVS about DA Jim Martin. It was by our count the 10th time. See: LVS, May 26, 2012

* On May 31, Andrew Gesslein's employer, former cop Pat Badolato/Eye in the Sky contacted LVS and tried to lure us into meeting with him at Eye in the Sky. Sensing a possible frame-up ambush, as DA Jim Martin and then Attorney General Tom Corbett had perpetrated on LVS in the past unsuccessfully, we went public at LVS w/ Pat Badolato's likely entrapment invitation. Badolato and his phony invitation both disappeared like farts in the wind. See: LVS, May 31, 2012

* In early June, DA Jim Martin realized he couldn't make the Andrew Gesslein case disappear in similar fashion so he finally filed charges, but Martin's local media lapdogs did their part by not showing the public a picture of arrested caucasian confessed killer Andrew Gesslein for almost another month. See: LVS, June 7, 2012

* In mid-June, an eyewitness to Michael Randolph's killing, disturbed by deceit-laden local media coverage of the event, contacted LVS and volunteered to go on the record. He told LVS the same things he cooperatively told Allentown Police Detectives shortly after Michael Randolph's killing. But The Morning Call, 69 News, and The Express-Times all continue to allude to him as an uncooperative out-of-state witness who can't be located. Nothing could be farther from the truth. See: LVS, June 13, 2012

* In late-June, LVS catches DA Jim Martin in the act of trying to conduct a secret, insider/VIP bail hearing for Andrew Gesslein. See: LVS, June 27, 2012

* Although exposed by LVS and not a secret anymore, DA Jim Martin's insider/VIP/rigged bail hearing for Andrew Gesslein proceeded as scheduled anyway. LVS watched, slack-jawed, as curiously inept First Assistant District Attorney Steven Luksa took a shamefully apparent dive and allowed a laughably low bail by obviously in-on-it Judge Robert L. Steinberg, when Luksa could have easily cut the legs out from under an even more curiously inept recommendation of only $15,000 bail by 'know-nothing' Lehigh County Pretrial Services Officer/Dunce, Ashley Stumpp. First Assistant DA Steven Luksa also passed up a slam-dunk opportunity to present Andrew Gesslein as being uniquely qualified as a flight risk, based on his employment history as a "fugitive recovery specialist," a.k.a., a bail bondsman's bounty hunter (!) coupled with the newly discovered fact that Andrew Gesslein had apparently lied to his wife for many years about having been a "police officer in Bergen County, NJ." Turns out he wasn't, and that makes DA Jim Martin's oft-quoted star witness a publicly exposed liar. Also exposed during this courtroom charade and reported on at LVS were an array of other jaw-dropping first-time revelations, none of which have to date been reported on by DA Jim Martin's Allentown-based press agents, The Morning Call "newspaper," and 69 "News." See: LVS, June 28, 2012

* Early the next morning ...Edna Gesslein, who had testified under oath just the day before to being $5,000 short on her confessed killer/hubby's $15,000 bail, all of a sudden had it all, paid it all, and DA Jim Martin secretly freed Andrew Gesslein on Judge Steinberg's 'bargain' $15K bail, and Martin's local media lapdogs kept it a secret, while displaying zero intellectual curiosity over the growing list of eerie parallels between the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman/Shellie Zimmerman case and the Michael Randolph/Andrew Gesslein/Edna Gesslein case. This part of the Andrew Gesslein case-fix-in-progress maybe stinks the worst so far. See: LVS, June 30, 2012

* Allentown Chief of Police (for now) Roger MacLean refuses to discuss the putrid stench of the Andrew Gesslein case with LVS, although we see Chief Roger and his City of Allentown IP address on this blog's SiteMeter(R) reading about it at LVS at all hours of the day and night. See: LVS, July 3, 2012.

* "Stonewall" Steinberg refuses to discuss the putrid stench too, and probably b/c of exposed embarrassment over the fact that much of the stench is emanating from under his robe. See: LVS, July 5, 2012

Editor's Note: LVS is used to pusillanimous avoidance.

Al Sharpton's National Action Network and the national media need to wake up and start covering the murder of Michael Randolph and the Andrew Gesslein case-fix-in-progress.

LVS has laid all the groundwork for you.

10/23/12 Update: At 1:30pm today, Lehigh County Judge Robert Steinberg scheduled the Andrew Gesslein trial to start on April 1 (Fools Day), 2013, successfully kicking the Justice for Michael Randolph can down the road for at least another 6 months (for now).

VILLAS: WHY WE FIGHT