The road that led police from the 1989 murder of Rose Hnath to their suspect, Michael Breisch, was a long one, marked by lulls and restarts until forensic technology improved enough that detectives believed they could match a person to DNA found on the murder weapon.
Questioned by police 35 years after the 78-year-old widow’s body was found in a pool of blood in the kitchen of her North Whitehall Township home, Michael Breisch willingly spoke to detectives and gave them a DNA sample.
Then, prosecutors told a Lehigh County jury Tuesday, Breisch skipped town.
“He doesn’t tell his landlord. He turns off his phone,” Deputy District Attorney Joseph Holaska said.
Detectives had placed a tracking device on Breisch’s car and were able to find him in Ohio, where his son lived, by the time the DNA sample was analyzed in 2024. The DNA was a match, scientists said, so the 66-year-old former Wind Gap man was arrested and brought back to Lehigh County to face homicide charges, according to testimony.
The DNA swabbed off the barrel of a broken pellet gun found near Hnath’s Second Street home is the only evidence linking Breisch to Hnath’s killing, Deputy Public Defender Alicia Baatz told the jury. Police found no fingerprints and there were no witnesses.
Baatz told the jury that none of her client’s DNA was found in Hnath’s home, even though an autopsy showed that she fought her killer and had defensive wounds. Baatz asked the jury to consider all the ways that a person’s DNA could end up on an object.
“If you stopped at a Starbucks on your way here, you got your barista’s DNA on your coffee cup,” she said.
Breisch’s trial, which began Tuesday and is expected to last about a week, will be a battle of experts. Jurors are expected to hear from scientists to learn how a genetic genealogist built a family tree from the unknown suspect’s DNA until one of the branches ended with Breisch.
Hnath was a widow who lived alone in a secluded home overlooking the Lehigh River. She was last seen alive raking leaves on a cold, blustery morning Jan. 21, 1989.
When she failed to show up for 4 p.m. mass at Our Lady of Hungary Church in Northampton, her nephew went to check on her and found her body. She had been bludgeoned and repeatedly stabbed in the head and neck.
Police found footprints going to and from nearby railroad tracks and Hnath’s house. Near the tracks they recovered a bloody knife and BB gun.
Prosecutors say the broken BB pistol was the murder weapon, noting that the autopsy showed Hnath suffered a triangular skull fracture with black paint on it that matched the shape and color of the pistol.
Gregory Miller, a retired state trooper, was one of the first officers on the scene. He described the amount of blood found in Hnath’s kitchen as jurors looked at an evidence photo of her on the floor.
Miller said he had spoken to Hnath three weeks earlier because her house had been burglarized the day after Christmas 1988. A handgun and $1,100 were stolen, and Hnath, who lived alone, was shaken up.
“She was very frightened and nervous,” Miller said.
Court records show that Breisch has burglary convictions, but prosecutors will not be permitted to disclose that unless Breisch testifies.
The retired trooper said he tried to calm Hnath after the burglary and chatted with her about her late husband, who was a World War I veteran.
“She was a very kind woman, she reminded me of my grandmother,” Miller testified. “She kept a very neat home, the place was spotless.”
At least eight men were identified as potential suspects in the years after the killing, said Ray Judge, a Northampton County detective who was a state trooper and cold case investigator assigned to the case. They included a serial burglar, a family member and a man Hnath had a romantic relationship with that she may have been trying to end at the time she was killed. All were investigated and excluded as suspects, Judge testified.
Breisch is being held in the county jail pending the outcome of the trial.
Laurie Mason Schroeder is a freelance writer.
