NORRISTOWN — A 70-year-old Philadelphia woman will spend at least two decades in prison for using a cane-sword with a 16-inch blade to fatally stab an unarmed man who was engaged in a fistfight with her son in Ardmore.
Renee DiPietro, of the 500 block of West 67th Street, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court on Monday to 20 to 40 years in the State Correctional Institution at Muncy in connection with the 1:30 a.m. June 10, 2023, fatal stabbing of Michael Sides, 31, at the intersection of Cricket Avenue and Cricket Terrace in the Ardmore section of Lower Merion. The sentence, the maximum term for the third-degree murder charge, essentially is a life sentence for DiPietro.
“Nothing justified the murder of Michael Sides,” Judge Wendy G. Rothstein addressed DiPietro, referring to video surveillance footage from cameras in the area that recorded the altercation. “The video does not lie. You looked like a cold-blooded killer in that video. You, not Michael Sides, escalated the situation. You stabbed Michael and stood over him and taunted him.”
After a trial in January, a jury rejected DiPietro’s claim of self-defense and that she acted in defense of others. With the third-degree murder conviction, the jury found that DiPietro acted with malice and an extreme indifference to the value of human life when she stabbed Sides with the cane-sword.
The jury also rejected a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter which occurs when someone causes the death of another person while acting in a reckless or grossly negligent manner and is punishable of a possible maximum sentence of 2½ to 5 years in prison.
Before learning her fate on Monday, DiPietro continued to maintain she acted in self-defense.
“He came at me. I never came at him. I’m sitting in jail. What did I do?” DiPietro, raising her voice at times, said as she sat in a wheelchair at the defense table. “You don’t think I hurt? I see his (Sides) face every day. I am sorry for what happened to that young man.”
As sheriff’s deputies escorted her from the courtroom to begin serving the sentence, DiPietro reiterated, “I did not take his life. He came at me.”
Rothstein turned down defense lawyer Louis Busico’s request for a mitigated sentence for DiPietro. In making his request, Busico cited DiPietro’s age, failing health and remorse.
“Murder is murder, no matter the age of the defendant,” responded Rothstein, adding the Muncy prison has a medical department that can adequately address DiPietro’s medical needs as she ages.
Addressing DiPietro directly, Rothstein added, “You are remorseful for your situation, not for what you did.”
DiPietro vowed to appeal her conviction and sentence.
Barbara MacDonald, Sides’ grief-stricken mother, testified she has been devastated by her son’s tragic death.
“I lost my only child, my best friend. I will never hear his voice. I also died that night. To never talk to him again, brings me to my knees. No more milestones,” said MacDonald, adding her heart is “shattered.”
Deputy District Attorney Brianna Leigh Ringwood and co-prosecutor Bradley Walter Deckel sought a lengthy prison term against DiPietro.
“She displayed a callous disregard for his life without a moment of hesitation. This was not about protection. This was about retribution. This was about violence without a moment of hesitation. His life was cut short because of what this defendant did,” Ringwood argued.
Busico presented the testimony of several witnesses, including DiPietro’s children and her husband, who expressed their condolences to the Sides family but who described DiPietro as “loving, kind and generous,” and as a nonviolent woman who reacted out of fear after seeing her son being assaulted and who didn’t intend to kill Sides.
“What happened that evening was an accident. It was not supposed to happen,” DiPietro’s husband, Michael, addressed the courtroom.
An autopsy determined Sides’ cause of death was a stab wound to the chest and the manner of death was ruled homicide.
During the trial, Ringwood and Deckel argued DiPietro, when she stabbed Sides, acted with malice and an extreme indifference to the value of human life, legal elements required for a conviction of third-degree murder.
Ringwood and Deckel argued DiPietro injected herself into what was a fistfight between her son and Sides, who was unarmed, and brought a sword to that fistfight. What DiPietro did was not justified, Ringwood and Deckel argued.
Ringwood suggested the evidence showed DiPietro had hostility whenever there was a perceived slight or disrespect of her son. She pointed to video surveillance footage of the incident that appeared to show DiPietro swing the sword at Sides even after he had been mortally wounded and had fallen to the ground.
But Busico argued DiPietro reacted to her son being beaten by Sides with a mother’s “inherent, intuitive, innate instinct” to protect her son. Busico argued DiPietro was forced to defend herself and her son against an aggressive man, who was taller and heavier than DiPietro’s 5-foot 1-inch and 100-pound frame. It wasn’t DiPietro’s intent to injure, hurt or maim Sides that night, Busico argued during the trial.
Busico suggested DiPietro acted in self-defense and in defense of others.
Busico suggested Sides continued to approach DiPietro aggressively even after she struck him with the cane and after the sheath of the cane disconnected and the sword was exposed “accidentally, unintentionally.”
DiPietro did not testify during the trial.
The investigation began about 1:33 a.m. June 10, when Lower Merion police were dispatched to a report of a stabbing at the intersection of Cricket Avenue and Cricket Terrace and found Sides unresponsive on the ground, hemorrhaging from his upper torso, according to the criminal complaint filed by county Detective John Wittenberger and Lower Merion Detective Bryn Garner.
Sides was transported to Lankenau Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 2:28 a.m. June 10.
The investigation uncovered an altercation earlier that evening at a nearby bar, John Henry’s Pub on Cricket Avenue, during which a friend of Sides was “sucker punched” by a man later identified as Jason DiPietro, who is Renee DiPietro’s son, according to authorities. Prosecutors suggested Jason was upset that his girlfriend and the man he punched had been flirtatious.
Jason DiPietro was ejected from the bar and called his parents to pick him up.
A short time later, testimony revealed, Sides, who was bartending at Jack McShea’s Pub nearby, learned about his friend being punched and sought out the man who punched him, Jason DiPietro.
Witnesses testified they observed Sides engage in a physical altercation with Jason DiPietro as Jason attempted to get into the back seat of a white sedan, occupied by his parents and stopped at the intersection of Cricket Avenue and Cricket Terrace.
“The victim prevents Jason DiPietro from entering the vehicle and engaged in a physical assault with him,” Wittenberger and Garner wrote in the arrest affidavit. “The victim was not armed with any type of weapon.”
During the altercation, according to witness statements and video surveillance, Michael DiPietro, Renee’s husband, exited the driver’s side of the vehicle, and Renee DiPietro got out of the front passenger side and she “began to strike the victim with what appeared to be a black cane that fell apart.”
A witness told detectives he observed Renee DiPietro “lunge” toward Sides with the cane and watched as Sides fell to the ground, bleeding. Following the stabbing, Renee DiPietro “then appeared to strike the victim after he was on the ground with the weapon,” according to the arrest affidavit.
The witness observed Renee DiPietro attempt to remove the license plate from the vehicle, and then the three members of the DiPietro family departed the area in their Nissan sedan, according to the criminal complaint.
Testimony revealed the DiPietros did not call 911, did not render aid to Sides and did not flag down police as they headed to their home in Philadelphia.
Jason and Michael DiPietro were not charged with any crimes in connection with the incident.
