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aggravated matters.
    After school, John sought refuge in the structure and discipline of the Marine Corps. While his initial impressions were enthusiastic, and he seemed to respond quite well to the strict discipline of the corps, he eventually went AWOL. After numerous AWOL charges, John was less-than-honorably discharged and unfortunately was forced to return to the crime-infested, drug-ridden lifestyle from which his brief stint in the marines had freed him.
    John’s time in the marines had changed him. When he returned, he was much more distant, less talkative and much more out of control. He frequently got into fights, sometimes with little or no provocation. He constantly drank, drove recklessly and appeared to have no fear. John’s return from the marines brought not only a return to his former degenerate lifestyle, but it also brought him some disturbing news.
    Child welfare had removed John’s youngest brother, Joey, from the family well before they had successfully taken the other five kids. Because of this, Joey was placed in a foster care facility separate from the others. Even though his placement may have saved him from some of his mother’s worst abuse, his foster parent subjected him to something far worse. While in foster care, one of his foster care guardians repeatedly abused him sexually.
    John was violently upset when he found out about this. Beyond the protective nature of an older brother, John’s strong reaction was likely rooted in some early childhood memories of his own.
    As a small child roaming the streets and projects of Homestead, amid the steel mills and row houses, John and his brother had run a shoeshine business. For extra money, John carried around his shine kit, and he polished shoes for locals. He tried desperately to put food on the table. On one occasion, one of John’s shoeshine patrons invited him back to his home with an offer of more money for another pair of shoes. While at this customer’s home, the patron sexually molested him.
    These are the formative experiences that John endured. Whether this early abuse was enough of a catalyst to tip the precarious scales of his psychic balance is still up for debate; however, over the next few days, something would align the forces of evil within John enough to bring about a metamorphosis of Kafkan proportion.
    Perhaps the grand orchestrator of John’s evil rampage was his recent acquaintance, Michael Travaglia. Some argue that while older than John by a mere two months, Michael was the more dominant figure, and as a result, John quickly followed Michael’s lead wherever it took the pair.
    Regardless of whether John followed or, as others claim, led, the two were destined for infamy from the moment they met.
    The two met when both men worked at the Allegheny County Airport. Michael was pursuing training as an airplane mechanic, and both men seemed to find a common bond. Sharing a penchant for drugs and alcohol, the union between these two men forged an alliance that would ultimately lead to the death of four innocent people.
    This chance meeting at the Allegheny County Airport in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, would set in motion seven days of pure, vicious evil. Whether it was John’s tortured childhood and cycle of abuse that made him the way he was or whether he was pure and simply born evil, it did not matter—there was something about the derelict and malevolent Edison Hotel that felt like home.
    It was this fitting home to which Michael and John were en route when a chance encounter with forty-nine-year-old, unemployed security guard Peter Levato would change history.
    As the frigid men walked under the cloudless, coal black city sky, John began thinking about where his next meal was going to come from. Broke, hungry and depressingly sober, they needed some cash—and quick. He sidestepped a tiny bit of debris as it flew past him and then stepped down off the curb onto the street.
    They were two blocks from the Edison and