the almanac S E P T E M B E R 6, 2026
SOUTH HILLS COMMUNITY NEWS
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MT. LEBANON MAN REMEMBERING 9/11 Friends of Ken Waldie keep his legacy alive RISES ABOVE SEPT. 11 TRAGEDY By Eleanor Bailey ebailey@thealmanac.net
Tom Etzel chats with children. Etzel established the Global Peace Building Foundation in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
By Eleanor Bailey ebailey@thealmanac.net
On any ordinary day, not just on Sept. 11 anniversaries, Tom Etzel of Mt. Lebanon can wrestle with his feelings
“Out of the blue, the raw emotions still come up and I get tears in my eyes,” he said. Etzel thinks of the niece and friend he lost 25 years ago when two hijacked airliners
crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Katie McCloskey, 25, was working on the 97th floor of 1 World Trade Center, staffing the computer help desk of Directfit Inc. Bethel Park native Ken Waldie, 46, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that struck the North Tower. “Katie would have been 50 this year,” Etzel said. “She was so dear. It’s hard not to wonder what Katie looked like and what she would have done. “Ken was a fierce competitor,” Etzel added of Waldie, who swam at Bethel Park High School as well as at the U.S. Naval Academy. “Even raking leaves in the front yard, he would make a game of it, but the most impressive thing about Ken Waldie was his huSEE TRAGEDY PAGE A2
Terry Crump of Bethel Park once celebrated Sept. 11. Today, he grieves, remembers and toasts a lost companion. Friday marks Crump’s 71st birthday and the death of Ken Waldie. Twenty-five years ago, Waldie boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in Boston but less than 45 minutes later the hijacked plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. All aboard were instantly killed and all above the 91st floor perished. Nearly 3,000 victims died during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that targeted the Pentagon as well. “I look at the date differently now,” said Crump. “Every Sept. 11 since then, I wake up at 7 in the morning, have a beer and salute Kenny.” Crump remembers the day as if it were yesterday. He had just finished his 11 p.m. to 7
a.m. shift at the Allegheny County jail. “I was lying in bed and watching TV. I remember not believing what I saw. I said to my wife, ‘Wow, that plane just hit the building.’ I didn’t know until later that Kenny was on that flight.” Eleven days later on Sept. 22, Crump and a group of his former Bethel Park High School classmates attended a memorial service and gathering for Waldie. “A bunch of us. Frankie (DelPercio), Mac (Steve McGinnis), Tom (Skladany), Al (Cardamone) and Rick (Shademan) packed into my Dodge van and drove nine to 10 hours to Boston,” Crump recalled. “It was the biggest funeral ever. More than 1,500 people. They packed the church and they videotaped the service downstairs for the overflow crowd.” Crump noted the outpouring spoke to the impact
Waldie had made upon others. He certainly left a lasting impression on Crump. The two had known each other since age 8 when they began swimming on the Bethel Park AAU team. By 1973, they were WPIAL champions on the Bethel Park High School swim team. “Ken was a much better swimmer than me,” Crump said. “He was the guy that swam against everybody else’s best swimmer. He could do all the strokes and nine times out of 10, he beat them all. “He was a fierce competitor, but he also knew how to have fun. I remember pulling on the lane ropes and fooling around in practices when we weren’t supposed to as well as doing all those drills. The 100s in two minutes. The 30, 50s on the minute. It was tough and he was tough. He did amazing things.” Waldie took his talents to SEE REMEMBER PAGE A2
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
Ken Waldie served as class president of the United States Naval Academy for four years and spoke during commencement exercises in the presence of then-president Jimmy Carter.
Teen, mother held for court in Peters Some parts of region are vulnerable amid Township girl’s stabbing death By Garrett Neese
gneese@heraldstandard.com
Prosecutors showed a mix of video, GPS data, phone records and texts to show the path of the Washington County teen accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death last month and then enlisting his mother to help cover it up. Royce Moser, 18, of North Strabane Township, and his mother, Rachel Moser, 56, of Beallsville, were held for court Sept. 1 on all charges connected to the Aug. 19 death of 18-year-old Karoline Heintz of Peters Township, who was planning to begin her freshman year at PennWest California a week later. Royce Moser told police that he had “a demon take over” on the night of Aug. 19 after he was angered by something Heintz told him while she was in her vehicle in the driveway of his North Strabane home. “She said something he didn’t like that angered him,” testified Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Jessica Bishop, who interviewed Royce and Rachel Moser after they were taken into custody. “He couldn’t remember what that something was.” He then walked back into his house at 229 William Drive and retrieved a knife,
Karoline Heintz
returned to the car and stabbed her in the chest, police allege in court documents. Bishop said Heintz suffered stab wounds to the hip and heart. Royce Moser then placed her in the hatch of her vehicle, unsure if she was alive or dead, Bishop said. Texts retrieved from Royce Moser’s and Heintz’s phones showed a number of messages exchanged on the night of Aug. 19, when Heintz had gone to dinner with family before planning to return to PennWest for the night. Royce Moser had asked her to stop at his house for “a hug and a kiss,” to which she replied “idk we’ll see,” according to Matthew Collins, a detective with the Washington County district’s at-
LOCATION Up, up and away! PAGE A3
What’s happening, B3
Royce Moser
COURTESY OF KDKA TV
torney’s office. Over the next few minutes, he texted her asking if she was still on Instagram and TikTok, and that he was “kind of impatient,” Collins said. At 9:38 p.m., Heintz texted that she was “going back to college,” which was then followed by an eight-minute phone call between the two, Collins said. GPS tracking indicates Heintz’s phone arrived at Royce Moser’s home at 9:46 p.m., where it remained for the next half-hour. After placing her in the hatch of the vehicle, Moser made several calls to his mother, leading to a 10-minute phone call starting at 10:25, the trooper testified. “He told her that he had
stabbed Karoline, and she was in the Jeep, and he was driving to her,” Bishop said. Royce Moser arrived shortly before 11 p.m. at his mother’s house in Beallsville, the last GPS location recorded for Heintz’s phone. In the early morning hours of Aug. 20, Royce Moser told police his mother instructed him to pull Heintz’s car into her garage, where they cleaned the car with disinfectant. Rachel Moser then told her son to follow her car as she drove to a parking lot on Wood Street in California Borough, directing him to put on latex gloves, Royce Moser told police. License plate readers, GPS data and surveillance footage showed Rachel Moser driving a Volkswagen Jetta and Royce Moser driving to the Wood Street lot. Surveillance cameras showed both wearing latex gloves. Police later found the car with Heintz’s body in the cargo area early on the morning of Aug. 20. Christopher Guffey, an officer with California Borough Police Department, recalled seeing blood stains on the back bumper of the vehicle, near the front door and the rear hatch. He then spotted SEE DEATH PAGE A2
SPORTS Heidenreich makes the cut PAGE B1
Classifieds, B4
measles outbreak
By Brad Hundt bhundt@observer-reporter.com
The blue has been ominously spreading west on the map, like an enemy army advancing. The map is the one that the Pennsylvania Department of Health maintains to track the statewide measles outbreak. Each county where there is a reported case is shaded in blue, with counties that have an abundance of cases designated in deep blue. As of Sept. 1, there had been no reported cases in Washington, Greene or Fayette counties, but Westmoreland County reported its first case days before . Indiana and Somerset counties have also reported cases, with eight in Indiana and four in Somerset. Dr. Thomas Corkery, chief medical officer at AHN Canonsburg Hospital, said on Tuesday that people would have to be “naive” to believe that measles will not eventually infiltrate this area. Of the 424 cases of the measles that were reported statewide as of Aug. 28, more than half of those were concentrated in Lancaster, York and Chester counties. None of those who came down with the highly contagious disease were vaccinated. Measles was reportedly a factor in two deaths in recent days, according to the state health depart-
ment. As recently as 2024, there were just six confirmed cases of measles in Pennsylvania for the whole year, and 285 across the entire country. Measles was officially declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Public health officials have long underscored that the best way people can protect themselves and those around them from viruses like the measles is to get vaccinated. However, it appears some portions of Washington, Greene and Fayette counties could be vulnerable to measles because the vaccination rates in some school districts, mostly at the kindergarten level, have not reached 95%, which is considered to be the point at which there is herd immunity. For instance, at the Carmichaels Area Elementary Center in Greene County, 91.3% of kindergartners had received the MMR vaccine in the 2025-26 school year. It is typically administered to children in two doses, at ages 1 and again at 4 or 5. They were also below herd immunity for hepatitis B, polio and diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough (DTaP). According to state data, however, over 95% of students in the seventh and 12th grades in that SEE MEASLES PAGE A2
SIGHTS & SOUNDS Walk of fame 2026 honorees PAGE B3 Real estate transactions, A5