Witness testifies he was killer, not the defendant
In a measured tone occasionally choked by emotion, David Lehrman testified to a jury at the Allegheny County Courthouse Thursday that he killed one of his closest friends in a house in Carrick in 1996, dumped the body in a cemetery and then dismembered it with the help of two other men.
“I stepped forward and I shot him in the head,” Lehrman said.
Convicted of killing 21- yearold Brian Mirenna and serving a life sentence, Lehrman took the stand during the retrial for Scott Godesky, a co- defendant who was also convicted of the killing and sentenced to life in prison.
Lehrman testified that he was solely responsible for killing Mirenna. He said he previously pinned the murder on Godesky because he thought he could avoid prison.
In 2008, Lehrman wrote a letter to Godesky and apologized for pinning the crime on him. That letter prompted a new trial for Godesky, which began Aug. 7 before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani.
Shackled and handcuffed, Lehrman testified that his friendship with Mirenna was characterized by joint criminal endeavors. The two sold drugs together, robbed people together, got drunk and high together and spent nearly every day together, Lehrman testified.
But, Lehrman said, their friendship had been strained in the weeks before the Feb. 28, 1996, party that ended with Mirenna dead. Mirenna had become “big- headed,” Lehrman said, and that night, fueled by alcohol and drugs, Lehrman said he wanted to teach Mirenna a lesson.
He told Godesky and the only other person left at the party, Todd Erfort, that he wanted to prank Mirenna by pretending to rob him. Lehrman gave Godesky a .357 Magnum and then picked up a shotgun.
In the home’s living room, Lehrman testified, he pointed the shotgun at Mirenna, who was seated on a couch, and demanded his money.
Mirenna brushed him off, Lehrman testified.
“He said something like, ‘ Stop playing,’” Lehrman said.
Lehrman testified that without thinking, he shot Mirenna in the foot. The man started screaming, and Lehrman panicked, he testified.
He said he looked over at Godesky, who was still pointing the gun at Mirenna but appeared shocked and “frozen.” He said he grabbed the gun from Godesky and it fired as he did so. He would later learn that bullet hit Mirenna in the cheek.
But in the moment, Mirenna was still screaming and Lehrman just wanted the man to be quiet, Lehrman testified, so he
shot him in the head. Lehrman pushed Mirenna’s body to the floor so that the blood wouldn’t get on the couch.
After the shooting, everything seemed to move in “fast forward,” Lehrman said.
“It dawned on me right then and there that I [ messed] up,” he said. “I couldn’t take this back.”
The three men — Lehrman, Godesky and Erfort — cleaned up the home, dumped Mirenna’s body in a cemetery and eventually cut up the body and buried body parts in shallow graves.
Lehrman appeared emotional when he discussed using a hacksaw to cut Mirenna’s body, and called the act “heinous.” He said he came forward in 2008 to try to “right a wrong.”
“I didn’t take just one life,” he testified, at times directly addressing the jury. “I took two lives. I’m sorry. I realized what I did was wrong, and I wanted to fix it.”
Lehrman also became emotional when he read the five- page letter he sent to Godesky in 2008.
“Sitting here is not easy,” he testified. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t like this. This isn’t what I want to do, but I have to.”
Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Lusty during cross- examination focused on how many times Lehrman’s account of the killing has changed over the years — from his initial interactions with police in which he denied all involvement to his testimony during his own trial in which he fingered Godesky as the killer.
Mr. Lusty argued that it makes more sense that Godesky, who was on parole and did not know the others well, pulled the trigger.
The prosecutor also questioned why Lehrman would so quickly escalate from wanting to teach his friend a lesson to shooting him in the head.
Lehrman said he couldn’t pinpoint a motive for the killing — his disputes with Mirenna had largely cooled before the party — but explained he was in part set off by Mirenna’s nonchalant attitude during the incident.
“It was going to be a prank if he would have been afraid,” Lehrman said. “But once he wasn’t scared, it was like a challenge to me.”