Phone Records and False Reports

Following the brutal murder of Tommy Holmes, several news organizations reported an ironic side-note to McKeesport's first homicide of 2003. Just after 8:00 PM on January 9, during the exact moments Tommy Holmes was being murdered on Madison Street, a police officer "just happened by" the 600 block of Madison Street while on "routine patrol," reports declared.

The officer turned out to be Detective Joseph Osinski -- the reports turned out to be false.



This is not an accusation of murder against Detective Joseph Osinski. It is an examination of his police report and a critical look at his involvement in the Thomas Holmes murder investigation.



Time Will Tell

Accurate time information from phone records and dispatch logs would reveal much of the truth surrounding the murder of Tommy Holmes. Revealing the falsehoods surrounding the murder, and identifying their original source, would also be extremely useful.

Telephone calls can be associated with nearly every significant event of the episode, and since available reports and news articles don't vary much in timeline details, even without official phone records, certain basic facts emerge:



7:50

At approximately 7:50 PM, Osinski either initiated or answered a phone call, and spoke with Tommy Holmes about an impromptu meeting on Madison St.


8:05

Around 8:05 PM, Osinski telephoned Holmes from the McKeesport Police station and briefly spoke with him again.

After the second call, Tommy Holmes left his Fairview Street residence, located half a block from the place he would be shot and killed.

At approximately 8:09 PM, the first back-up officers got to the crime scene to find Officer Osinski kneeling over Tommy Holmes' dead body.

There are only four minutes between the time when Osinski was with Holmes on the telephone, and when Osinski was with Holmes' dead body. Even at break-neck speed, it takes two minutes to drive the 0.8 miles from the police station to Madison St., effectively reducing the time of the remaining events to a tiny window of about two minutes.



Original Source: Drive-By

It isn't clear whether or not Joe Osinski is the originator of the absurd "routine patrol" story, but whoever invented it was immediately believed by Police Chief Ron Willard, who told a McKeesport Daily news reporter the day after Holmes was gunned down, "Within minutes, one of our detectives just happened to be driving by." Later in the same article, Willard says the hapless detective mistakenly assumed it was a domestic incident because he had heard female screams in the area.

If these unique details were originally supplied by someone other than Osinski, Chief Willard, presumably, would have at least verified the bizarre facts with Osinski prior to telling the press.



8:06

The truth is -- Osinski didn't happen by. He admits he called Holmes at 8:05. If so, Holmes could not have finished the call, put on his jacket, left the house and gotten to Madison any sooner than 8:06.



First Series of Gunshots

Three separate witnesses to the killing told authorities they heard multiple gunshots and screams, and then a pause of about a minute. So the first shooting took at least one minute.


8:07

One witness says Holmes, already injured, came running and yelling to the front door of his home at 637 Madison St. -- clutching his leg in pain, Tommy was pleading, "Help me! Help me! They're trying to shoot me!"

The resident told police his nine-year-old daughter was in the hall and screamed out in fear, so after promising to call 9-1-1, he quickly shut his front door.

Detective Osinski never mentions seeing Tommy Holmes running down the street and yelling.



A Pause

As Detective Osinski arrives on Madison St. that Thursday evening, wearing plain-clothes and driving an unmarked car, he reports he hears and sees nothing unusual. Then, approaching the end of the block, Osinski says he hears three young, female screams. Looking toward the direction of the screams, he sees the resident at 637 Madison slam his door.


8:08

At this point, witness Osinski says he radio'd in. The exact time of this call is critical and easily verifiable by dispatch logs.

Osinski states he walked over to the door at 637, saw the motionless body, inspected it and realized it was Tommy Holmes who had been shot in the head.

8:09

After yelling out that he was a law enforcement officer -- Osinski claims the door re-opened and he saw the homeowner on the phone to 9-1-1. The re-opening of the door is a small but vital detail which is mentioned in many news articles including a January 11 Post-Gazette piece which says: "The man opened the door to see Holmes lying there."

This description would lead one to believe that the resident slammed his door in fear, heard Osinski announce himself and then "within seconds" re-opened the door and viewed Osinski kneeling over the dead body of Tommy Holmes.


Second Series of Gunshots

The resident at 637 remembers it differently. He told police he spoke with Holmes who, although injured, was very much alive -- then, immediately after he shut the door, he heard 3 or 4 loud gunshots very close to his house. Those were the fatal, close-range shots to Holmes' head.

Everyone reports that the gunfire was extremely loud. (One witness told police he heard the shots over at his residence on Shaw Avenue, several blocks away.) Osinski however, maintains he heard no gunfire and saw no shooter.

The resident told police he then dialed 9-1-1 and the lines were already so jammed, he was placed on hold by the operator. Knowing the exact time of the 9-1-1 call would be very instructive. After he placed the call, the homeowner cautiously re-opened his front door. That's when he first saw Tommy Holmes lying dead, and that's when he first saw Officer Osinski. It was a minute later when the first police car sped down Madison St.


Time of Death

Dispatch logs will concretely prove the matter, but the first back-up officers on the scene were probably not responding to Osinski's "domestic" -- they were responding to "gunshots fired" -- which explains how they got there so quickly.

Holmes was indeed shot four times in the arm, once in the leg and then three times in the head. That all happened some time before officers arrived at 8:09. The shooting, which seems to have initially been botched, lasted three to four minutes -- prolonged by Holmes' desperate escape to the neighbor.

The events Officer Osinski describes (screams and door slam, radio dispatch, approaching 637, inspecting the body, radio dispatch, seeing the resident, waiting for back-up) also last for three to four minutes.

Logically, Joe Osinski had to have witnessed the murder.



Officer Osinski's report seems to indicate that he arrived on Madison St. in the minutes following the shooting, and implies that Holmes was dead before Osinski had even arrived -- but the time information from phone records will likely prove that story false, since the events in his statement would've taken nearly four minutes to occur, yet responding officers were on the scene at 8:09.



The Investigation

In the hours immediately following the murder, Osinski told county investigators that Holmes was a confidential informant for the McKeesport police, and that the shooting was revenge for information supplied by Holmes that resulted in a woman's arrest on the previous day, January 8.

The woman was associated with her half-brother -- Joseph Rhone, and on January 16, Rhone was arrested.

Joseph Rhone, 20, apparently lived with Jusef Rhone, 19 -- the sole witness to confirm Osinski's "informant" motive. Jusef Rhone of course has troubling criminal charges of his own with the McKeesport police.

Amazingly, Joseph Rhone readily confessed to the shooting but could not offer details of the crime or a consistent motive. Now it seems, Rhone may well have been bullied or coerced into the confession, which he recants, and the confession is likely to be thrown out. If so, there's no case against Rhone. Police have no identifying witness and no murder weapon.


Two Shooters?

Tommy yelled out, "They're trying to shoot me!" or "They're trying to kill me!" In that desperate moment, Tommy used what he most likely knew would be his last words, and the words indicate two things: Tommy said "they're" not "he", implying more than one shooter, and secondly, since he had already been wounded, the word "trying" indicates that he knew the shooters were still pursuing him.


There were actually two separate shootings, which could imply two separate shooters. And although there is no evidence of two different guns being used, there is one police report that oddly denotes use of an "additional weapon," but offers no further explanation.

Then there is this two man scenario from the January 11 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

"Please help me, they're trying to kill me," Holmes screamed, according to county homicide Sgt. Jeffrey Korczyk.

The unnamed neighbor, fearing for the safety of his 9-year-old daughter and himself, locked his front door, Korczyk said.

Seconds later the neighbor heard gunshots and felt a bullet smash into the steel door as he braced himself against it.

The neighbor did not see the men who chased Holmes from a nearby alleyway to Madison Street, Korczyk said.

"Squeeze Play"

Considering the timing, and the wild, amateurish, ineffective shooting of the first set of gunshots as it compares to the steely, "up-close and personal" over-kill of the second blast -- it is also possible that there were two shooters but only one gun, traded during the minute's pause.

No witnesses claim to have seen a second shooter, but no witnesses saw a lone shooter either. A nervous, reluctant first gunman who shoots then quickly flees to the west, followed by a second, determined and more experienced gunman situated to the east, would account for the victim's odd "squeeze play" movement pattern -- and would explain why witnesses saw Holmes running down Madison, but didn't see anyone running after him.



Original Source: Police Informant

Beginning the night of the murder, news reports openly announced that Tommy Holmes was a police informant. Where did that information come from?

Every news outlet mentions Holmes' "informant" status and attributes the information to the McKeesport police.

WTAE - TV News headline:
Drug Suspect's Brother Accused Of Murdering Snitch

McKeesport Daily News:
"The victim had provided reliable information in the past regarding the sales and possession of illegal drugs, in the McKeesport area."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
The younger Holmes, 44, of Fairview Street, a convicted drug dealer and user, was for years a confidential informant for McKeesport and other police agencies.



The original source of these stories is unknown, but since the "informant" angle appeared in the media within hours of the homicide, one has to ask: Who else but Joe Osinski had even suggested that Holmes' relationship with the police was the reason for the murder?

Whoever it was in the McKeesport Police department that gave news reporters such privileged information, has now been proven wrong.



Joseph's Revenge Motive

Not once has Joseph Rhone, or his lawyer, ever mentioned the half-sister as a motive, or connected her with this matter in any way. Ever.

Joseph Rhone initially gave a vague story about a summer of 2002 incident, not his half-sister's arrest. He couldn't have said that, because there was no arrest.

The press reports that repeated the story of a January 8 arrest of Joseph Rhone's half-sister for possession of illegal drugs, were wrong.

Subsequent articles have now established that it was not an arrest -- it was an arraignment that took about an hour, and at any rate, did not involve illegal drug charges. It's hardly enough to propel a sibling to run down the street with a loaded pistol and shoot a man in the head as revenge.

There is no real connection between Rhone and Holmes. The only thing that connects them is the news media -- that is to say -- the source of the "informant" story. They may well have known each other, but without the "arrest", there is no reason to conclude or even suspect that Rhone sought revenge on Tommy Holmes.

But Joseph Osinski had a very contentious relationship with Holmes that went back for some years. The exact nature of the tension between them is unclear, and factual information is hard to come by. It is a fact that there was a great deal of conflict between the two men who knew each other and did not like each other.



What did Osinski really witness?

Joe Osinski is the main witness to a shocking crime, and he is also a trained police officer. Despite his training, the account he gives differs from all other accounts, and the timing of his story is -- practically speaking -- impossible.

It is not possible that Joe Osinski could so clearly hear three frightened screams from the 9-year-old girl standing inside the hall of her home, and yet, not hear any of the horrifying noises that prompted her screams -- the repeated gun shots and hysterical cries from the fatally wounded Holmes as he desperately galloped up to the child's door.

It is not possible that Detective Osinski could see the resident slam his front door, but could not see the reason for the slam -- Tommy Holmes standing in front of that door begging his neighbor for help.

It is not possible for Osinski, alone with the dead victim, to witness the front door open, but not witness the murderer, who had approached the victim, and at point blank range, fired three bullets directly into Tommy Holmes' head.

Joseph Osinski did not just "happen by" a homicide. Osinski was the last person to see Tommy Holmes alive, and the first person to see him dead.