Berks Man Gets Death for Co-Worker's Murder: Jury

An eastern Pennsylvania jury has decided that a man should be put to death for the stabbing death of a co-worker three years ago.

The Reading Eagle says the Berks County jury deliberated for more than four hours Wednesday before deciding that 45-year-old Glenn Lyons deserved execution rather than life in prison without parole.

The panel last week convicted Lyons of the May 2008 stabbing death of 45-year-old Kathy Leibig of Lebanon County, a co-worker of his at a Heidelberg Township chocolate factory.

Prosecutors said they were having an affair and met at a parking lot at Wernersville State Hospital, and her body was found there inside her sport utility vehicle three days later.

Lyons said they were attacked by an unknown assailant, and he awoke to find Leibig dead.

Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Kurland argued that the death penalty was warranted because Lyons stabbed the victim 30 times. A forensic pathologist testified during the trial that she suffered pain for 15 minutes during the stabbing.

Kurland also argued that Lyons had spent nearly a dozen years in prison for two armed robberies.

Assistant Public Defender Sean Fitzgerald, however, asked jurors to spare his client's life, saying Lyons' relatives portrayed him as a decent man with a troubled past.

“When Kathy Leibig tried to end that relationship, he may have just went violent and stabbed her,” he said.