A man who, as a teenager, was ordered to spend the rest of his life behind bars for one of Reading’s most infamous murders is being given a chance at freedom.<\/p>\n
Michael Boettlin Jr. was re-sentenced Friday to 40 years to life in prison. He’ll be eligible for parole after 10 years, when’s he’s 56 years of age.<\/p>\n
“I’m disappointed that is was 40, but the judge was fair and he was following case law,” said friend Jeni Breitenstein. “That’s all we can do, maybe put in an appeal. I think 10 more years is a lot.”<\/p>\n
“This is a sentence that is somewhat consistent with the new sentencing scheme that our legislature has passed to address juveniles who commit murders,” said Berks County District Attorney John Adams.<\/p>\n
Boettlin appeared before Judge Paul Yatron for his re-sentencing hearing, more than 30 years after he participated in the 1987 murder of Stanley Detweiler on South Fifth Street in Reading.<\/p>\n
Boettlin, who was 16 at the time of the killing, is one of several convicted killers in Berks County who must be re-sentenced because of a recent Supreme Court ruling on life terms imposed on juvenile defendants.<\/p>\n
“He’s improved himself a lot, and I feel confident he is going to get out, so that’s a good thing, and I’m confident he’s going to do good with the rest of his life,” said Cynthia Katzin, an aunt.<\/p>\n
Boettlin’s co-defendant, John Calvaresi, died of natural causes in 2015 while serving a life sentence in state prison. He was 22 at the time of the killing.<\/p>\n
The two men, police said, were trying to burglarize Detweiler’s apartment when Detweiler surprised them.<\/p>\n
Calvaresi then beheaded Detweiler and used his blood to write “redrum” — “murder” spelled backwards — on a wall of the apartment.<\/p>\n
“This is a crime that, when it occurred, sent a chilling effect throughout our community,” Adams said. “This was a horrific, brutal homicide.”<\/p>\n
The case drew international media coverage because of similarities to the 1980 movie “The Shining,” which had been shown on cable television just a few days earlier. In both the case and the movie, which was based on a Stephen King novel, the word “murder” was written backward in blood on the walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who, as a teenager, was ordered to spend the rest of his life behind bars for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[279,31,10465,139,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-196763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks","tag-crime","tag-dni","tag-news","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}