Renee DiPietro is escorted by police (via YouTube/WPVI). Inset top: Renee DiPietro. Inset bottom: Images of the blade and cane DiPietro used to kill Michael Sides (both via Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office).
A judge Monday sentenced a Philadelphia woman, 70, to 20 to 40 years behind bars after she stabbed a man to death with a blade hidden in her cane.
Renee DiPietro was convicted by a jury in February of third-degree murder in the June 2023 slaying of 31-year-old Michael Sides. As the court deputies wheeled her from the courtroom, she remained defiant.
“I apologize for what happened to him, but I did not kill him,” she said, according to Philadelphia ABC affiliate WPVI. “I did not take his life. He came upon me.”
Prosecutors suggested a sentencing of 7 to 20 years, however the judge apparently decided to give her a stiff sentence considering her lack of remorse.
Around 1:30 a.m. June 10, 2023, officers from the Lower Marion Township Police Department were called for a stabbing at the intersection of Cricket Avenue and Cricket Terrace, an arrest affidavit said. They found Sides bleeding profusely from his upper torso. He was rushed to the hospital where he died about an hour later.
Dan Rogers, one of Sides’ friends, told detectives Sides was “sucker punched” earlier in the night by a mutual friend later identified as Jason DiPietro, the affidavit says. Sides said he was “going to seek [him] out.” During the altercation, the victim was preventing Jason DiPietro from getting into a white car when his parents Renee and Michael DiPietro, got out of the car, according to the affidavit.
Rogers saw Renee DiPietro “lunge” toward the victim, causing him to fall to the ground bleeding with what appeared to be a black cane that fell apart, the affidavit said. She then struck the victim while he was on the ground, detectives wrote in the affidavit.
“Rogers stated it was then apparent to him that the female stabbed the victim,” the affidavit said. “Following the stabbing, Rogers stated the female was attempted to remove the license plate from the vehicle and the older white male, the female and Jason DiPietro departed from the scene in the white sedan, believed to be a Nissan.”
The incident was captured on surveillance video, according to the affidavit.
A few hours later, detectives went to the DiPietro home in Philadelphia.
“It was self-defense, he came looking for trouble and he got it,” Michael DiPietro said, according to the affidavit.
Renee DiPietro told detectives she got a call earlier in the night from her son who was “upset and crying” so she took her baseball bat and walking cane and, along with her husband, drove to his location. She told detectives when her son tried to get into a car a “big” man prevented him from doing so and was assaulting him, the affidavit said. She got out of her car to “defend her son” and said when the man came at her she “poked him” and he fell to the ground before driving away with her husband and son, detectives wrote.
In Sides’ obituary, family described him as “a beautiful person who never saw the bad in anyone.”
“He was a kind soul that loved animals and would take the jacket off his back for someone in need. Mike lived life to the fullest and would enjoy having a good conversation with anyone at any time. He is loved, and will be missed, by all that knew him, forever,” the obituary said.
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