ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) \u2014 A man confessed to kidnapping and killing an elderly woman so he could use her automatic teller machine card, and to killing another man so he could steal his pickup truck, police said.
\nState police in Cambria and Huntingdon counties charged Nathan Timothy Fortson, 27, of Ebensburg, in the deaths of Velda Malloy, 74, of Ebensburg, and Dale Zunich, 39, of Altoona.
\nCambria County District Attorney Patrick Kiniry said Tuesday he planned to seek the death penalty in Malloy\u2019s killing.
\n\u201cThe motive was to get money, plain and simple,\u201d Kiniry said at a news conference.
\nMalloy had been missing since May 24, when her son found her purse spilled onto a kitchen table, and teller machine card and cash missing. Fortson used the card to get $375, but unsuccessfully tried to withdraw $3,000 more by using it at two Huntingdon County banks, police said
\nPolice said a witness told them he saw Fortson driving Malloy\u2019s car the afternoon she disappeared.
\nFortson confessed to strangling Malloy and cutting her throat, police said. Her body was found about 2 a.m. Tuesday partially submerged in a pond along Old Route 22, just east of Ebensburg.
\nZunich was found slain near his pickup truck in a wooded area of Shirley Township, Huntingdon County, about a mile from the home of Fortson\u2019s mother.
\nPolice had been searching for Malloy when they got a tip about a pickup truck with possible blood on it Monday afternoon. That\u2019s when they found Zunich.
\nFortson apparently killed Zunich on Sunday after he sought Zunich\u2019s help in locating his girlfriend. Zunich was hit on the head and his throat was cut, police said.
\nFortson was arrested at his mother\u2019s home Tuesday morning. He was jailed without bond and it was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) \u2014 A man confessed to kidnapping and killing an elderly woman so he could use her automatic teller machine card, and to killing another man so he could steal his pickup truck, police said. State police in Cambria and Huntingdon counties charged Nathan Timothy Fortson, 27, of Ebensburg, in the deaths of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}