Courtroom gavel

A Unityville man who, in December 2023, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and other charges, satisfactorily completed his court mandated Accelerated Rehabilitation Disposition for the Jan. 2020 murder of one bovine cow and the wounding of a second, granting him expungement of his record, Lycoming County President Judge Nancy Butts ruled in November, according to PennLive.com.

In May 2020, Gary Colatosti, 60, of 145 S. Woods Road, Unityville, was charged with two counts each of aggravated cruelty to an animal, cruelty to an animal, theft, receiving stolen property and one count each of criminal mischief and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, after he stole two cows from the Kitzmiller Farm, located in the 2700 block of Keller Hollow Road in early January, according to state police.

The cows, Lyndy and Lexy, were owned by the minor children of Edwin and Danielle Kitzmiller, and in addition to being family pets, were part of a 4-H project being undertaken by the two children.

Lexy returned to the family farm the afternoon of the incident with a “neck wound consistent with damage caused by a bladed object,” Kitzmiller told police. She later died of her injuries.

Evidence of the cow’s abuse was found on Colatosti’s property, including a pile of intestines in a burn brush pile and blood in the bed of his pickup truck.

Just south of Colatosti’s property, police discovered four trash bags containing warm, unfrozen quarters of a cow with black hair still attached to some of the meat. Four blood samples that were collected tested positive as bovine blood, a state police report said.

As conditions of his entrance into the ARD program, Colatosti was ordered to pay restitution to the Kitzmiller family, write a letter of apology addressed to the minor victims, make a $1,000 donation to the Lycoming County Dairy Committee, complete 50 hours of community service, and have no contact with any member of the victims’ family.

Additionally, he was not permitted to possess any firearm and his hunting privileges were suspended for the duration of his time in the program.

Despite a determination by the Lycoming County Adult Probation Office that Colatosti had successfully fulfilled the terms of his ARD, Lycoming County First Assistant Martin Wade refused to sign off on the disposition.

At a July 2025 hearing on the matter attended by the Sun-Gazette, Butts admitted to being at a loss as to Wade’s position, noting that he had not filed any motions to terminate Colatosti’s ARD, nor had he made his dissatisfaction with any aspect of the agreement known.

The only indication of Wade’s objection was in the form of a post-it note affixed to Colatosti’s apology letter, labeling it as not acceptable, she said.

Calling the motion “crazy,” defense attorney Edward Rymza said that the family wanted an admission of guilt within the letter, something that was not a requirement set forward by the agreement.

The position of the District Attorney’s Office amounted to a desire for Judges to “micromanage the quality of apology letters,” he argued.

“It is editorial to consider what an apology is,” Rymza said, calling the move a “slippery slope.”

“My client completed all of the requirements put upon him and made out the restitution check that day. He took this case very seriously,” he said.

“This hearing is an utter waste of time. I know these are crazy times, but there’s no evidence to show my client didn’t comply fully with the terms of the plea agreement,” Rymza argued.