A Chester County man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing his wife and daughter
Roger Hanks, drunk on beer and Irish whiskey, shot his wife during a heated argument and then turned the gun onto his 37-year-old daughter, investigators said.
The friends and loved ones of Judy and Emily Hanks spent Monday afternoon telling a Chester County judge how the “cowardly and inhumane act” of someone close to them forever robbed the world of the light their lives provided.
“I can not fathom what could be in the mind or in the soul of a person who could commit such an atrocious act — not just once, but twice,” Jessica Niewold, one of Emily’s longtime friends, said to Emily’s father and killer, Roger Hanks, who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering her and her mother last year.
“But if the motive was to dim their light, dim their bond, or dim the gifts that they were to their friends and communities, it will not happen.”
Last April, Hanks, drunk and angry, threatened to “plug” his wife with a 9mm handgun he was cleaning in their house in East Marlborough Township, prosecutors said.
Judy Hanks, 75, had admonished her husband for doing little to help her and his daughter, who had been released hours earlier from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for treatment of a chronic medical condition.
Hanks, 77, made good on his threat, shooting his wife in the neck and then his 37-year-old daughter in her chest as she rushed toward him in shock and anger, according to Assistant District Attorney Michelle Frei.
He pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of third-degree murder, triggering a mandatory life sentence under state law. He entered the plea the day before what would have been his daughter’s 38th birthday.
Hanks, now confined to a wheelchair and hard of hearing, declined to make a statement to Chester County Judge Thomas McCabe.
Before handing down the sentence, McCabe told the dense crowd of the two women’s friends and co-workers that the court will remember them “not as victims, but as people of light and hope.”
Corinne Sweeney agreed. Sweeney told McCabe that she had lived next door to the Hankses for years and that her house became a second home for Judy Hanks. The women grocery-shopped for each other, spent countless summer hours in Sweeney’s pool, and watched their daughters grow up together.
Those memories were forever tainted, she said, when Hanks called her last April 25 to tell her that he had shot his wife and daughter and asked her to call the police.
“She took such good care of you and Emily, and you gave nothing,” Sweeney told Hanks, who did not turn to meet her gaze in the courtroom. “She always cared for you, and you just sat around drinking and feeling sorry for yourself until you committed the ultimate act of selfishness.”
After the shooting, while en route to Paoli Hospital because of a high level of intoxication, Hanks told police that he killed his family, prosecutors said Monday.
At the time, Hanks’ blood alcohol level was .327, more than times the 0.08 limit for driving. He told investigators that he had been drinking beer and Irish whiskey throughout the day as he waited for his wife to return home with his daughter from Penn.
Emily Hanks, who worked for an insurance company in the Chicago area, had been hospitalized there for nearly a week and was looking forward to recuperating in the safety of her childhood home, according to her loved ones.
But that house was far from safe for her and her mother.
“Emily’s absence is felt in ways both immense and intimate,” said Lindsay Raleigh, another longtime friend. “In the milestones she won’t reach, the conversations we can’t have and the simple act of walking of walking through neighborhoods we once called ours.”