{"id":9247,"date":"2018-12-12T10:27:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T15:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/?p=9247"},"modified":"2018-12-12T10:46:14","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T15:46:14","slug":"the-tale-of-a-10-year-old-boy-who-shot-his-father-to-protect-his-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2018\/12\/12\/the-tale-of-a-10-year-old-boy-who-shot-his-father-to-protect-his-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"The tale of a 10-year-old boy who shot his father to protect his mother"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Together <\/a>
Together briefly at the start of a coroner’s inquest are, from left, Janet, Mickey and Shirley Chervenak. Mickey, 10, was the youngest person in Pittsburgh history to be charged with murder. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Detectives <\/a>
Detectives Michael Brose, left, and Lou Masters examine the shotgun used in the killing. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"After <\/a>
After being detained at juvenile court, Mickey Chervenak meets his mother Shirley Chervenak. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"At <\/a>
At a coroner’s inquest, Mickey Chervenak talks with county detectives Mike Brose, left, and Lou Masters. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Michael <\/a>
Michael T. (Mickey) Chervenak, 10, was the youngest person in Pittsburgh history to be charged with murder. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

From the first time anyone asked him why he shot and killed his father, Mickey Chervenak always said he only did it to protect his mom and younger sister.<\/p>\n

Mickey, whose given name was Michael, was just 10 when he was charged on Sept. 6, 1957 with murder for shooting his father, Michael E. Chervenak Jr., 31. At the time, he was said to be the youngest person ever charged with murder in Allegheny County.<\/p>\n

Though the 1957 case lasted a mere week, it quickly grabbed attention in newspapers across the nation, where pictures of the striking, towheaded boy with the piercing eyes who shot his father in the chest with a shotgun to defend his mother, ran in papers big and small from coast to coast.<\/p>\n

Photographers not only got pictures of Mickey in a police car as he was taken from his home at 8438 Dersam St. in Pittsburgh\u2019s East Hills neighborhood, they were given access to him the next day at the police station. They took touching photos of Mickey, still in the same grimy white T-shirt he was wearing when he shot his father, when his mother came to the station to bring him a sandwich and comic books.<\/p>\n

And a week later when a coroner\u2019s inquest \u2014 a jury trial held by the coroner\u2019s office, now known as the medical examiner \u2014 found Mickey\u2019s case to be justifiable homicide and he was set free, photographers were there, again, to get photos of Mickey, his younger sister, Janet, 3, and their mother, Shirley, hugging each other in joy. What happened to the family after the case left the newspapers is unclear. They may have moved, and the Post-Gazette was unable to discern what happened to Mickey and his family after that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mickey reunites with his mother after a week in a juvenile detention center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1957 the case got so much attention for the same reason that it was so quickly resolved: At least to those outside of the father\u2019s family, it was a clear-cut case of a son defending his mother from a longtime abusive father.<\/p>\n

According to stories at the time in the Post-Gazette and the Pittsburgh Press, as well as police reports the Post-Gazette recently obtained, it began at about 9 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 6, 1957, when Mickey and his father returned from fishing together.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chervenak (pronounced SHER-ven-ak), who worked at US Steel\u2019s Edgar Thomson works in Braddock, brought home six beers and began drinking. He quickly downed two beers and was working on his third when he became enraged about 40 minutes later over the eggs his wife served him, and then the corn she cooked up instead.<\/p>\n

He threw the eggs at her and began yelling that he hated her. He slapped her several times and choked her before she broke free. Then he turned his rage on his son, beating him across his behind with his belt, and slapping him across the face hard enough that Mickey\u2019s head slammed into a wall.<\/p>\n

It was not the first time. Neighbors said they routinely heard him yelling at his family. And Shirley Chervenak told police her husband would sometimes take her down into their basement to beat her so that the neighbors would not hear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dlugokecki and Mrs. Kay Bauer, neighbors of the Chervenaks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAll my married life has been awful,\u201d Mrs. Chervenak told police, according to the Press. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t please him. The children and I lived in fear 24 hours a day, seven days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

But on that day, Mickey had had enough. After his father stopped beating him, he ran upstairs and got a J.C. Higgins Sears & Roebuck 12-gauge shotgun from under his parents\u2019 bed. His father had taught him how to use it after buying it just a couple weeks earlier because someone tried to break into the home.<\/p>\n

Mickey loaded it and brought it down the stairs, resting it on the banister and aiming it at the doorway to the living room. The shotgun was nearly as long as he was tall, and weighed nearly 6 pounds.<\/p>\n

When his father came through the doorway, Mickey shot him once from less than a foot away, blasting a 2 \u00bd-inch hole in his father\u2019s chest, killing him almost instantly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just couldn\u2019t take it any longer,\u201d Mickey told police. \u201cI could mind father beating me, but I just couldn\u2019t stand him beating my mommy. He beat Janet too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the abuse, neighbors described Mickey as a nice and polite boy, and Mrs. Chervenak as a good mother.<\/p>\n

The inquest was just a week after the murder. And the evidence \u2014 in particular color photos police took of the injuries to Mickey caused by his father and the testimony from neighbors about the father\u2019s abuse \u2014 proved to be overwhelming to police, the coroner, and, ultimately, the jury.<\/p>\n

\u201cGentlemen of the jury, I cannot honestly ask you to find that this boy be held for the grand jury,\u201d Allegheny County Coroner William D. McClelland told the jury, according to the Post-Gazette. \u201cThere are circumstances that can be termed justifiable homicide, and you should give that your consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

They quickly agreed and voted the case to be justifiable homicide.<\/p>\n

Mickey, who had quietly testified on his own behalf, admitting he shot his father, was confused by the verdict.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does it mean?\u201d he asked his mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means you get to go home,\u201d she said, the Post-Gazette reported.<\/p>\n

They, and Janet, fell into each other in a family hug, crying.<\/p>\n

Not everyone was overjoyed.<\/p>\n

After Mickey testified, the Post-Gazette reported that while he was walking back to his seat, one of Mr. Chervenak\u2019s two sisters who attended the inquest, Mary Janucko or Ann Matechen, said out loud to Mickey: \u201cYou lied! You lied!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mrs. John A. Janucko and Mrs. John Matechen, sisters of the slain man at the inquest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mickey answered back, \u201cNo I didn\u2019t,\u201d before sobbing and collapsing into his mother\u2019s arms.<\/p>\n

A few days earlier at Mr. Chervenak\u2019s funeral, one of the two sisters also screamed: \u201cMy brother\u2026 my brother\u2026 if she [Shirley Chervenak] had given him a home, he wouldn\u2019t be here. She killed him\u2026 She killed him,\u201d according to an account in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chervenak\u2019s two sisters and one brother, Frank, are all deceased now.<\/p>\n

A daughter of one of the sisters, who asked that her name not be used, knew about the story and said \u201cit was a long time ago and it was a tragedy. But it\u2019s over and it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don\u2019t think there\u2019s any interest in digging this up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two other relatives, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the statements from the sisters at the inquest and at the funeral are part and parcel of what Mr. Chervenak\u2019s family really believed happened in the case: That it was not Mickey who shot his father, it was Mr. Chervenak\u2019s wife, Shirley. Mickey was just covering for his mother \u2014 a theory detectives quashed early on after questioning the boy alone.<\/p>\n

The Chervenak family never reconciled with Shirley Chervenak or Mickey and his sister.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hated each other,\u201d a relative said. \u201cThey never really made up with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a shame, because I always wondered what happened to them, what happened to Mickey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
After being detained at juvenile court, Mickey meets his mother.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No one from the Chervenak side of the family has any idea where Mickey, his mother and sister ended up. And there is no traceable record of the family after February, 1958 \u2014 except on two last court documents.<\/p>\n

First, a will was filed for Mr. Chervenak. The only asset listed that would go to Mrs. Chervenak was the family\u2019s 1956 Chevy Sedan, valued at $700.<\/p>\n

Then, in an odd request, but one that probably spoke to the family\u2019s troubled financial life after Mr. Chervenak\u2019s death, Mrs. Chervenak on Feb. 14, 1958 filed a request with the Allegheny County Coroner\u2019s office to get back the shotgun that Mickey had used to shoot his father.<\/p>\n

It was returned to her the next day.<\/p>\n

In the last story about the family ever to appear in a Pittsburgh paper, the day after the coroner\u2019s inquest set Mickey free, Mrs. Chervenak, 31, told the Pittsburgh Press that she was thinking about leaving town and going back to her hometown in New York state.<\/p>\n

She was an only child. Her father had died in 1955, and her mother sometime before that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no relatives, only the children,\u201d Mrs. Chervenak said then. \u201cI may go back to New York but I\u2019m not sure. I don\u2019t want to stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking at Mickey, who was playing with his sister during the interview, she told the reporter: \u201cI don\u2019t know how it will affect him later on.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Sean D. Hamill <\/strong>(shamill@post-gazette.com<\/a>, or 412-263-2579 or Twitter:\u00a0@seandhamill<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1957 case grabbed attention from across the nation<\/p>\n

Look at the picturesThe tale of a 10-year-old boy who shot his father to protect his mother<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":9275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[947,1066,946],"tags":[961],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Digs_ChervenakPreview.jpg?fit=2233%2C2000&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7187,"url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2017\/01\/26\/murder-and-a-circus-sideshow-performer\/","url_meta":{"origin":9247,"position":0},"title":"Murder and a circus sideshow performer","date":"January 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"'I told you I would kill him,' says Grady 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