An East Oak Lane woman who stabbed a man with a sword cane begins her trial on murder charges

Renee DiPietro’s son had called her, distraught, after he caught his girlfriend kissing another man at a bar in Ardmore in June. She knew something was wrong, her lawyer said Tuesday. And she did what any mother would do: go to her son’s aid.

But in the span of a few seconds, a man who confronted her son for sucker-punching the man his girlfriend had kissed was lying in a pool of his own blood. He was dealt a fatal wound, prosecutors said, with a 16-inch sword cane that DiPietro had brought with her.

Now, a Montgomery County jury must decide whether the 70-year-old’s actions that night near John Henry’s Pub were murder or self-defense during a violent attack.

DiPietro, of East Oak Lane, has been charged with third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for stabbing Michael Sides, 31, in the chest with that hidden blade. Sides, prosecutors said, was friends with Kieran Burns, who DiPietro’s son, Jason, punched earlier that night inside the bar.

Assistant District Attorney Bradley Deckel, in his opening statement to jurors Tuesday, said DiPietro needlessly “injected herself” into a dispute between her son and Sides, and came to pick him up armed with her cane — a deadly weapon — and a baseball bat.

“This is a fistfight between two men. There are no weapons. This is a barroom fight spillover,” Deckel said. “This didn’t have to happen. Michael Sides didn’t deserve to die, and he didn’t need to die.”

Deckel said that DiPietro had threatened her youngest son’s girlfriend weeks earlier during a dispute at her home, brandishing a bat. That, he said, was on her mind when she prepared to pick up her son from the bar.

But DiPietro’s lawyer, Louis Busico, offered the jury a different perspective. He said DiPietro and her son had no idea who Sides, who was not present for the initial fight in John Henry’s, was, nor why he was attacking them.

“The commonwealth is accusing a 70-year-old, 5-foot-1 woman of murder,” Busico said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Busico said Jason DiPietro didn’t look to further antagonize Burns after he was ejected from John Henry’s, and instead waited outside for his parents to come get him. And when DiPietro went to get into a Nissan Versa driven by his father, Sides walked up to him to start a fight on the sidewalk.

“Ladies and gentleman, the night should’ve been over then and there,” Busico said. “Rather than simply let him get in the car and go home, tragically, Michael Sides didn’t let that happen.”

Both Renee DiPietro and her husband, Michael DiPietro, exited the car. Surveillance footage recorded nearby shows Renee DiPietro hit Sides with a cane, causing its bottom portion — a sheath covering its 16-inch blade — to fall off.

DiPietro then stabbed Sides with the blade, causing him to collapse. All three then got into the car to leave, but not before DiPietro stopped to bend the car’s license plate up, in an attempt, Deckel said, to obscure it.

“These are not the actions of someone who is shocked or surprised by what happened, but the actions of someone who knew the exact risk of her behavior,” the prosecutor told jurors.

Burns testified Tuesday that he knew Jason DiPietro’s girlfriend from her job as a server at John Henry’s, where he was a regular. He didn’t know, he said, that she was dating DiPietro, and told prosecutors he had never met him before.

He admitted to flirting with DiPietro’s girlfriend on the night of the stabbing, and that he was knocked off his bar stool by DiPietro’s punch, which he said he didn’t see coming. Afterward, he went with friends to another nearby bar, Jack McShea’s Pub, where Sides, his longtime friend, worked as a bartender.

When Burns arrived, he said, he was told Sides had run out to look for the man who had hit him. Burns chased after him, and found him on the ground, bleeding from a chest wound.

Sides was taken to Lankenau Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead. An autopsy determined the single stab wound the to his chest had pierced one of his heart’s ventricles.

Later, in an interview with detectives, Renee DiPietro admitted to stabbing Sides, saying she “poked” him after he lunged at her and her son, according to court documents.

In testimony Tuesday, Michael DiPietro said that picking up his son was “all that was supposed to happen,” and that the couple didn’t go there looking for a fight.

He admitted that neither he nor his wife called 911 after she stabbed Sides, and that he didn’t realize how badly he had been injured.

“It wasn’t a good idea, no,” DiPietro said, of leaving the scene, “but we were scared.”

The trial is expected to last through Thursday before Montgomery County Court Judge Wendy Rothstein.