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Man's unsolved 1989 killing yields only anger, frustration
Saturday, June 26, 1999 By Jonathan D. Silver, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Sella Kart remembers the waiting.
It was June 29, 1989, a hot, clear night, and her husband, Robert, was working late again. At 63, he still put in a full day and then some. At 8 p.m., he called her to say he'd be home within an hour.
She waited. Nine o'clock came and went, but her husband didn't arrive. She called him at their business, the Slush Puppie distributorship on McCague Street in Swissvale. No answer. The clock ticked away.
"The day of the murder, I was frantic because my husband didn't come home," Sella Kart, 69, said in an interview earlier this week. "I called around. I called the hospitals. I called and called and called and called, and I couldn't get any response."
Finally, at 10:45 p.m., she grew tired of waiting. She called the police.
They found Robert Kart beaten to death in his store, a 500-pound ice cream freezer on top of him and not a shred of hard evidence to point to his killer.
He was a successful businessman who had been a fixture in the neighborhood for years, a loving grandfather and a hard-working father of two sons.
It appeared that robbery was the motive. Whoever did it ransacked the office, breaking open two desk drawers where cash was kept, and left the garage door open. But strangely, Kart was left face down in a pool of blood, still wearing a gold bracelet, gold necklace, watch and his wedding band.
Kart's killer still has not been found. Pathologists determined Kart died from blunt force trauma to the head, but investigators never retrieved a murder weapon. There were no witnesses, and no one has been arrested.
Although Tuesday marks a decade since the murder, Allegheny County Police have not given up hope of solving it.
"We are still actively working on the case. It's not put away in a cupboard to not be worked on. It's assigned to a detective who has an active interest in it," said Lt. John Brennan of the county police's homicide division. "We are periodically making attempts to see if we can unearth some information, but I couldn't really get into details of it."
Kart's widow lacks confidence in Brennan and the investigators. She believes the investigation was compromised from the start by Swissvale police whom, she claims, allowed the crime scene to be contaminated by patrons from the M&M Lounge next door. And she blamed county detectives for wasting precious time scrutinizing her family in a search for suspects.
As a result, she believes her husband's killer will never be caught.
"I feel that the murder will never be solved if it hasn't been solved by now, and I don't see any purpose to my bringing up everything ," said Sella Kart, who lives in Churchill. "I'm very bitter because they went after the family instead of going to the real perpetrator, and he fell through the cracks, whoever it may be."
Although Brennan said he did not recall Kart being pinned under an ice cream freezer, Sella Kart said the lone Swissvale patrolman who found her husband summoned the barflies at the M&M to help him lift the freezer. In doing so, she said, evidence was destroyed and the crime scene was contaminated -- something she claims a retired county detective told her the next day.
Brennan said he had never heard that the crime scene was not properly preserved, but acknowledged it was possible. Swissvale Police Chief James Ormond declined comment.
Robert and Sella Kart had built their business from the ground up. Both Squirrel Hill natives, they met on a blind date and married a few years later. He was a World War II veteran, a master sergeant in the Army who served under Gen. George S. Patton.
Robert Kart's father owned the Triangle Candy and Tobacco Co., and he worked there before heading off on his own in 1973. At a candy convention in Las Vegas, Sella Kart had a headache and bought an orange Slush Puppie from a vendor, swallowed an aspirin along with it, and noticed a sign saying that franchises were available.
She showed it to her husband. By the time he died, their business had moved from Shadyside to Swissvale and expanded by leaps and bounds. Slush Puppie of Pittsburgh Inc. sold equipment to customers in 13 counties at more than 500 separate locations.
In the little spare time he had, Robert Kart volunteered for organizations that helped retarded people and was on the board of Allegheny East Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center in Penn Hills, Sella Kart said. The Karts' younger son, Steve, is retarded.
"Bob did a lot of good in his life. He was very well-liked," she said.
In the investigative frenzy that followed the murder, detectives drew up a list of current and former employees, looking for someone who might have wanted to harm Kart. They administered polygraph tests. They took hair samples from Sella Kart and her eldest son, Herbert.
All the attention made Sella Kart so angry that she sought a restraining order against a particular county detective whose dogged inquiries she interpreted as harassment.
In January 1992, police thought they had a break in the case. They arrested Herbert Kart and accused him of hiring a hit man in April 1989 to kill his father.
At that point, Herbert Kart was going through tough times. His marital life was in turmoil. He had gone bankrupt in 1988. And the year before, a rift opened when his father fired him from Slush Puppie after he had worked there for 13 years, according to court documents.
A police affidavit filed to support the arrest warrant accused Herbert Kart of offering a man named Eric Miller $5,000 up front and $5,000 afterward to beat his father to death and make it look like a robbery. Miller, interviewed at his Wilkins home earlier this week, said he met Herbert Kart while working at a Squirrel Hill shoe store, but he declined to discuss the case any further.
According to police, Miller rejected Herbert Kart's request.
In February 1992, the Allegheny County district attorney's office withdrew the solicitation of murder charge against Herbert Kart.
Brennan, however, said police still suspect Herbert Kart was involved in arranging his father's death.
Sella Kart said her son was framed. Herbert Kart's attorney insists his client had nothing to do with his father's death.
"Herb Kart is innocent of this crime, has always been innocent of this crime. Ten years have gone past. Let him live his life," said David Shrager, a Pittsburgh lawyer who represented him in 1992.
Herbert Kart, who now works at an auto dealership in Monroeville, could not be reached for comment. But court records indicate times have not gotten much easier for him since his father's death. In 1990, his ex-wife obtained a protection from abuse order against him. According to court records, he was accused of breaking into her home with a sledgehammer. Another protection from abuse order was granted in 1996, and the couple's divorce was finalized last year.
In 1997, Herbert Kart was arrested in Homestead and charged with burglary and criminal mischief. Police accused him of breaking into a woman's home and stealing her 31-inch color television set. The woman did not show up for the hearing, and the charges were withdrawn.
For Sella Kart, life has gone on, but it has been emptier without her husband. This month would have been their 50th wedding anniversary. She managed to reopen their store after his death and ran it until July 1997, when she sold the business. But during those eight years, Sella Kart said, she could never bring herself to go to the spot where her husband's body was found. Today, the building is a warehouse for a rug and furniture business, but the Slush Puppie logo remains on the outside, against a robin's egg blue background.
"I have not healed. I never will. I mourn for my husband every day," Sella Kart said. "He was a hardworking, very wonderful husband, devoted to his family and to me."
On Tuesday, Sella Kart will visit her husband's grave in West View Cemetery in Ross, where she will light a candle and pay her respects. Meanwhile, Lt. Brennan of the county police and his detectives will continue their quest for Robert Kart's killer.
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