'A lawyer, not a politician': John Peck, former longtime Westmoreland County district attorney, dies

As Westmoreland County’s top prosecutor, John Peck would go to Mass every day.

And then he’d go to work, always well-dressed — even if it was a Saturday.

Friends and former coworkers remembered the former district attorney on Thursday as an exceptional trial attorney, someone who they could count on to offer advice about the best way to handle a case.

“He taught me so much, he was a mentor, he was a dear friend,” said Judge Rita Hathaway who worked as an assistant district attorney before being elected to the bench in Westmoreland County. “He had the bar so high. He did it all, he would advise you … he was the one that we went to.”

Peck, 77, of New Kensington, died Thursday at a Pittsburgh hospital. The cause of death was not released.

He had prosecuted cases in the district attorney’s office since 1981, first as a part-time assistant and then as the county’s elected office holder. It was a job he held for decades — he was first elected in 1994 and left at the end of 2021 after failing to secure a seventh term in office. He tried his last case in December that year.

For decades, he took on the highest-profile trials but also served as the lead prosecutor in cases that don’t always make headlines. When he wasn’t standing in front of a jury, he was reviewing case files and legal precedents from stacks of law books. While he often used time at the courthouse on Saturdays to work uninterrupted, his son, the Rev. John Peck, remembered Saturdays growing up much differently.

They’d often get breakfast together in New Kensington and then head into Pittsburgh for an educational outing to a museum.

“He was really generous with his time,” Peck said. “He loved spending time with me, with my sister.”

Peck credits his priestly vocation to his father.

“He is a person whose integrity, whose conscientiousness, whose concern and whose hard work were great examples that I always wanted to emulate,” he said.

Attorneys who worked with him felt the same way.

“John led by example first and foremost,” said Judge Chris Scherer, who was an assistant district attorney in the office for six years in the 1990s. “He was always the first one in, the last one out. John would take the most difficult cases and would try them, more often than not, to a successful outcome.”

Peck didn’t let politics get in the way of pursuing what he thought was right, Scherer said.

“John had a moral compass that was unbreakable,” he said.

Peck’s most notable cases included those of the six Greensburg roommates who were convicted in the 2010 torture and murder of a mentally disabled woman and the conviction of a Harrison man sentenced to death for the 2017 killing of New Kensington police Officer Brian Shaw.

In 1984, he took over the prosecutions of “Kill for Thrill” murderers John Lesko and Michael Travaglia. The two were tried and convicted in 1981 for a murder spree in which they killed two men, a woman and a rookie Apollo police officer between Christmas 1979 and New Year’s 1980.

Peck took over the cases after an appeals court vacated death sentences originally imposed by jurors. He successfully argued for death sentences against Lesko in 1995 and Travaglia a decade later. While Travaglia died in prison in 2017, Peck continued appellate work as Lesko challenged his conviction and death sentence.

“John led a purposeful life,” said retired Judge John Driscoll, whose election to the bench left the district attorney spot open. “It’s a great loss. He was really an extraordinary individual.”

He loved classical music and the German language, his son said. He enjoyed riding a bicycle, staying active and keeping up with the friends he made during his tenure at the courthouse.

He wasn’t a typical politician, telling the Trib in an interview in December 2021 before he left office that he considered himself a lawyer first.

“I don’t think about politics,” he said. “It should never be part of this office.”

That is why Peck was an outstanding district attorney, said Bruce Antkowiak, law professor at Saint Vincent College in Unity.

“No decision was ever tainted by the corrupting force of political expediency; no determination was ever made for the purpose of advancing his own career or for capturing a prominent place in the public eye,” Antkowiak said. “For him, those decisions had to represent the exercise of his duty to the law and to the people the law was meant to serve and protect.”

More recently, Peck was working in a part-time capacity as a hearing officer with the juvenile detention center and children’s bureau, Judge Hathaway said. He wasn’t ready to retire upon losing re-election, she said, but it did give him more time to spend with his family.

He and wife Cynthia were married for 45 years. His son described him as a devoted and nurturing grandfather, who sometimes got silly, a stark contrast to the hard-nosed, serious courtroom persona that was a common sight for many others.

District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli, who won the 2021 election, commended Peck’s decades of service to the county.

“He was the voice and advocate for thousands of victims through the years, fought for justice and truth, and helped shape the minds of young prosecutors and legal professionals,” she said in a statement.

In addition to his wife and son, Peck is survived by daughter and son-in-law, Taylor and Christopher Carr, of North Strabane and grandchildren, Maddox, 8, and Blakely, 5.

Peck spent the last few weeks of his time in office preparing for court hearings.

In the 2021 Trib interview, he said: “I am a steward of the District Attorney’s Office, and I am consumed to finish the job before I leave office. I’ll miss the job, but it’s not the end of life. Next to my family, it’s extremely gratifying and fulfilling.”