‘GUT-WRENCHING’

Woman Suffers ‘Violent Death’ After Responding to Facebook Marketplace Ad for Fridge

The mother of two visited a man’s apartment to purchase a fridge as a gift for her boyfriend. She never made it back alive.

A Pennsylvania woman was stabbed to death after meeting up with a man she had arranged to buy a refrigerator from via Facebook Marketplace, authorities said Wednesday. Denise Williams, 54, had responded to the ad about the used fridge in the hopes of getting a gift for her boyfriend, prosecutors say. But when she got to the apartment of the seller, identified as 26-year-old Joshua Gorgone, authorities say she was savagely attacked. “She put up one heck of a fight to defend herself,” Cambria County Coroner Jeff Lees was quoted saying by PennLive.com. “But this was a violent death she sustained.” Williams, a mother of two who worked in nursing, was stabbed multiple times and left to die in Gorgone’s apartment. He was later picked up by police in the parking lot of a shopping center. He reportedly told investigators an argument over the price of the fridge led to Williams’ brutal demise. Gorgone, who is currently being held without bond, faces charges of criminal homicide and aggravated assault. In what Cambria County District Attorney Greg Neugebauer described as a “horrible, gut-wrenching coincidence,” Williams was the sister of another homicide victim, Robert “Bobby” Williams Jr., who was fatally shot inside his home in 2013 in a case that remains unsolved.