His trial was the first murder one case in Wyoming County’s history.
Phillip Donald Walters, Pennsylvania inmate QG3247, born 1987, incarceration intake at age 32, sentenced to life
At a sentencing hearing in 2020, it had been almost two years since Haley Lorenzen went missing from her then-boyfriend Phillip Walters’ Mill City Pennsylvania home.
At trial, a jury found Walters guilty of murdering Lorenzen and dumping her body in the Susquehanna River.
Her body was found seven months after being thrown in the river.
Lorenzen’s family attended the sentencing via Zoom. During the sentencing, Walters’ attorney filed a motion to not allow any victim impact statements by Lorenzen’s family to be allowed, but Judge Dudley Anderson overruled.
Walters was also given an opportunity to speak to the judge. He said, “No way did I ever harm Haley,” and, “I pray someday the truth will come out, and I maintain my innocence.”
The judge upheld the suggested sentence for Phillip Walters — life without parole.
The D.A. said this was the first murder conviction in the history for Wyoming County. While Lorenzen’s death casts a dark shadow over the community, he believes she was able to somehow give back.
Walters’ attorney declined to comment, other than to say that his client plans to appeal.
In September 2023, a new trial was ordered according to an opinion handed down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday, Sept. 23.
Walters had appealed his 2020 conviction in the murder of his girlfriend Haley Lorenzen. His appeal before the Supreme Court centered on the testimony of forensic pathologist Dr. Gary Ross. Ross had performed the autopsy on Lorenzen.
Specifically, the issue that was presented by Walters’s attorney, Robert M. Buttner of Scranton, before the Supreme Court was as follows:
“Whether the Superior Court misapplied controlling case law and misapprehended controlling facts in concluding that the trial court did not err as a matter of law or abuse its discretion in allowing the commonwealth to present the testimony of Dr. Gary Ross concerning the cause of death ‘by history,’ which was devoid of any objective medical findings and did not comport with a conclusion or opinion ‘within a reasonable degree of medical certainty’ thereby not only improperly bolstering the credibility of (witness) Gabel Bell but depriving (Walters) of his right to due process and a fair trial.”
Ross had testified in Walters’ trial in 2020 that the cause of death of 24-year-old Haley Lorenzen was “strangulation by history.”
In their decision, the justices ruled that Ross’ “expert opinion that Lorenzen’s cause of death was strangulation was inadmissible because it was not offered within a reasonable degree of medical certainty and, therefore, constituted inadmissible testimony that vouched for the credibility of (witness Gabel) Bell.
“As the commonwealth failed to prove that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we are constrained to hold that (Walters) is entitled to a new trial,” the justices stated in their ruling.
As of June 2025, a new trial was scheduled to commence in September 2025, but was subsequently postponed. As of May 2026, a new trial was scheduled to begin in September 2026.
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