Oct. 3—It was a normal Saturday morning until Laura Dankesreiter discovered something odd at her Derry Township home.
At first, she thought she had tripped on a ripped piece of carpet after opening the basement door, something she initially attributed to one of her cats. But on further inspection, Dankesreiter noticed metal eye hooks attached to the bottom of the door frame and fishing line taut between them.
“I couldn’t figure out why it was there or what it was,” she testified Tuesday. “It wasn’t there the night before.”
Dankesreiter spent the next few hours calling both of her sisters and an off-duty state trooper one of them recommended before contacting state police in Kiski to make a report, but she didn’t intend to take it any further. She said she didn’t want to get her husband, William “B.J” Dankesreiter, 63, in trouble.
“I was holding on to the hope that there was some logical reason why that was there,” she said, adding she didn’t want to entertain the thought that her husband would do something to hurt her.
William Dankesreiter is on trial for setting up the trip wire three years ago at the top of the basement steps in what prosecutors claim was an attempt to kill his wife.
Police said Laura Dankesreiter tripped on the wire Oct. 2, 2020 while heading into the basement to get something from a freezer for breakfast, but was able to stop herself before she fell. A piece of fishing line was secured to the door frame with metal eye hooks about 3 inches above the carpet, according to court papers.
William Dankesreiter is charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment. Defense attorneys said during opening statements that questions surround the investigation and Laura Dankesreiter’s role in it, adding that they plan to examine how she was able to stop herself from falling.
On the second day of trial, Laura Dankesreiter testified she and her husband carried groceries up and down the basement steps four to five times the evening before. They watched television separately before retiring to separate bedrooms.
William Dankesreiter kissed his wife goodbye early Oct. 2, 2020 before he left for work. When Laura Dankesreiter got up a few hours later, she recalled opening the basement door and the top of her foot hitting the trip line.
“In a millisecond, I caught myself and jerked back,” she said. “If I hadn’t caught myself, I would’ve gone forwards down the steps.”
After contacting state police, Dankesreiter testified she went to Westmoreland Mall to pay a couple bills and pick up a pair of jeans at her husband’s request. When she got home and started making beef vegetable soup, she was surprised to see two troopers arrive around 2:30 p.m.
“I didn’t think they were going to send anybody to the house,” she said, adding she planned to ask her husband about the line when he got home.
While troopers were there investigating, William Dankesreiter called their home number and left a voicemail at 3:29 p.m. for his wife, something Laura Dankesreiter testified was not a normal thing for him to do. He planned to make a couple stops after work and pick up a birthday card, according to the voicemail.
Prosecutors say the card was intended for a woman with whom William Dankesreiter was having an affair.
Laura Dankesreiter told investigators that the couple had been having issues in their marriage of 28 years and she suspected there might be another woman. They also had life insurance policies on each other — $318,000 for her and $518,000 for him.
Trooper Jeffrey Walton testified that he was one of two troopers who first arrived at the house and Laura Dankesreiter appeared to be frazzled and shocked. William Dankesreiter was arrested when he got home around 3:50 p.m.
Laura Dankesreiter testified that she later found items in the house belonging to her husband that she turned over to police. They included condoms, a passport and the birthday card in a backpack and a gallon jug of chloroform in the basement near William Dankesreiter’s work bench.
“A team of trained investigators didn’t find this stuff but you did?” defense attorney Mike Ferguson asked.
“It was sitting right there so I just turned it into them,” she said.
The chloroform was found two years after the arrest and the backpack a few weeks later, she said.
“My life as I knew it ended,” she said. “I lost my husband, my marriage was gone, my child’s life was ruined. … I inherited the mortgage, all the household bills. … I had to come up with everything on my own.”
Their divorce was finalized April 2021.
Prosecution testimony will continue Wednesday.
Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta by email at rsignorini@triblive.com or via Twitter .