Jury Finds 70-Year-Old Woman Guilty of Murder in June 2022 Bar Fight in Montco

Tony Di Domizio | North Penn Now•

Renee DiPietro, 70, of Philadelphia.

A 70-year-old woman will soon be sentenced to prison after being found guilty of murder in the June 2022 stabbing death of a 31-year-old man outside a Lower Merion bar.

A jury found Renee DiPietro guilty of third-degree murder Thursday for stabbing Michael Thomas Sides with a 16-inch blade hidden in a cane, according to Fox 29 News. It took the jury five hours to return the verdict, per the report.

Montgomery County prosecutors argued that DiPietro inserted herself into a fight between Sides and her son at the Main Line bar called John Henry’s Pub of Ardmore, per the report. DiPietro claimed she acted in self-defense, police said. DiPietro and her relatives fled the scene after the stabbing.

"It was wrong," DiPietro said, in the article after her verdict. "If it was their child…if it was their child, what would they do?"

On June 10, 2023, at 1:30 a.m., Lower Merion Police responded to Cricket Avenue and Cricket Terrace to find Sides suffering from stab wounds, unresponsive, and bleeding from his upper torso, police said. He died a short time later at the hospital. An autopsy confirmed Sides died of a single stab wound to the chest, police said, and ruled homicide.

According to police, a relative of DiPietro’s sucker punched one of Sides’ friends, per the report, and Sides could be heard saying he was going to "seek out” DiPietro’s relative for the alleged assault.

Surveillance video showed Sides catching up to DiPietro’s relative as the relative attempted to get in the backseat of a car, police said. Police said Sides stopped the relative from getting into the car and fight ensued, police said.

Then, DiPietro gets out of the car and stabs Sides with the blade sheathed in her cane, police said.