The Pennsylvania State Police announced on July 16, 2026 that Anthony Joseph Kistle, 46, has been charged with criminal homicide in the 2024 death of his wife, Karen. Every outlet in the region ran the release. None of them mentioned that the man charged is the first cousin of a state trooper stationed in the same troop that handled the case — or that the trooper’s wife is a state police lieutenant who once served in that troop and later worked in its internal-affairs bureau.
The charges
Anthony Kistle (DOB 9/12/1979) is charged with criminal homicide plus two counts of theft by unlawful taking — one for a firearm, one for a motor vehicle. Karen Kistle, 60, was found shot at their home on Vandien Court in Dingman Township, Pike County, on May 22, 2024, and died before she could be flown to Geisinger in Scranton. PSP now says its investigation concluded her death was a homicide “rather than a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation arrested Anthony just before 11 a.m. on July 14, 2026, during a traffic stop on I-25 near Castle Pines, south of Denver. CBI listed him as a resident of Peyton, Colorado, credited the Colorado State Patrol and Douglas County Sheriff’s Office with assisting, and referred all questions about the homicide to PSP. He’s held in Colorado pending extradition.
The family connection
There is a trooper stationed at PSP Honesdale named Jeffrey F. Kistle Jr. He is Anthony Kistle’s first cousin.
The link is documented, not inferred. Joseph L. and Rose Marie Kistle of Milford — the Pike County seat — had two sons: Joe Jr., who settled in Peyton, Colorado, and Jeffrey Sr., of Sandyston, New Jersey. Joe Jr.’s son is Anthony, now charged with murder. Jeffrey Sr.’s son is Trooper Jeffrey F. Kistle Jr. Both are named as grandchildren in Joseph L. Kistle’s December 2022 obituary.
Trooper Kistle Jr. is married to Lt. Lori Kistle (née Edgar, per the couple’s wedding registry, both listed in Hawley). Lori B. Kistle is a Pennsylvania State Police lieutenant, promoted in September 2023. Before that she served in Troop R — the troop whose Blooming Grove barracks handled Karen Kistle’s death — and later as an investigator in the Bureau of Integrity and Professional Standards, PSP’s internal-affairs arm.
The disclosure question
Neither Trooper Kistle nor Lt. Kistle has been accused of anything, and nothing in the public record places either near the investigation of Karen’s death. That is not the question. The question is whether PSP followed its own rules. State police conflict-of-interest policies exist so that a case touching a member’s family is flagged and documented regardless of whether that member goes near it — the protection isn’t supposed to depend on trusting an officer to stay clear on his own. The point is only sharper here because of where the family sits: a trooper in the neighboring county’s station, and a lieutenant with a history in both the troop that handled the death and the bureau that polices these exact conflicts.
So: over the twenty-six months this case stayed open, was the familial connection disclosed and documented under PSP policy? That record should exist. Whether it does is a legitimate public question.
Twenty-six months
The gap itself is worth noting. Karen died May 22, 2024. Anthony was charged and arrested in July 2026 — twenty-six months later, not the “more than a year” the wire copy reported. For most of that time there was no warrant to flee; the charges are new, and there is no public evidence anyone helped him evade. By PSP’s own account, the death sat uncharged while investigators weighed whether it was self-inflicted. What took two years, and what changed, has not been explained.
Karen’s sister questioned the death from the start. “She didn’t deserve this, and I know justice will prevail,” she told Mid Hudson News on June 1, 2024, when the official status was still “under investigation.” Six months before her death, Karen had buried her youngest daughter, Lauren Gerhold, killed in a car crash on November 22, 2023 — the kind of recent loss that can make a suicide finding look plausible on its face.
The theft charges
The two theft counts are easy to skim past and shouldn’t be. A stolen-firearm count in a shooting death typically means investigators accounted for a specific weapon that should have been at the scene and tied it to the accused. The stolen-vehicle count suggests the car Anthony left Pennsylvania in wasn’t his. Together they point to the physical trail of the case — though the affidavit, still sealed, is what would confirm it.
What’s still sealed
The Pike County docket is empty — nothing in magisterial court or Common Pleas — almost certainly a sealed complaint, standard when a defendant is being extradited. When it unseals, the affidavit of probable cause should show when Anthony became a suspect, when the gun and car went missing, whether he was interviewed, and who else appears in the case. Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin’s office co-investigated from the start; the Douglas County, Colorado fugitive docket should reference the Pennsylvania warrant even while the underlying complaint stays sealed.
Pocono Review will update this report as the record opens.
This report is based on public records, published obituaries, court filings, a wedding registry, and state police releases. It will be updated as the Pike County complaint unseals.
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