This updates our July 16 report, Trooper’s Cousin Charged in 2024 Dingman Township Homicide, which first documented the defendant’s family ties inside the Pennsylvania State Police. That piece asked whether PSP flagged the connection under its own policy. What we’ve confirmed since moves the question from the neighboring county into the investigating barracks itself.

Anthony Joseph Kistle is back in Pennsylvania. Since our last report, he’s been extradited from Colorado, arraigned, denied bail, and lawyered up — replacing the public defender with a criminal defense attorney from the Lehigh Valley. In the same stretch, the criminal docket opened, and it, along with the state’s own records, shows that the family connection we described in July sits closer to this case than we knew. The barracks that investigated Karen Kistle’s death is commanded by the defendant’s cousin’s wife. And relatives of Karen say the defendant’s cousin himself was stationed there when she died, and left only after they complained.

The extradition and the charges

Kistle was arrested July 14 in Colorado during a traffic stop on I-25 and returned to Pike County over the following weeks. Magisterial District Judge Ashley G. Zimmerman arraigned him at 12:45 a.m. on August 5. Bail was denied. He is held at Pike County Prison.

The charges on the docket don’t match what PSP announced. The July 16 release described criminal homicide plus two theft counts — one for a firearm, one for a motor vehicle. The docket filed August 4 lists criminal homicide and three theft counts: two second-degree felonies and one third-degree felony. PSP hasn’t explained the additional charge, and the criminal complaint has not been made publicly available. The arresting officer of record is Trooper Megan L. Herrmann of PSP Blooming Grove — the barracks that has handled this case from the night Karen died.

The Pike County Public Defender’s Office was assigned initially, with Eric L. Hamill and Nicholas James McIntyre representing Kistle. On August 18, private attorney Mark Aaron Hinrichs entered an appearance and promptly filed a continuance. Hinrichs runs MH Criminal Defense out of Center Valley in Lehigh County — not a local Pike County practitioner but a criminal defense specialist barred in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The public defenders remain listed on the docket; whether they’ve formally withdrawn or are assisting in the transition isn’t clear from the filing.

Two continuances have pushed the preliminary hearing from its original August 10 date — first by the public defender on August 6, then by Hinrichs on August 18. It’s now set for October 27 at 10:00 a.m. in Court Room 1, before Judge Zimmerman.

The trooper who was there

Our original report placed Trooper Jeffrey Kistle Jr. at the Honesdale barracks, based on the assignment records available at the time. Relatives of Karen Kistle now tell Pocono Review that account was current but incomplete: when Karen was killed in May 2024, they say, Jeffrey was stationed at Blooming Grove — the barracks that caught the case — and was moved to Honesdale only after the family complained about the connection.

PSP has not confirmed or denied this, and we present it as the family’s account. But it reframes the disclosure question our first report raised. If the relatives are right, the reassignment that put distance between the trooper and the case didn’t come from PSP recognizing a conflict and acting on it. It came because the victim’s family pushed. The protection a conflict-of-interest policy is supposed to provide — flagging a case that touches a member’s family whether or not that member goes near it — appears, on this account, to have depended on outsiders noticing.

Who commands Blooming Grove

That barracks is run by Lt. Lori Kistle. Her own LinkedIn profile states the title plainly: “Lieutenant, Blooming Grove Station Commander, Pennsylvania State Police.”

Our July report documented that Lori Kistle is married to Trooper Jeffrey F. Kistle Jr., the defendant’s first cousin, and that she came to her present rank from the Bureau of Integrity and Professional Standards — the state police internal-affairs arm. What that report didn’t yet establish is where she now sits. Station commander is not a title filed away in Harrisburg. It’s the officer who runs the barracks: the investigations, the troopers, the daily work of the station. Trooper Herrmann, who arrested Anthony Kistle, reports to Lt. Kistle. The arresting officer in this homicide answers to the wife of the defendant’s first cousin.

The question PSP hasn’t answered: when did she take command?

When Lori Kistle was promoted to lieutenant in September 2023, PSP’s own announcement assigned her not to Blooming Grove but to the Office of Community Engagement, as Community Affairs Section Commander. She moved to the station command afterward. The department has never stated when.

Karen Kistle died May 22, 2024. Two possibilities follow, and PSP has disclosed neither as fact.

If Lori Kistle already commanded Blooming Grove that day, then the defendant’s cousin-in-law was running the barracks from the opening hour of the investigation into his family member’s death.

If she was assigned after, then at some point during a homicide case that stayed open and uncharged for more than two years, PSP placed a member of the defendant’s family in command of the very station investigating him.

We cannot confirm the date from the public record, so we are asking for it. Neither answer is neutral. Each describes a conflict the department’s own rules exist to catch, and there is no public indication those rules were applied here.

The family in law enforcement

The Kistle name runs through three parts of policing. Anthony’s father — brother to Jeffrey Sr. — is a retired New Jersey police chief, now living in Colorado, according to Daily Voice. His first cousin, Jeffrey Jr., is a state trooper. Jeffrey’s wife, Lori, went from internal affairs to the command of the barracks that handled the case. The July report documented the family tree through Joseph L. Kistle’s December 2022 obituary; this fills in the branch above it.

The suicide theory, and its doubters

PSP first classified Karen’s death as a possible suicide. Her friends questioned that from the start. They told Colorado station KRDO that carpal tunnel in both of Karen’s hands, from decades of work at ShopRite, made the idea of her gripping and firing a gun hard to picture — and at least one asked why she would have reached for her husband’s firearm rather than her own. These are observations, not findings. Whether investigators weighed them, and what evidence finally reclassified the death, is something the affidavit should show.

What remains to be answered

There’s more to learn. The affidavit of probable cause should establish when Anthony Kistle became a suspect, what forensic evidence moved the case from suicide to homicide, who conducted and reviewed that work, and whether twenty-eight months reflects the length of the investigation or a period in which it stalled.

It should also show whether the Kistle family’s presence inside the investigating barracks appears anywhere in the file — disclosed, documented, and managed under policy — or whether it went unaddressed until Karen’s relatives raised it themselves.

The preliminary hearing is set for October 27 at 10:00 a.m. before Judge Zimmerman. Pocono Review will be there, and will report on the record as it opens.

This report is based on the Pike County magisterial docket (MJ-60303-CR-0000063-2026), Pennsylvania State Police press releases and promotion announcements, Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board records, published news accounts, LinkedIn records, the 2019 PSP Academy graduation list, and information provided by relatives of Karen Kistle.

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