MONTGOMERY COUNTY COURTS

Jury convicts Bucks man of first-degree murder in West Conshohocken shooting of girlfriend

Panel deliberated about 30 minutes in the case of Michael J. Dutkiewicz, of Warrington, who will get life in prison

Michael Dutkiewicz (Booking photo courtesy Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office)

  • Courts

Neighbors awoke to “blood-curdling” screams and three gunshots; a Ring camera captured the chase.

Minutes later, 25-year-old Alyssa Rose Wiest lay face down on the sidewalk outside her Moorehead Avenue home in West Conshohocken, shot twice in the back and once in the head.

On Thursday, a Montgomery County jury found Michael J. Dutkiewicz, 27, guilty of first-degree murder for the May 18, 2025 killing, concluding he acted with specific intent to kill after Wiest ended their relationship, according to trial coverage by The Mercury.

Jurors — nine women and three men — returned the verdict after roughly a half hour of deliberations. First-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence; Judge Wendy G. Rothstein imposed that punishment Thursday afternoon.

Dutkiewicz, of the 2300 block of Oakfield Road in Warrington, showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read, The Mercury reported.

Prosecutors argued that Dutkiewicz retrieved Wiest’s Ruger .38-caliber revolver from a TV stand, used his phone to pull up an online how-to video on loading and firing a revolver, and shot Wiest within minutes of her telling him to leave.

Jurors saw Ring footage of Wiest sprinting from her home, screaming, with Dutkiewicz following, gun in hand; audio recorded two shots outside that prosecutors said struck her in the back, a pause, then a final round to her head as she lay on the sidewalk, according to the article.

Detectives recovered five projectiles in and around the home and later found the revolver — its cylinder holding five spent casings — in a toolbox at a family property in North Wildwood, N.J., according to testimony summarized by The Mercury. License-plate readers traced Dutkiewicz’s Ford F-150 away from the scene minutes after the shots, police said.

Defense attorney Timothy Woodward urged jurors to convict on third-degree murder, arguing a sudden breakup and alcohol pushed Dutkiewicz into a rage that “replaced reason” after the pair had been out drinking in Ambler. The jury rejected that claim.

After the verdict, District Attorney Kevin Steele called the killing “a terrible incident of relationship-based violence,” noting the decision came during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Finnegan said Wiest —a microbiologist remembered by friends and family for her kindness s— left a void that the verdict could only partly address.

Thursday’s outcome follows the case’s move to county court last summer; as we previously reported in June, Dutkiewicz waived his preliminary hearing on counts including first- and third-degree murder and possessing an instrument of crime, and was held without bail pending trial.

He later surrendered to police roughly 12 hours after the shooting.




author

Tony Di Domizio

Tony Di Domizio is the Managing Editor of NorthPennNow, PerkValleyNow, and CentralBucksNow. Email him at [email protected].

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