Rose Josephine Hnath

Murdered 1/21/89

Case File Details

At about 7:30 p.m. Jan. 21, 1989, relatives arrived at Rose Josephine Hnath's home in North Whitehall and found it ransacked and her dead, police said.

She was a widow who lived alone near the west bank of the Lehigh River, police said.

She died from blunt force injuries and stab wounds, police said.

Case Updates

On Friday October 10th 2025 a Lehigh County jury, after 5 minutes deliberation, acquitted Michael Breisch, 65, who had been charged with the 1989 murder of 78-year-old Rose Hnath in North Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania. Hnath was found dead in her ransacked home with multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma. The case remains unsolved regardless of DNA technology used to identify Breisch as a suspect. At the time of the murder, Breisch lived in a community corrections facility in Allentown. He was arrested in Ohio after having been interviewed by detectives and providing a DNA sample in 2024. Rose Hnath’s family still seeks closure in solving her murder.

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