Angry Patient Beats Chiropractor To Death Over Chronic Jaw Pain

A man from Pennsylvania with chronic jaw pain on Friday pleaded guilty to killing his chiropractor by breaking into his home and clinic and beating him to death with a blunt object in his possession.

Joseph O’Boyle, a 22-year-old man, pleaded guilty to criminal homicide, criminal trespassing, and possession of an instrument of crime related to the murder of chiropractor Dr. James Sowa, whom he was a patient of in an attempt to cure his jaw pain, according to FOX 29.

With the jaw pain also came depression and other mental health issues, which O’Boyle hoped to alleviate by visiting Dr. Sowa to help him cope with the pain. Instead, he complained that Sowa appeared to make the pain worse, and O’Boyle considered suing the man over the matter, Law&Crime reported.

Instead of seeking legal advice, however, O’Boyle visited Sowa’s home, which also doubled as his practice, and struck him three times in the back of the head with a blunt object, before hitting him several times in the jaw in what police called “poetic perverse irony.”

O’Boyle’s father confronted him about the death days later, where he admitted to his father and mother what he did. Detectives showed up at his house over eight days later, which O’Boyle responded to by jumping at one of the detectives and striking him multiple times in the head before police officers were able to restrain him.

He pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, resisting arrest, and simple assault over the incident with the detective. His lawyer Joseph Haag also presented evidence that O’Boyle suffered from schizophrenia and that he was off his medications months before Sowa was killed.

The pleas did not come attached with an agreement for a lesser sentence or a deal, though O’Boyle’s lawyers are attempting to make one of the future charges murder in the third degree instead of murder in the first or second degree, which would reportedly carry life prison sentences.