May 6, 2019, Samantha Melamed - The Philadelphia Inquirer
On Tuesday evening, George Trudel Jr. — heretofore known as inmate AS2262 at the State Correctional Institution Phoenix — got the news he’d been awaiting for 30 years. Gov. Tom Wolf had granted him clemency, bringing to a close what had been a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.
“He’s a little overwhelmed and just can’t believe it’s real,” said Liz Geyer, Trudel’s girlfriend of two years. “He spends a lot of time thinking what it’s gonna be like, because he just can’t believe he’s actually going to walk out of there.”
Geyer always believed it, though, because Trudel, now 52, is one of more than a thousand lifers convicted for a role in a killing that they did not personally commit or necessarily even anticipate — lookouts for botched robberies and burglars who caused elderly victims to have heart attacks. “I never thought he would die in prison," she said.