Former Levittown Man Convicted In Teen’s Grisly Murder Dies

A former Levittown resident who was imprisoned as a teenager for the 1978 murder of his girlfriend has died, according to a report.

Robert Buli, 64, died last Saturday, the Bucks County Courier Times reported this week.

Buli’s death follows a decision earlier this year by Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Senior Judge Rea Boylan, who rejected an emergency request for compassionate release.

Buli, who suffered from a terminal illness, had asked to spend his remaining months living at his family’s home in the Cobalt Ridge neighborhood of Middletown Township.

The 64-year-old man’s conviction was for the Nov. 13, 1978, killing of 17-year-old Diane Goeke.

Buli, who was 16 at the time, planned an attack because he suspected Goeke had become pregnant with his child a second time, prosecutors said.

Two months before her death, Goeke had given birth to Buli’s daughter, who was placed for adoption.

After the birth, Buli’s parents banned him from seeing Goeke.

Court records said that Buli and an accomplice, John Lekka, repeatedly struck Goeke using a two-by-four board and metal pipes.

The pair then abandoned her in an underground fort located near Woodbourne Road.

When the two returned several hours later and discovered Goeke was still breathing, they dropped a 220-pound concrete slab onto her head to kill her, according to court documents.

The next day, school children located the teen’s body in the woods.

Buli was ordered to spend the remainder of his life in state prison under a juvenile mandatory life sentence. However, after a court mandate governing the resentencing of juvenile lifers, a county judge vacated the original penalty in 2017 and resentenced Buli to nearly 40 years.

The decision allowed him to become eligible for parole consideration this year.

At his 2017 resentencing proceeding, Buli voiced remorse for committing the murder.

Lekka has since been released from custody after completing decades behind bars for his role in the attack.

While Goeke’s immediate family members have all passed away, her best friend, Barbara Thomas, has continued to advocate over the years to keep both men incarcerated, the Bucks County Courier Times reported.