Republican politician to stand trial for 1979 murder

[Galraedia]

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

A Republican politician is to stand trial for the 1979 murder of his 23-year-old lover after cold case investigators found his DNA on her nightgown.

Pennsylvania councillor Gregory Scott Hopkins, 66, is accused of killing Catherine Janet Walsh, of Monaca, by choking her to death in her bed.

She was found by her father, bound and strangled with a bandana, on September 1, 1979, after he could not contact her over Labor Day weekend.

Hopkins later attended a preliminary hearing in Beaver County, after the case was revived in January when police found new DNA evidence in Miss Walsh's apartment.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2122614/Gregory-Scott-Hopkins-Republican-politician-trial-1979-murder-Catherine-Janet-Walsh.html

[RC]

1. Huh? What?

"...revived in January when police found new DNA evidence in Miss Walsh's apartment."

This is a 33 year old murder and the police found new new evidence in her apartment?

Or am I reading this wrong?

[HereSince1628]

2. Must be someone did a really thorough spring cleaning!

[RFKHumphreyObama]

3. It happens

There've been cases of houses which have been thoroughly cleaned and or renovated yet there have still been traces of murders/assaults that have happened several decades ago -sufficient enough for convictions to be made.

[whathehell]

11. About 20 years in Philadelphia, someone was tearing down an old house and found a severed arm

in a box, wrapped up in old newspaper.

The newspaper was Civil War era and the "find" was thought to be linked

to an old unsolved murder from that time.

[Galraedia]

5. The cold case was revived with advances in DNA technology.

Hopkins refused to provide investigators a sample of his DNA when they renewed their investigation into the 1979 killing of Catherine Janet Walsh of Monaca.

Hopkins was initially interviewed in 1979 and re-interviewed on June 16, 2011. After Hopkins refused to voluntarily provide police with a DNA sample, investigators fished disposable drinking cups from the trash after Hopkins used the cups at the Bridgewater borough building, according to a search warrant.

From there police were able to use the small sample they collected to get a search warrant to get an "appropriate reference sample" from Hopkins, which prosecutors say ties him to the crime.

[mimitabby]

4. don't you love it

how the UK news reports this before we do?

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. my thoughts exactly

[bullwinkle428]

6. Now they need to go after Scalia over that double-homicide that took place in 1986. WHAT???!?!?!?

WASHINGTON—Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recused himself from a capital murder case heard Monday, acknowledging his impartiality could be called into question due to the double homicide he committed in 1986. "Considering my own brutal murder of two innocent people 25 years ago, there are some who might cast doubt upon the court were I to help decide this defendant's guilt or innocence," Scalia said in reference to the incident in which he viciously beat and murdered two elderly owners of a mom-and-pop convenience store before placing their dismembered remains in plastic trash bags and throwing them off a bridge.



http://www.theonion.com/articles/scalia-recuses-self-from-capital-murder-case-citin,26778/

[Orsino]

7. How do we go from "arrested" to "will stand trial"?

And so far we've only established that his DNA was indeed on this nightgown. The story doesn't even say that the victim was found wearing the garment.

As written, the connections are tenuous.

[Galraedia]

8. She was wearing the nightgown

"Ms. Walsh, 23, was found strangled in the bedroom of her first-floor duplex. She was found face-down on the bed, clothed in a nightgown from the waist up and a cord tied around her hands."

http://old.post-gazette.com/pg/12089/1220360-54.stm


Hopkins' DNA was found on her nightgown, the white rope that bound her hands behind her back and the bed sheet that covered her body.

[xtraxritical]

12. Well if they were "lovers" as the article states finding his DNA on her nightgown

is not very conclusive, I mean lovers usually spread their DNA around the bed clothes.

[XanaDUer]

10. Fyi there's a True CriMe forum on Du