PA - Politician charged in '79 cold-case murder DNA match

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Republican politician charged with 1979 cold-case murder of
23-year-old lover after DNA breakthrough on victim's nightgown
(Daily Mail)
A Republican politician has been charged with the 1979 murder of his 23-year-old lover - who he is accused of choking to death in her bed.

Pennsylvania builder Gregory Scott Hopkins, 65, was arrested on Sunday after cold-case investigators linked his DNA to the killing of Catherine Janet Walsh, of Monaca.

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

Beaver County prosecutors said police had found new DNA evidence on Walsh's nightgown, the white rope that bound her hands behind her back and the bed sheet that covered her body.
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more, with pictures, at link above
 
YAYYY!!!! Another one found out!! Justice! Love the comment in the article above from a poster who asked (paraphrase) 'makes you wonder what walks among us.............'
 
From November 2013:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/2...79-Beaver-County-killing/stories/201311220170

The not knowing, for three decades, who had killed his big sister and why, was the "horrible" part, said Francesco Caltieri.

The trial, in which 23-year-old Catherine Janet Walsh's murder by strangulation was shown in pictures and discussed in testimony, was the "painful" part, he said.

But the verdict Friday, in which a Beaver County jury decided that Gregory Scott Hopkins, 67, a former Bridgewater councilman, was guilty of third-degree murder in the Monaca woman's 1979 death? That, finally, after 34 years, was something close to closure, said Mr. Caltieri, 53, of Somerset, Ohio.

From February 2014:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/w...cilman-Hopkins-sentenced/stories/201402260136

Gregory Scott Hopkins, a former Bridgewater councilman who turns 68 early next month, will serve eight to 16 years in state prison, ruled Common Pleas Judge Harry E. Knafelc on Wednesday morning before a nearly full courtroom in the Beaver County Courthouse.
 
This link includes the video for the 48 Hours investigation into Walsh's murder.

"34 years later, detective closes haunting cold case"

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/34-years-later-detective-closes-haunting-cold-case/

But perseverance and luck came through and I finally got to go visit Peter Caltury again. His wife Mary Jane did not live to hear the news, but Peter learned that after more than 30 years we had made an arrest in his daughter's case.
He testified at the preliminary hearing but died before the trial. I promised him at the hospital that justice would prevail.
 
Glad to see her family finally got Justice. Too bad it was so late. I haven't read up on this or anything but anyone know what his motive was?
 
Oct 5 2022

Oct 5 2022 rbbm.
''BRIDGEWATER ‒ A former borough councilman who spent nearly a decade in prison in a high-profile Beaver County cold case before having his murder conviction overturned, has filed a lawsuit against investigators in his case.

In a complaint filed with the western Pennsylvania courts, Gregory Hopkins alleges investigators charged him in 2012 for the 1979 murder of Janet Walsh without probable cause and fabricated evidence. In his lawsuit, Hopkins names Beaver County detective Andrew Gall and Pennsylvania State Police troopers Rocco DeMaiolo and Ashlee Mangan as members of a civil conspiracy.''

''On April 6, 2020, the Superior Court reversed Hopkins's conviction and ordered a new trial, which ruled that the defense should have filed for a Frye hearing and deprived Hopkins of a fair trial. On Jan. 21, 2022, the charges against Hopkins were dismissed by the court and he was officially exonerated from the crime.

Hopkins filed the lawsuit against the three detectives involved on Tuesday, alleging all the parties named in the document are guilty of conspiring against him. According to the suit, Hopkins is seeking damages for lost wages, emotional harm and punitive damages to be determined at trial.''
 
Woah! I’m left with a lot of questions.
 
Exonerated? With DNA evidence. :eek:

Someone committed this brutal crime. If not him, who?!
 
Oct 5 2022 rbbm

''Police initially looked to at least three suspects in Walsh’s murder: (1) her estranged husband, Scott Walsh; (2) a man who followed her and her friends to a restaurant after they met at a bar earlier the night she died, Robert McGrail; and (3) Hopkins, her illicit lover and the man who had built the home she and her husband previously lived in together. Each man, however, provided police with an alibi for their general whereabouts around the time the victim was determined to have died.''

''Hopkins admitted to having an affair with Catherine Walsh that included two or three sex acts on the bed where she died. But, he said, the final tryst occurred roughly a month before she was killed.

In his testimony, Wecht did not date the semen found. Rather, he said it was “likely” left on the morning the victim was killed and was unlikely to have been deposited during the previous sexual encounters.

The pathologist also made other inferences.''

''During trial, others testified that Catherine Walsh’s estranged husband’s DNA was also present, as well as a third, unidentified male DNA profile.''

As it turned out, none of Wecht’s inferences were scientific at all; they were not based on any forensic method; they were just his opinions packaged as what a court later called “a novel scientific opinion.”
 

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