W.Va. man slated for trial in 1999 Pa. murder
PITTSBURGH (AP) – Opening statements are scheduled Wednesday in the trial of a West Virginia man charged in the stabbing death of his ex-wife in her suburban Pittsburgh home more than a dozen years ago.
Forty-six-year-old John Minch of Cameron, W.Va., is representing himself in the May 1999 murder of 29-year-old Melissa Groot, whose body was found in the bathtub by her second husband.
Minch was arrested a decade after the murder following DNA tests on a hair found at the crime scene. Minch has argued that while tests indicate that the hair could be his, they also show that it could match millions of other men.
The trial was scheduled last summer but was delayed after a prosecutor said new evidence was found in local police files.