Closings slated in trial in 1979 Pa. murder
BEAVER, Pa. (AP) — Closing arguments are slated Thursday in the trial of a former western Pennsylvania borough councilman accused of having killed his former girlfriend more than three decades ago.
Sixty-seven-year-old Gregory Hopkins, a former Bridgewater councilman, is charged in Beaver County in the death of 23-year-old Catherine Walsh, with whom he had been having an affair. She was found strangled and bound in her Monaca apartment in September 1979.
Hopkins testified that he hadn’t been to Walsh’s apartment for three or four weeks and wasn’t there the night she died.
A defense witness on Wednesday countered prosecution testimony that DNA evidence indicated that Hopkins was on top of Walsh at about the time she died.
Dr. Mark Perlin of Pittsburgh-based Cybergenetics said the DNA evidence “would tend to be exculpatory” for Hopkins.