Judge asked to OK statements in Western Pa. woman’s death
UNIONTOWN (AP) – Prosecutors are asking a judge to allow them to use statements allegedly made by one of two men charged in the strangulation death of a woman whose body was found in a Western Pennsylvania river last year.
Twenty-four-year-old Paul Bannasch of Hopwood is charged along with 24-year-old Craig Rugg of Connellsville in Fayette County in the June 2013 death of 52-year-old Margaret Kriek of Connellsville.
Bannasch’s public defender argued in May that Bannasch had asked whether he should be speaking with an attorney. The (Uniontown) Herald-Standard reports that prosecutors argue that the question wasn’t “an invocation of the right to counsel.”
Police allege that Rugg told them the pair killed Kriek in June after leaving a Connellsville bar because she changed her mind about having sex with them.