Apr 21, 2016 3 min read

The case of a former Wheeling, W.Va., man who is to be retried for the 1979 murder of a 15-year-old dry cleaner’s clerk hit a speed bump Thursday when William “Tippy” Wallace wouldn’t appear on camera from prison to discuss pretrial matters.

An administrative officer from SCI-Greene told Washington County Judge John F. DiSalle Thursday via teleconference Wallace refused to appear.

The teleconference was scheduled so Wallace, 61, could meet with a prosecutor, DiSalle and his court-appointed attorney, Dennis Popojas, in a status conference ahead of a new trial for Wallace in the death of Tina Spalla.

Popojas said the status conference will probably be rescheduled soon.

So far, Popojas was unable to meet with or reach his client. Since being appointed in November to represent Wallace, Popojas has sent him several letters but hasn’t received answers.

“I had questions that I can only discuss with him,” Popojas said outside the courtroom.

Further complicating matters, Popojas told the prison official that he isn’t on Wallace’s list of approved visitors or in prison records as Wallace’s attorney. Popojas provided contact information to the official and asked her to relay it to Wallace’s counselor in an attempt to resolve those issues.

A Somerset County jury found Wallace guilty in 1985 for the murders of Spalla and 63-year-old dry cleaner Carl Luisi Sr. during a robbery at Carl’s Cleaners on Adams Avenue in Canonsburg.

Wallace is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for a second-degree murder conviction in Luisi’s killing.

The jury convicted him of first-degree murder in Spalla’s death and sentenced him to the death penalty. U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin vacated that sentence in 2007. McLaughlin’s ruling was upheld when the prosecution appealed his decision.

Since then, Wallace’s case has mostly languished. He appeared before then-President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca in 2011 for a status conference and agreed to withdraw a pending appeal to pave the way for a new trial, which was never scheduled.

In November, a status conference for a new trial was held without Wallace. A second was initially planned for December but delayed until this week.

Wallace’s next trial will be his fourth for homicide.

In 1980, the first ended in a hung jury. He was convicted in 1983 but that verdict was overturned by the state Supreme Court.

Ahead of his third trial, Henry Eugene Brown, his accomplice, agreed to testify against Wallace in exchange for a renegotiated sentence. By then, Brown was serving two concurrent life sentences for the murders; in exchange for his help, his sentence was reduced to 10 to 20 years.