A pre-trial conference is scheduled today before Indiana County President Judge William Martin, with the murder trial of 65-year-old Charles Cook scheduled to begin on March 18, ten days from now.
Cook is charged with criminal homicide and robbery in the December, 1991 shooting death of 76-year-old Myrtle McGill at her home along South 6th Street in Indiana. In December of last year, Cook’s attorney filed a motion asking Judge Martin to dismiss the charges based on the state’s law requiring a speedy trial. Attorney Aaron Ludwig is also asking to court to suppress statements made by Cook to authorities in Minnesota in March of 2016, and to suppress a DNA swab taken eight days later.
Cook was a drifter who came to Indiana after busing across the state to avoid detention in a halfway house. He was identified as the suspect in 2007 based on DNA on a cigarette butt found in McGill’s car, which investigators say he stole and abandoned in Pittsburgh after the shooting. He was finally located in Minnesota in October of 2016 and extradited to Indiana the following March.
In the last three months, there have been a number of sealed entries filed by the attorneys for the defense and the prosecution, and by Judge Martin, who filed another one yesterday. The judge has not publicly posted any rulings since conducting a motions hearing this past Monday.
