Now that State Superior Court has remanded the Charles Cook homicide case back to Indiana County Court, the state Attorney General’s office will take over the prosecution because of current District Attorney Bob Manzi’s prior court-ordered involvement in it.
The appellate court reversed Judge William Martin’s denial of evidence that could be used against the 64-year-old Cook, a drifter accused of murdering 76-year-old Myrtle McGill in 1991 at her home along South 6th Street in Indiana.
Cook was identified as a suspect in McGill’s shooting in 2007 and finally located and arrested in Minnesota in 2016. It was after that arrest that he made statements that then-Indiana County District Attorney Pat Dougherty wanted to use at trial, but Judge Martin ruled them inadmissible.
In their decision, Superior Court wrote that when Cook’s statements were made in a mental health treatment center library, they were “in a private conversation to a fellow patient, during recreational time in a library, and outside of any therapy session. The fellow patient was not a member of Cook’s treatment team, Cook’s statements to this patient were not “confidential” communications…(and) were not made ‘in the course of treatment.’” Cook told the patient that he was “on the run back in 1991” and he “killed someone”. Those remarks were overheard by Security Counselor Jeffrey Brunz, who wrote them down and reported them to Cook’s treatment team.
Judge Martin had ruled the statements, in which he said he had killed someone, inadmissible based on confidentiality between a patient and his treatment team.
The case has not yet been added to the county court schedule. In a separate case, Cook is scheduled for trial on June 22nd for seven counts of felony criminal use of a communication facility, committed in October 2018 during his incarceration at the Indiana County Jail.
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