After years of delays and appeals, the Kevin Murphy case is inching forward again, this time with a court order allowing a second ballistics expert to review the findings on the weapon Murphy is accused of using to murder his mother, sister, and aunt at the family’s glass business near Saltsburg in 2009.
Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio approved the request on Wednesday. Last week, she allowed the release of evidence for re-examination by Murphy’s defense team.
The 60-year-old Murphy was convicted in 2013 of three counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of his mother Doris Murphy, sister Kris Murphy, and aunt Edith Tietge. Murphy lived in Saltsburg Borough, in Indiana County, but the business where the murders occurred is across the border in Loyalhanna Township, Westmoreland County.
Murphy lost a Supreme Court appeal in 2016 and later claimed inadequate defense by his original attorneys. He said the gun found at the glass shop was his, but claimed he had brought it to the business to shoot birds, that the bullet fragments did not match the weapon, and that DNA evidence of a second person was found at the scene.
Attorneys Brian Aston and Ken Noga were appointed to represent Murphy in 2017 and were granted county funds to hire a ballistics expert in 2019, but they told the judge that that expert later refused to work with them. They hope to appeal again once the reports are in on the re-examination of the evidence.
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