Indiana County President Judge Thomas Bianco on Friday entered an order scheduling an evidentiary hearing to determine the competency of Ronald Weiss to stand trial for the murder of 16-year-old Barbara Bruzda of Tunnelton, but the court docket sheet does not say when that hearing will be held.
Weiss is now 77 years old. He was 30 when the murder occurred in October of 1978. He and Bruzda were playing pool at her father’s bar prior to her disappearance. Her body was not found until the following March, buried under a pile of leaves.
Weiss was found guilty of the murder in 1997 but a federal judge struck down the verdict in 2018 based on trial misconduct by the prosecutor from the state attorney general’s office and a state trooper. Bianco later ruled that the misconduct and the issue of Weiss’s guilt or innocence were two separate matters, and that the retrial could still go on. Since that ruling, there have been five attempts at holding a new trial, all postponed.
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