With a pretrial conference scheduled two weeks from today, there has been another flurry of sealed entries filed this week in the Charles Cook homicide case.
Cook is the 65-year-old drifter charged in the 1991 murder of 76-year-old Myrtle McGill at her home along South 6th Street in Indiana. He evaded capture for years after being identified in 2007 as the suspect, based on DNA on a cigarette butt found in McGill’s car, which had been stolen and abandoned at the Pittsburgh bus terminal. Cook was finally tracked down in 2016 in Minnesota and was extradited to Indiana County in February of ’17.
Since a November pretrial conference, there have been 29 sealed entries entered into the court record by attorneys for both the defense and prosecution and by Judge William Martin. The judge entered three more sealed entries yesterday. He has yet to rule on a defense motion to dismiss the case based on the failure to meet the state standard for speedy trial, and on motions to exclude statements and evidence in the case.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin March 18th.
