A man accused in a 25-year-old homicide case will face trial for charges of murder and robbery.
63-year-old Charles Cook was in the Indiana County Courthouse today for his preliminary hearing for charges connected with the death of 76-year-old Myrtle McGill in her home on South Sixth Street on December 7th, 1991. The District Attorney’s office focused the testimony on DNA evidence that was recovered from a cigarette butt found in McGill’s car that matched a voluntary DNA sample from Cook, and several pieces of circumstantial evidence that was enough to bring the charges forward.
Indiana County District Attorney Patrick Dougherty said that the circumstantial evidence does get a bad reputation, but it is still good evidence, and has held up in preliminary hearings and in trials.
The affidavit of probable cause stated that Cook was supposed to report to a half-way house in Philadelphia after serving time at a state prison in Dallas, PA for drug dealing, but instead took a bus to Indiana, and when he was in Indiana, he shot Mrs. McGill through a window. He was taken into custody in October, a few months after he was released from jail in Minnesota, where police had tracked him. He was returned to Indiana County Jail. The date of the trial has not been set yet, but Dougherty expects it to be sometime in the next few months.
(Charles Cook leaving Indiana County Courthouse after his preliminary hearing. Photo by Josh Widdowson)
