Bear Rocks slayings: Key evidence raises doubt about guilt of Munchinski
Nearly 27 years after two men were murdered in the Bear Rocks resort community, the evidence used by two Fayette County prosecutors to gain first-degree murder convictions against David Munchinski is still being debated.
Munchinski, 52, formerly of Latrobe, has served 17 years of two consecutive life sentences for the Dec. 2, 1977, murders of James "Petey" Alford, 22, of Hempfield Township, and Raymond Gierke, 28, of Bear Rocks.
The killings at Gierke's home remained unsolved for five years until Munchinski and another man, Leon Scaglione, were charged with the crimes.
Since his arrest, Munchinski has maintained his innocence. Earlier this month, his conviction was overturned as a result of a judge's findings that the former prosecutors, now judges Gerald R. Solomon and Ralph C. Warman, tampered with and withheld evidence from the defense.
As a defense attorney now works to win Munchinski's release as a result of the most recent court ruling, questions are being raised about the quality of evidence, as well as what really happened that night.
Evidence has come into question by the sister of the key prosecution witness, Richard Bowen, who to this day insists her brother was telling the truth. Meanwhile, a forensic pathologist who testified for the prosecution at the trials now maintains the autopsies were botched.
At the heart of the dispute is a state police report that the defense did not receive until two years ago. Defense attorneys maintain this report would have cast reasonable doubt on Munchinski's guilt.
Bowen, formerly of Hempfield Township, testified during the defendants' joint trial in 1983 that he drove Munchinski and Scaglione to the murder scene that night and then fled to Oklahoma. That trial ended in a hung jury.
He repeated his statement in Munchinski's 1986 retrial, which ended in a conviction.
However, Bowen told three versions of his story before recanting his testimony in 1991, when he claimed he was in Oklahoma at the time of the murders.
Authorities may never know the truth because Bowen committed suicide in prison in 1997.
What little they do know comes from a 26-year-old police report in a minor theft case in which Bowen was a suspect. That report, by now-retired trooper George Bates, indicated Bowen had left for Oklahoma before the slayings. Bates said he learned from Bowen's then-girlfriend and her sister that Bowen had left by bus Dec. 1, a day before the killings.
Bates issued a warrant for Bowen, and he was arrested in Oklahoma in the theft case. This week, Bates said he never verified the actual date Bowen left Pennsylvania.
According to Bates' Jan. 8, 1978, report, Bowen's then-girlfriend, Mary Caccia, and her sister, Carol Anne Overly, told police Bowen left town a day before the killings. Bates earlier this week recalled their conversation.
"I asked her, 'Do you have any idea when he left?'" Bates said. "The sister said they put him on the bus Dec. 1, 1977."
Bowen's sister, Dora Leonard, of Unity Township, this week said she believes her brother witnessed the murders but changed his stories because he was being threatened. Leonard said her brother told her about the killings in detail one night as they sat at her kitchen table.
"I truly believe he was there," Leonard said. "I truly believe they did it. No one will ever convince me that he didn't do it. One of the troopers told me way back then that the only reason they believed Rick was he told them things that were never publicized at the time."
After all these years, it is unclear what impact Bates' report would have had on the outcome of Munchinski's trials. That's one of the reasons Munchinski's conviction was vacated Oct. 1 by Northumberland Senior Judge Barry Feudale.
Feudale found that the report was one of 11 pieces of evidence withheld from defense attorneys over the years.
Defense attorney Noah Geary said he only learned of this report in 2002 and immediately tried to verify its accuracy. He tried to review Greyhound Bus Co. records, but those records no longer exist, he said.
"The police didn't want to do any more investigating. I'm certain they did absolutely nothing but hide that report," Geary added.
Although he could find no evidence to verify it, he's convinced the report is accurate.
"If it was inaccurate, why didn't Solomon disclose it?" he asked.
Solomon and Warman's actions involving Bowen's testimony have come under scrutiny in another way. According to court records, Bowen claimed in a tape-recorded interview with prosecutors that he fled to Oklahoma before the slayings.
Warman and Solomon and other prosecutors have refused to produce the tape, saying the interrogation never was recorded.
Feudale ruled that Munchinski is to be released, and barred prosecutors from retrying the case, unless the tape was turned over to Geary. To date, that tape has yet to surface.
Physical evidence in the case also has been questioned recently.
Leonard this week said her brother related how Alford, after being shot in the back, ran for help to a neighbor's house, where he died.
Bowen also told his sister about Munchinski and Scaglione sodomizing the victims before they were killed.
Dr. Manuel Pelaez, a former Fayette County physician who reviewed the autopsy reports for the prosecution, said he's not even sure the men were raped.
The original pathologist died a month after the murders, Pelaez said, and he was asked to review the report for prosecutors. Pelaez said this week in an interview with the Tribune-Review that the autopsy was botched because the semen samples were taken from the victims' rectums after their internal organs were removed, which could have caused contamination.
Pelaez, who now lives in Florida, said the semen could have collected in the anuses when the victims were cut open.
"You need to collect samples before the body is opened," Pelaez said. "It's not a proper way to do the collection."
Munchinski's release from prison has been delayed because state Attorney General Jerry Pappert has appealed Feudale's decision to Superior Court. Spokesman Sean Connolly said the state still supports the evidence.
"These issues have been litigated time and time again during the post-conviction appeals and these matters remain in litigation," he said.
