In Westmoreland County Court, a status conference this week in the Melissa Fox-Beacom homicide trial has been moved back a day to Friday. It had been scheduled Thursday before Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio. Status conferences for the other two defendants in the case, Robert Jack and Matthew Bates, have also been moved, to July 29th.
The three are accused of plotting and committing the murder of Fox-Beacom’s mother, 71-year-old Alice Robson, at Robson’s New Florence-area home in December 2023. The victim’s body was found buried beneath her back porch along Furnace Lane. Investigators say that at Fox-Beacom’s urging, Bates and Jack carried out the shooting. Both accuse the other of pulling the trigger.
