Kevin Murphy last week asked the State Supreme Court to expedite his appeal of his triple murder conviction for the 2009 shooting deaths of his mother, sister, and aunt at the family glass business in Loyalhanna Township, Westmoreland County.
Murphy is appealing Westmoreland County Judge Meghan Bilik-DeFazio’s ruling last March that despite mistakes made by his original defense team, their errors were not egregious enough to warrant a new trial. Murphy claims that his attorneys should have had him at the crime scene when the jury visited it during the trial, and that they failed to investigate other suspects who might have shot the three victims.
Prosecutors said Murphy, who lived in Saltsburg, shot the women because they did not support his relationship with a married woman.
The now-64-year-old Murphy filed his brief before the State Supreme Court on July 16th. In his appeal, he specifically named two other possible suspects, one of them the boyfriend at the time of the married woman involved with Murphy; and Jack Edmunson Jr., a former Saltsburg police officer who was later convicted of the 2013 murder of Tunnelton gun shop owner Frank Petro.
