Testimony concludes in Groves murder trial; Closing statements Friday morning
By Scott Johnson
LOCK HAVEN – After seven days of court sessions in the first and third degree murder trial of a man accused in a nearly 30-year-old alleged murder of a Mill Hall area woman, testimony was completed Thursday afternoon.
Closing arguments from Daniel Dye, Senior Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth, and David Lindsay and George Lepley for the defense, are set for Friday at 10 a.m., with jury deliberations to start immediately thereafter.
Loyd Waitman Groves, 69, is charged in the 1991 killing of Katherine “Kathy” Dolan Heckel.
Thursday morning’s court session was postponed after the prosecution and defense met with Presiding Judge Kenneth Brown until the lunch break. Immediately after the break, Lindsay rested the defense’s case. Groves had testified to Brown Wednesday he decided not to testify in
his defense.
The first rebuttal witness for the Commonwealth was Heckel’s husband at the time of Kathy’s disappearance on July 15, 1991, John Heckel III. His testimony centered on items found in a Dumpster at the National Guard Armory in Lockport on Aug. 4, 1991.
Chad Wolfe had testified Wednesday he and his friends found a purse and wallet containing Kathy Heckel’s identification card while “Dumpster diving” that day. Also found were some credit cards and women’s items, such as make-up and lipstick.
John Heckel testified Thursday he would take his garbage to the Dumpster often as it was located at his workplace. He said he remembers throwing items away from a desk in the dining room after a search of their house by state police left items on the desk. “I wanted to clean everything up,” John said. “I was under psychiatric care and I just wanted to keep the house clean… I was not in a perfectly good state (of mind). I just wanted to keep time going and not think about Kathy being missing.”
One item he remembers throwing away was a photo of his wife taken by Kathy’s girlfriends before a country and western concert. That picture showed Kathy in a bra from the waist up. He also remembered throwing away an old pocketbook and wallet that contained items that were no longer current, like credit and ATM cards. Heckel testified he believed that search was conducted some day in July of 1991.
Under cross-examination from Lepley, John Heckel told police at that time Kathy shoud have two credit cards and two ATM cards with her. He then called state police on Jan. 3, 1992 that he had found Kathy also had another credit card he was unaware of, according to a report.
Heckel said he had called state police in 1991 to search the house for suspected drugs, not from Kathy, but for company Kathy had over. “I never suspected my wife of being involved in drugs,” he said. “After they left and things were still laying out, I just wanted to clean it up.”
However, Lepley had him read a police report that the house was searched by the drug-sniffing dogs on Sept. 11, 1991, after items were found in the armory Dumpster. “Did you throw things away two different times?” Lepley asked. “I don’t know. Loyd Groves could have thrown them out,” Heckel snapped back.
“He would throw away stuff in a Dumpster at the Army base you worked at?” Lepley asked. “He could have,” Heckel responded. The witness also testified he saved everything that was in Kathy’s walk-in closet including dresses and shoes. They are now in a storage unit.
Lepley asked why he would keep clothing, but throw away credit and ATM cards. “I did not put anything that was current to Kathy Dolan Heckel in the Dumpster,” Heckel said, adding that he did not return to work at the armory until after the items were found in the Dumpster.
“At the time I first got home (after Kathy’s disappearance), I was in a bad mental state,” he said. “I’m not sure of the process I was doing things. I was going from one extreme to the other.”
The Commonwealth and defense then stipulated to testimony from Tpr. Jim Caldwell from the Pennsylvania State Police that he did observe the items in the Dumpster, but they were not inventoried nor photographed. Further, he said in a police report he saw no personal pictures of Kathy.
The last witness in the case was retired state police Det. Michael Hutson, who testified Edward Brown told him during a interview he was not sure of that date he saw Groves. Brown, who worked at International Paper in Lock Haven with both
Groves and Kathy Heckel, said Wednesday he remembered talking to Groves between 1:15 and 1:45 p.m. July 15, 1991 because he told Groves a shipment of chemicals coming into the plant the next day had been cleared by the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets). “He said he could have been mistaken about the exact date he saw Mr. Groves,” Hutson said.
Upon cross-examination from Lindsay, Hutson testified that Brown’s testimony in court was consistent with what he told Hudson. “He said all he had to go on were the notes written on that day, July 15, 1991. Is that correct?” Lindsay asked. “Yes,” Hutson responded.
Judge Brown said the rest of the day Thursday would be spent by the respective sides and the judge going over exhibits to show to the jury for its deliberations.
Groves has been incarcerated at the Clinton County Correctional Facility since January of 2015, the time of his arrest in western Pennsylvania where he had moved after the Heckel disappearance. His apprehension followed a statewide investigating grand jury report based on
a renewed probe into the victim’s disappearance from work at the paper mill in Lock Haven in the summer of 1991. The arrest came after an investigation into what had been a cold case.
