Groves Obtains Counsel

Court Appearance Mar. 10

LOCK HAVEN – A former local resident charged with murder in the July 1991 disappearance of papermill coworker Katherine D. Heckel has hired private counsel as he awaits his first appearance in Clinton County Court.

County court records show that Loyd W. Groves, 65, has obtained Williamsport attorney George Lepley as his legal counsel; that precluded the need for a scheduled Central Court appearance on Tuesday of this week relative to possible public defender representation.

The court has now scheduled Groves’ first time appearance in common pleas court for Tuesday, March 10 at 8:30 a.m.

Meanwhile the former employee at the International Paper plant remains incarcerated at the Clinton County Correctional Facility, arrested in late January in his hometown of Beaver, Beaver County where he had been residing after the Heckel disappearance 24 years ago.

Groves faces charges of first and third degree murder in the case to be prosecuted in Clinton County by Deputy Attorney General Clarke Madden of the Office of Attorney General’s Criminal Prosecutions Section.

The case is unusual in that while Heckel is presumed dead, her body remains missing.

There was a time when murder was rarely charged in what authorities call “no-body” cases, a situation denying investigators access to forensic evidence which would make prosecuting cases more difficult.

But experts say today that improved forensics and circumstantial evidence combine to provide prosecutors a stronger case.

The January arrest was the latest development in the nearly quarter-century old case. Groves’ apprehension followed a statewide investigating grand jury report based on a renewed probe conducted by state troopers Curtis Confer and Michael Hutson and FBI special agent Kyle Moore.
Their work led to the grand jury findings which determined sufficient evidence existed to charge Groves with Heckel’s murder.

The grand jury findings noted that the victim’s body was never found after she left the papermill for lunch on the afternoon of July 15, 1991: “The Grand Jury considered and rejected any argument that Groves’ success in disposing of Kathy’s body should be an impediment to his prosecution or allow him to escape justice any longer.”

Legal experts have offered their views on the absence of a body in a murder case. Thomas DiBiase, a former federal homicide prosecutor with a background in “no-body” cases, recently said some 435 no-body cases have gone to trial in the US with a conviction rate of about 88 percent.