Monday Testimony Finished in Groves Murder Trial
By Scott Johnson
LOCK HAVEN – The investigation into the disappearance of a Mill Hall-area woman nearly 30 years ago was at the forefront of Monday’s testimony in the first- and third-degree murder case against Loyd Groves.
Groves, 69, is charged in the 1991 killing of Katherine “Kathy” Dolan Heckel. Monday saw but a brief afternoon session, the prosecution expected to finish its case in Clinton County Court on Tuesday.
Dennis Johnson, a retired state police trooper, told prosecutor Daniel Dye he arrived on the scene of the Ford Festiva owned by Heckel, found in the Lock Haven Hospital parking lot a few days after Heckel’s disappearance on July 15, 1991.
He said the driver’s side window was partially down and the car was in third gear with no keys in sight. Under cross-examination from defense attorney David Lindsay, he noted no measurements were taken inside the car that he knows of. “I don’t know why. We just wanted to impound it,” Johnson said.
Lindsay later read from Johnson’s grand jury testimony that Johnson was alone with Groves about 20 minutes into an interrogation on July 17 and Johnson “flew off the bat for a second.”
In the grand jury testimony, Johnson said he knew Heckel’s family and asked Groves, loudly, “What the (expletive) did you do with her body.”
Lindsay noted that exchange occurred less than 24 hours after she was deemed a missing person and in less than 24 hours he was accusing Groves. “I heard information and I assumed he and Heckel were together,” Johnson said Monday.
Lindsay also revealed information from Johnson’s grand jury testimony that a map with directions to Gastonia, N.C., was found in the Heckel family’s Ford Bronco and that another alleged boyfriend of Heckel, Dennis Taylor, went to North Carolina for a family vacation a week after Heckel’s disappearance.
Dennis Kirdkendall, a retired state police trooper, said he assisted in searching Groves’ 1987 Chevrolet conversion van a few days after Heckel’s disappearance and four suspected blood stains were sent to the State Police Laboratory in Harrisburg for testing. All four came back as human blood, but only one was big enough to identify the blood as being Type A.
Under cross-examination forensic scientist Donald Bloser Jr. said blood less than one-hundredth of a gram, or as small as a dot on a page, can by typed, but the other three stains were too small.
The final Monday witness was Sarah Kucher, a former forensic DNA analyst for the state police. In an abbreviated afternoon session that lasted only a half-hour, Kucher, said only one of the numerous blood samples taken from Groves’ van tested positive as Heckel’s.
All other samples, she said, came back as insufficient. Under cross-examination from Lindsay, she noted samples as small as a nanogram, or one-millionth of a gram, have been used in other cases for DNA matches.
The prosecution and defense then stipulated that the one sample came back as a match to Heckel. The prosecution had scheduled other witnesses in the afternoon to testify to the Heckel match, but they were no longer needed after the stipulation.
Dye said the prosecution plans to finish its case Tuesday morning. That will be followed by the defense. The jury could hear closing arguments by later this week. Monday’s resumption followed a two-day break for Thanksgiving last Thursday and Friday.
