Suspect's habit of stopping for water leads to arrest
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A Bridgewater councilman's habit of stopping by the borough building to drink water from a Styrofoam cup helped lead to his arrest last month in the 1979 homicide of a Monaca woman.
Gregory Scott Hopkins, 65, was arrested on Jan. 29 and charged with criminal homicide in the death of Catherine Janet Walsh, 23. He is being held without bond in the Beaver County jail.
When police found Mrs. Walsh's body on Sept. 1, 1979, she had been strangled and her hands were bound with a rope behind her back. There was no sign of a struggle, and the doors to the first-floor unit were locked. Mrs. Walsh, who was separated from her husband, lived alone.
According to a search warrant, Mr. Hopkins was interviewed that night because a friend of Mrs. Walsh said the two had been involved in a relationship. Mrs. Walsh had met Mr. Hopkins through her neighbor, who cleaned his home.
When he was interviewed, Mr. Hopkins said his relationship with Mrs. Walsh had been "purely sexual," that they had not been close and that he had not been to her Indiana Avenue apartment for the previous three or four weeks. According to Mrs. Walsh's friend, a phone conversation she heard between Mrs. Walsh and Mr. Hopkins the week before her death ended in an argument after Mrs. Walsh told him the relationship was over.
Mr. Hopkins, who was getting a divorce and involved with another woman, told police in 1979 that he had spent the night of Mrs. Walsh's death preparing for a pig roast with friends.
For reasons that are unclear from the search warrant application, police interviewed Mr. Hopkins again in September 1979, in 1981 and again in 2011, when they asked him to voluntarily submit a DNA sample for a test not available at the time of the 1979 homicide.
When he refused, Bridgewater Police Chief Doug Adams advised detectives investigating the case about Mr. Hopkins' habit of getting water from the borough building. DNA testing of a cup he used showed he could not be eliminated as a possible match with sperm found on Mrs. Walsh's nightgown and the rope around her hands.
In December 2011, a search warrant was granted and a DNA sample was taken from Mr. Hopkins. The match was confirmed in January.
A preliminary hearing for Mr. Hopkins has been scheduled for March 29.
First Published February 7, 2012 6:23 pm
