Beaver County town struggles to explain neighbor facing charges in old murder case
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Gregory S. Hopkins
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Bridgewater, a community of about 700 people near where the Beaver and Ohio rivers meet in Beaver County, is the kind of small town where neighbors help each other protect their homes before it floods.
And two years ago, when community members joined together to build an efficiency for a Bridgewater man who had been paralyzed, it's where Scott Jeffers met Scott Hopkins.
"Scotty did a lot of time helping out, laying things out," Mr. Jeffers said Tuesday as he sat down for lunch at the Pit-Stop, a restaurant that overlooks the Beaver River.
PG VIDEOMr. Jeffers, who moved from Bridgewater to Beaver six months ago, said he was "shocked" to hear on Monday that Mr. Hopkins, 65 and a Bridgewater councilman, had been charged with criminal homicide in the 1979 death of Catherine Janet Walsh, a 23-year-old Monaca woman.
"I have never seen him raise his temper to anybody," he said.
In Pit-Stop and throughout the town, shock was a common emotion among Bridgewater residents, although many declined to give their names or speak further.
Police arrested Gregory Scott Hopkins, the owner of a Beaver County construction and snow removal business, at his home on Mulberry Street on Sunday. He was arraigned that night before District Judge Janet M. Swihart and is being held without bond in the Beaver County Jail.
At a news conference Monday, Beaver County District Attorney Anthony J. Berosh announced that Mr. Hopkins had been charged with the strangling based on DNA evidence not available in 1979.
According to a criminal complaint, Mr. Hopkins was interviewed the night Mrs. Walsh's body was found. He told police then that he and Mrs. Walsh were involved in a sexual relationship but that it had ended a month earlier.
First Published February 1, 2012 12:00 am
