On the evening of August 13, 1987, 85-year-old Edna Laughman was found dead in her home in Oxford Township, Pennsylvania. She had been raped and suffocated with pills that had been forced down her throat.
A neighbor, Royce Emerson, told the police that he had seen a stranger walking behind his home that morning. Emerson said that he saw the stranger walk off in the direction of Laughman’s home. Based on Emerson’s statements, the police drew a sketch of the stranger and began stopping cars on Route 94, which passed in front of Laughman’s house, asking motorists if they had seen the stranger. The stranger was never identified.
Two weeks after the murder, Elwood Bolllinger and Patricia Harrison told the police that they had seen Laughman in her back yard on their way to a doctor’s appointment on the morning of August 13, 1987., Harrison told the police that she had remarked, “There's that poor old soul,” as they passed her. State Trooper Donald Blevins told the couple that they must have had the wrong date because the police had concluded that Laughman had been murdered on the night of August 12th.
On August 27, 1987, Trooper Blevins and fellow Trooper John Holtz questioned 24-year-old Barry Laughman, who was a distant relative of the victim. Laughman said that he had been drinking beer with his brother the evening before the victim was found. He said he fell asleep on the couch and did not get up until his father awoke him the next morning to go to work.
A shoeprint that appeared to have been left by a tennis shoe had been found at the scene. Asked if he had tennis shoes, Laughman said he did not, but then said he had high-top sneakers, which he did not consider to be tennis shoes. The police, however, considered that an inconsistent statement that aroused their suspicion.
Although Emerson had told police the stranger he saw was not Laughman, Holtz and Blevins asked Laughman to come to the police station on September 8, 1997. Laughman’s father drove him to the station because he feared that Laughman would have a nervous breakdown if he went alone. Laughman also had an IQ of 69 to 71, lower than 97.5% of the population. Holtz took Laughman into an interview room alone.
Holtz noticed that Laughman’s pinkie finger couldn't bend properly. He connected this finger issue to three bruises he saw on the victim’s arm that he assumed were grip marks. Because there were only three, Holtz inferred that the marks were left by someone who had a problem using one of his fingers.
During the interrogation, Holtz told Laughman that a fingerprint found on a cigarette pack in the victim’s house had a whorl pattern. Holtz then showed Laughman that he had a whorl pattern on his right index finger. Holtz did not tell Laughman that approximately 30% of all fingerprint patterns are whorls and that fingerprint examiners do not rely on gross patterns like whorls to make identifications. He did not tell Laughman that the chance of any person having at least one whorl pattern on their 10 fingers was high, or that a whorl pattern on one of Laughman’s fingers was virtually valueless in connecting him to the crime.
Holtz said that Laughman confessed after being confronted with this fingerprint assertion. The interrogation lasted one hour. It was not recorded, but afterward, Holtz read a statement and asked Laughman if it was correct. “Yes,” Laughman replied.
Laughman was arrested on September 8, 1997. He was charged with first-degree murder, robbery and burglary. A charge of rape was added later.
In December 1988, Laughman went to trial in the Adams County Court of Common Pleas. The prosecution sought the death penalty.
Janice Roadcap, a chemist with the state police crime laboratory, testified that she conducted serology testing on semen found on the victim’s vaginal swabs and found evidence of Type A blood, either from the victim or the perpetrator. The victim was a type A secretor and Laughman was a type B secretor. No B antigens were present.
However, instead of excluding Laughman, Roadcap testified that the absence of B antigens could be explained by “drainage, contamination, breakdown, or medicine ingestion.” This testimony was supported by a second prosecution expert, Dr. Robert Wenk, a forensic pathologist.
Holtz recounted how Laughman confessed, saying that Laughman said he had gone to get a soda at a nearby car lot and had climbed into the victim’s bedroom window. He said he hit her with a flashlight he was carrying, stuffed pills in her throat and pinched her nose shut while stroking her throat to get her to choke on the pills. According to Holtz, Laughman said he raped the victim and stole $400 from a bag she kept pinned to her bra, and that he did so to make it look like a robbery instead of a rape. According to the statement, Laughlin disposed of the bag the next day in a dumpster at a furniture store. He said he spent the money on beer and food. He said he committed the crime because he could “never, ever” get a girl.
The defense pointed out discrepancies between the crime scene and the confession. The alleged point of entry conflicted with a seemingly undisturbed window at the scene. The defense noted that while Laughman’s confession said the crime was committed on Aug. 12, the neighbors had seen her in her yard on the morning of Aug. 13. Laughman also had a girlfriend with whom he had a sexual relationship and to whom he had proposed marriage.
Bollinger and Harrison, the couple who had previously told police that they had seen the victim at about 9 a.m. on August 13, 1987, testified about seeing her alive that morning. They told the jury that Blevins told them that they “must believe in ghosts” because she was dead the night before.
A defense forensic expert, Lawrence Kobilinsky, said that Roadcap’s explanations for the absence of the B enzyme were unlikely.
Laughman testified and denied committing the crime.
When asked to read the Miranda warnings the police gave him and his signed confession, Laughman could not articulate nearly every other word. He needed about eight minutes to read: “You have an absolute right to remain silent and that anything you say can and will be used…”
Laughman testified that he had known the victim his entire life and that he loved her, calling her “Aunt Edna.” He said he had acted as a caretaker, bringing firewood for her wood stove regularly and doing odd jobs for her. He said she ate dinner with his family almost every day and they had discovered her body after she failed to show up for dinner that evening.
Laughman testified that Holtz repeatedly told him that he did not believe his story and said: “Why don't you just tell us? We know you did it.”
Laughman’s defense lawyer asked: “What did you think was going to happen if you agreed with them?”
“That they would let me alone,” Laughman said.
On December 16, 1988, the jury convicted Laughman of first-degree murder, rape, robbery and burglary. On August 15, 1990, Laughman was sentenced to life in prison for murder, 50 months to 20 years for rape, 50 months to 20 years for robbery, and 8 months to 20 years for burglary.
The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the conviction and sentence on July 12, 1991.
Prior to the trial, Laughman’s defense attorney had received 18 swabs and six microscopic slides of semen taken from the victim’s body for DNA testing, but no testing had been performed.
In 1993, pursuant to a defense motion, DNA testing was attempted by Cellmark Diagnostics on the vaginal swabs collected from the victim, but the results were inconclusive.
In 1994, Laughman’s post-conviction attorney submitted the swabs to Professor Mark Stoneking at Pennsylvania State University who was employing cutting-edge techniques in DNA testing at the time. Stoneking was able to obtain a DNA sample from the semen swabs taken from the crime scene. However, he could not draw any conclusions without a comparison sample from Laughman. Although Stoneking requested comparison samples from the defense attorney, he never received a response.
In 2003, Pete Shellem, an investigative reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot-News began looking into the case and tracked down Stoneking at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Stoneking said he still had the evidence.
After the newspaper published Shellem’s articles about the discovery of the DNA evidence as well as allegations about the use of false evidence by the detectives in other cases, David J. Foster, of Costopoulos, Foster & Fields, who was representing Laughman, obtained the DNA evidence from Stoneking.
On June 18, 2003, Laughman’s legal team filed a motion for DNA testing. On June 20, 2003, Judge John Kuhn granted the motion. The evidence, including swabs from Laughman, was sent to Orchid Cellmark laboratory in Germantown, Maryland.
On November 5, 2003, Orchid Cellmark reported that Laughman was excluded as the source of the semen. On November 12, 2003, a motion for post-conviction relief was filed. Laughman was released on bond on November 21, 2003, after 16 years in prison.
On August 26, 2004, Judge Kuhn, with the agreement of the prosecution, vacated Laughman’s convictions and dismissed the case.
Laughman subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the state police and the chemist, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction. In 2017, the lawsuit was settled for $2.1 million.
In 2021, police arrested 58-year-old Chris Speelman and charged him with Edna Laughman’s murder. They said genetic genealogy led them to Speelman, who lived next to the victim but had never been interviewed in the initial investigation.
On June 22, 2023, Speelman pled guilty to third-degree murder and burglary and entered a no-contest plea to rape. Speelman was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.
Laughman died in March 2024.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-20-2026
