The lawyer for a Loyalhanna man on death row for killing his mother, sister and aunt a decade ago wants more time to file an amended appeal.
Defense attorney Brian Aston said he needs two months to contact and interview witnesses as well as review more than 20,000 pages of records and documents in preparation for a potential hearing challenging the first-degree murder convictions and death sentence imposed on Kevin Murphy by a Westmoreland County jury.
Murphy, 58, was sentenced to death in 2013 after he was convicted of the April 23, 2009, shooting deaths of his mother, Doris Murphy, 69; sister Kris Murphy, 43; and aunt Edith Tietge, 81, at Ferguson Glass in Loyalhanna Township.
The women worked at the family business, which Kevin Murphy owned. Police said he used a .22-caliber revolver to shoot each of the women in the head because they disapproved of his romantic relationship with a married woman and didn’t want her to live at the family home near Saltsburg.
Aston was appointed in 2016 to augment the appeal filed earlier that year by Murphy, who contends he received an inadequate defense from his trial lawyers.
