The State’s Evidence and Problems with It
In this section, we’ll begin to look at more of the ways in which the case against Timothy McEnany fails to stand up to scrutiny, and ask WHY no judge or jury questioned this gross miscarriage of justice?
As a Catholic priest, before becoming a bishop, I worked as a canon lawyer, so I’ve spent much of my life studying law. Not just canon law, but law in general, especially criminal law. I suppose that is because I vowed my life to work for social justice, and I knew that quite often, what was being passed off as justice was anything but just.
That’s why I felt compelled, before going further to look into what some of the most glaring inconsistencies, and in my opinion, LIES were about in the way Mr. McEnany’s case was handled, from the time of his questioning to his subsequent arrest and trials.
The “evidence” against McEnany
The most logical place to begin, when deconstructing an alleged crime is to look at the supposed evidence. So let’s start there:
- In the police statement, they claim that Tim said, “I want to do the right thing. I want to tell you what happened.”
The simple truth in that matter is that Timothy McEnany has always maintained his innocence, even when the police tried to coax him to “turn” on his cousin, and place the blame on him, in exchange for leniency or release.
Why is it that there are police audio recordings of everyone’s interview involved in this case, except for the defendant, Tim McEnany? Why would everything else be recorded, except for the record of McEnany’s statement that he is innocent, and his account of what occurred that night?
More and more, former State Police officers are testifying to the fact that the Pennsylvania State Police regularly manufacture evidence to create convictions. After reviewing the facts in this case, the one thing that the State Police seemed to be clearly disinterested in was the truth.
Paint Chips… The Dubious “Smoking Gun”
The police report alleges that “paint chips” were found in the deceased’s hand and in McEnany’s jacket pocket. These were purportedly from a basement window, which was never opened prior to the police opening it (this is evident from the State Police crime scene photos).
These crime scene photos show unbroken cobwebs before the window was opened, and then, after the State Police opened the window, those same cobwebs are broken.
Curiously, no other evidence of paint chips were found — not around the window, nor below it on the ground. Not around Mrs. Bishop, or in the defendant’s vehicle. Just in Mrs. Bishop’s hand and Tim’s jacket pocket. And nowhere in the autopsy is there a recording of paint chips in Mrs. Bishop’s hand, under her nails or anything else. In fact, that autopsy is very thorough and detailed about evidence collected “via tape lifters and other paraphernalia”. It includes recording of the pen found in her right hand, fibers retrieved by tape lifters, hair from the victim’s head, clothing, fingernail clippings, fingerprints, photographs and two tubes of blood. But no mention of these mysterious paint chips that came from an unopened window that McEnany allegedly passed through apparently by some sort of magic.
At least two employees from the Pennsylvania State Police crime lab were asked to “look for paint chips”, but there were none recorded. And in fact, at the autopsy, performed on March 5th, at which Dr. Ross, Coroner Hetrick, Assistant District Attorney Narvol, and Troopers Kegerreis and Corporal Mull were present, there is absolutely no mention of paint chips discovered.
Remember the screen and broken window on the kitchen door, where they claimed the murderer entered? Why would they need to come in via the basement and the kitchen?
The day after the autopsy, when Troopers Kegerreis and Shannon, as well as Corporals Mull and Freehling took more photos of the basement window, no mention was made in their report about having found pain chips anywhere. It wasn’t until March 9th that Trooper Kegerreis took additional photos and procured samples of the paint. And only at this point is there mention that paint chips were allegedly found in Mrs. Bishop’s hand. These “samples” weren’t even sent to the crime lab until nine days after that, on March 18th!
The police claim that the jacket in which these paint chips were found was Mr. McEnany’s (short) black jacket, which had his company logo embazoned on the back. The way the pockets are constructed, McEnany would have to have climbed backwards through the tiny 4-foot 7-inch high window for the paint chips to have even gotten into that jacket pocket!
What’s even more absurd is that after McEnany magically squeezed through this small, unopened window backward, the police apparently claim Mrs. Bishop later reached into his pockets to retrieve a couple of the paint chips for some bizarre reason.
And I would ask the reader to take careful note here that the jacket McEnany was accused of having paint chips in was SHORT (a normal length jacket), like his HAIR at the time of the arrest. Just in case anyone wonders how that jacket magically grew into a long coat, and how his hair mysterious became “long and flowing” too, as the description of the person an eye-witness (a neighbour) reported seeing flee the crime scene that night, at about the time of the murder.
Now I would never go so far as to imagine that the State Police in South Central Pennsylvania were of above average intelligence or anything else that requires such a broad stretch of the imagination, but I would think that they would have had the modest intelligence to recognise that their “suspect” didn’t fit the description of the man seen running from the scene of the crime.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a long and storied history of corruption, malpractice and malfeasance.
Phone Records – Another Problem
On 7 March 1993, a consensual search of Timothy McEnany’s work van was conducted by Pennsylvania State Police Trooper, Lt. John Brown, and Trooper Myra Taylor. The following day, a search warrant was issued, and the van was seized. No evidence relating to the crime was found in either of these two searches.
Two weeks later, on 23 March, Corporal Mull and Trooper Lotwick (yes, the same Trooper, who would later become Sherrif Lotwick, and was permitted to transport the jury to court, despite the blatantly obvious and apparent conflict of interest and potential for witness tampering!) removed the accused’s cellphone from the van. This was done a full two weeks after the execution of the search warrant.
The Fourth Amendment requires that search warrants be executed without unreasonable delay. The purpose of the rule is to ensure that when a search is made pursuant to a warrant, probable cause exists, both when the warrant was issued and when the search is carried out.
So the question becomes, what’s “unreasonable delay?” A delay is unreasonable when it’s no longer reasonable to assume that items that were presumably located in the place described in the warrant are still there, because the information that placed them in that location is old and has become unreliable.
Why did the police wait sixteen days, before removing the cellphone from the van?
What we do know if that sixteen days after seizing the van, Mull and Lotwick took the phone to John T. Shingara, of the State Police communications division. Shingara claimed that the last number dialed on the phone was that of Mrs. Bishop (the victim). A subpoena (later deemed to be illegal and inadmissible) was issued for cellphone records, and showed that no calls near the time of death were made or received.
After the illegal subpoena, Jean Sweigart, an employee of Cellular One, was served with a search warrant for telephone records. These records allege that two incomplete phone calls were made to the Bishop residence at, or about 10 PM on the night of the murder. Original records of these phone calls were never produced.
What was produced, however, was a sixty-page report, sent to the Pennsylvania State Police, but this report was never introduced into discovery during the trial.
McEnany avers that it is impossible for these calls to have been made, as he was in a bar with witnesses at that time.
So, like the fabricated paint-chip evidence, it’s not unimaginable that these mysterious phone records that were never officially entered into evidence in the case, were another of the PSP’s fabrications.
Remember, not long ago, Sgt. Brandon Ruff, an eight-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police force, filed a police brutality lawsuit against his own Department on Monday.
Sergeant Ruff also alleges rampant corruption in his lawsuit and states that the police department as a whole encourages and tolerates officers who “misrepresent facts in order to establish probable cause, and allows officers to have persons falsely arrested or maliciously prosecuted.”
Maybe it’s time to hear McEnany’s account of the events surrounding this terrible period.