Barry Laughman

The Crime

On Aug. 13, 1987, 85-year-old Edna Laughman was found dead in her home in Oxford Township in Adams County, Pennsylvania. She had been raped.

The Investigation

A neighbor, Royce Emerson, told the police that he had seen a stranger walking behind his home on the morning Ms. Laughman was found. The stranger had walked off in the direction of Edna Laughman’s home. Based on Mr. Emerson’s statements, the police drew a sketch of the stranger and began stopping cars on Route 94, which passed in front of Ms. Laughman’s house, asking motorists if they had seen the stranger. The stranger was never identified.

Two weeks after the murder, a couple, Elwood Bollinger and Patricia Harrison, told the police that on the morning of the crime, they were on their way to a doctor’s appointment and saw the victim in her backyard at about 9 a.m. Ms. Harrison told the police that she had remarked, “There’s that poor old soul,” as they passed her. State Trooper Donald Blevins told them that they must have had the wrong date, because the police had concluded that Ms. Laughman had been murdered on the night of Aug. 12.

On Aug. 27, Trooper Blevins and fellow Trooper John Holtz questioned 24-year-old Barry Laughman, who was a distant relative of the victim. Mr. Laughman said that he had been drinking beer with his brother the evening before the victim was found, and that he could not go to bed because a second brother — with whom he shared a room — was in that room with his girlfriend. Mr. Laughman fell asleep on the couch and did not get up until his father awoke him the next morning to go to work.

A shoe print that appeared to have been left by a tennis shoe had been found at the scene. When asked if he had tennis shoes, Mr. Laughman said he did not, but then noted that he had high-top sneakers, which he did not consider to be tennis shoes. The police considered this an inconsistent statement that aroused suspicion.

Although Mr. Emerson had told police the stranger he saw was not Mr. Laughman, Troopers Blevins and Holtz asked Mr. Laughman to come to the police station for another round of questioning. Mr. Laughman’s father drove him to the station, fearing that his son would have a nervous breakdown if he went alone. At the time, Mr. Laughman had an IQ between 69 to 71, which was lower than 97.5% of the population. Trooper Holtz took Mr. Laughman into an interview room alone.

Trooper Holtz noticed that Mr. Laughman’s pinkie finger could not bend properly. He connected this to three bruises on the victim’s arm, which he assumed were grip marks. Because there were only three, Trooper Holtz inferred that the marks were left by someone with a problem using one of his fingers.

During the interrogation, Trooper Holtz told Mr. Laughman that a fingerprint found on a cigarette pack at the crime scene had a whorl pattern. He then pointed out that Mr. Laughman had a whorl pattern on his right index finger. However, Trooper Holtz withheld critical information: He did not mention that whorls are common, making up about 30% of all human fingerprints. He also omitted that examiners do not use these broad patterns to make identifications. Finally, Trooper Holtz failed to explain that most people have at least one whorl, meaning this match was virtually useless for connecting Mr. Laughman to the crime.

Confronted with this fingerprint assertion by Trooper Holtz, Mr. Laughman confessed to the crime. The interrogation lasted one hour.

Mr. Laughman was arrested on Sept. 8, 1987. He was charged with first-degree murder, robbery, and burglary. A charge of rape was added later.

The Trial

In December 1988, Mr. Laughman went to trial in Adams County Court of Common Pleas. The prosecution sought the death penalty.

A state police crime laboratory chemist, Janice Roadcap, 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 Mr. Laughman was a type B secretor. No type B antigens were present. 

However, instead of excluding Mr. Laughman, Ms. 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 expert, Dr. Robert Wenk. 

Trooper Holtz recounted how Mr. Laughman had confessed, saying that eventually, Mr. Laughman admitted to climbing into the victim’s bedroom window. According to Trooper Holtz, Mr. Laughman described hitting the victim with a flashlight he was carrying, stuffing pills in her throat, and committing rape. He alleged to have stolen $400 from a bag she kept pinned to her bra to make the crime look like a robbery instead of a rape. He discarded the bag the next day in a dumpster at a furniture store, and spent the money on beer and food. The crime was supposedly committed because he could “never, ever” get a girl.

The defense pointed out discrepancies between the crime scene and the confession. The point of entry conflicted with a seemingly undisturbed window at the scene. Additionally, the confession said the crime was committed on Aug. 12, but neighbors had seen Ms. Laughman in her yard on the morning of Aug. 13.

Mr. Bollinger and Ms. Harrison, the couple who had previously told police that they had seen the victim at about 9 a.m. on Aug. 13, testified about seeing her alive that morning. They told the jury that Trooper Blevins had remarked to them that they “must believe in ghosts,” because he believed she was dead the night before.

A defense forensic expert, Lawrence Kobilinsky, asserted that Ms. Roadcap’s explanations for the absence of the B enzyme were unlikely.

Mr. Laughman testified and denied committing the crime. He had known the victim his entire life and loved her, calling her “Aunt Edna.” He had acted as a caretaker, bringing firewood for her wood stove regularly and doing odd jobs for her. She ate dinner with his family almost every day and they had discovered her body after she had failed to show up for dinner that day. 

He also denied confessing. During the interrogation, Trooper Holtz repeatedly told him that he did not believe his story, taunting, “Why don’t you just tell us? We know you did it.” When Mr. Laughman’s defense lawyer asked: “What did you think was going to happen if you agreed with them?”, he responded, “That they would let me alone.”

When asked to read the Miranda warnings and his signed confession, Mr. Laughman could barely articulate 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…” 

On Dec. 16, 1988, the jury convicted Mr. Laughman of first-degree murder, rape, robbery, and burglary. On Aug. 15, 1990, Mr. Laughman was sentenced to life in prison, 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.

The Exoneration

Prior to the trial, Mr. 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 was ever performed.

In 1993, pursuant to a defense motion, DNA testing was attempted by Cellmark Diagnostics on the case evidence, but results were inconclusive.

In 1994, Mr. 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. Professor Stoneking was able to obtain a DNA sample from the semen swabs taken from the crime scene, but could not draw any conclusions without a comparison sample from Mr. Laughman. He requested these samples from the defense attorney, but never received a response.

In 2003, Pete Shellem, an investigative reporter for the Harrisburg Patriot-News, began looking into the case and tracked down Professor Stoneking at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, where he was doing research. Professor Stoneking still had the evidence. 

After Mr. Shellem published a report about his discovery of the DNA evidence, as well as articles detailing allegations of the use of false evidence by the detectives in other cases, Attorney David J. Foster of Costopoulos, Foster & Fields, who was representing Mr. Laughman, obtained the DNA evidence from Professor Stoneking.

On June 18, 2003, Mr. Laughman’s legal team filed a motion for DNA testing. Two days later, Judge John Kuhn granted the motion. The evidence, along with swabs from Mr. Laughman, was sent to Orchid Cellmark laboratory in Germantown, Maryland. 

On Nov. 5, 2003, Orchid Cellmark reported that Mr. Laughman was excluded as the source of the semen. On Nov. 12, 2003, a motion for post-conviction relief was filed. Mr. Laughman was released on bond on Nov. 21, after 16 years in prison.

On Aug. 26, 2004, Judge Kuhn, with the agreement of the prosecution, vacated Mr. Laughman’s convictions and dismissed the case.

Mr. 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 Chris Speelman and charged him with Edna Laughman’s murder. They said genetic genealogy led them to Mr. Speelman, who lived next to Ms. Laughman but was never interviewed in the initial investigation.

On June 22, 2023, Mr. Speelman, 58, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and burglary and entered a no-contest plea to rape. Mr. Speelman was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. 

Mr. Laughman passed away in March 2024.