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In early July 1993, the body of James J. Buglia was found on a dirt road near a former open-mine site in Schuylkill County. Despite a number of active clues, it took more than ten years to find and charge the killer. In solving this crime, DNA was used, perhaps for the first time to finalize a Lykens Valley area cold case.
The photo appearing at the top of this post is of investigators at the state police barracks in Reedsville looking over evidence from the James J. Buglia stabbing murder. It was published in the Pottsville Republican on 15 December 1995, eight years before the case was solved.
This post presents the newspaper article that appeared in the Pottsville Republican, 7 November 2003. Note that many details of the Buglia murder were only publicly reported after the crime was solved – so referencing only the information in yesterday’s post about reporting on the murder in the five years after the crime, only tells part of the story
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From the Pottsville Republican, 7 November 2003:
Police crack unsolved homicide
Arrest made in 10-year old Buglia slaying
Photo caption: William J. Huth Sr. is escorted from the office of District Justice Carol A. Pankake on Thursday by state police Cpl. Joseph E. Lipsett, center, and Trooper Manuel R. DeLeon Jr. after he was arraigned in connection with a 10-year-old homicide.
BY FRANK ANDRUSCAVAGE
Staff Writer
TREMONT – More than 10 years ago, the body of James J. Buglia – who was stabbed ten times – was found thrown alongside a dirt road in Tremont Township.
On Thursday, his alleged killer was arrested with the help of sophisticated DNA testing and The REPUBLICAN & Herald.
William John Huth, 40, who lived in Tremont at the time of the slaying, was arrested by Pennsylvania State Police at Schuylkill Haven on felony charges of criminal homicide, aggravated assault and robbery.
He also faces misdemeanor charges of theft by unlawful taking and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.
A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for 9 a.m. on November 13.
Buglia’s case was brought to life three years ago by The REPUBLICAN & Herald’s “Unsolved Homicide” series, which examined at least a half dozen cold cases in Schuykill County.
After an arraignment before District Justice Pankake, Huth was returned to the State Correctional Institute, Mahanoy City, where he’s in prison for the July 1997 death of Ivan F. Fesig, who was stabbed repeatedly at his home in Valley View.
Trooper Manuel R. DeLeon and Cpl. Joseph E. Lipsett outlined the events leading up to Huth’s arrest in a criminal complaint.
On July 8, 1993, Buglia’s body was found in a mine reclamation area, formerly U. S. Solid Fuel, just off of Route 209, near Interstate 81.
His stabbed body was found by Gregory P. Szumlanski, a surface mine inspector for the state Departrment of Environmental Protection. Buglia’s black Ford Ranger pickup truck, was also found and Buglia’s wallet was also missing.
Forensics pathologist Richard P. Bindie determined that Buglia, then 47, died from multiple stab wounds, 10 in all, and also had several defensive wounds on his hands, caused by a similar weapon.
The wounds were to Buglia’s left back, left arm, left flank, right chest and left shoulder, four stab wounds to his left chest and multiple cuts on both hands and fingers.
It was apparent that the homicide happened somewhere else because of a lack of blood on the ground and the fact that there were no signs of a struggle in the area, police said.
Buglia, Llewellyn, was last seen by his mother, Cecelia Buglia, in the early evening of July 6, 1993, after he left home to attend a party at the Pottsville home of Timothy Bressler.
About a week later, tree surgeon Scott Hess found Buglia’s wallet and contents strewn over Route 125 in an area known as the Donaldson Stretch, in Frailey Township, near Interstate 81.
Police then established a roadblock to interview motorists in hope of learning how the wallet got there.
One driver, William Wending, told police that he spotted a dark colored passenger car at the exact location. Another driver, David Boltz, told police he saw a blue vehicle with tail lights similar to a Dodge Diplomat with a white man inside.
At the time of the homicide, police said Huth was driving a dark blue Dodge Diplomat.
As the investigation continued, police interviewed Huth’s friend William Vesay, who said he and Huth were together one night after the murder.
Vesay recalled the two were in Huth’s car when the conversation turned to killing people, police said.
Huth talked about what it would feel like to get stabbed “a lot of times,” police said. Authorities added that Vesay told them Huth was serious, he could “tell by the look in his eyes.”
About six years later, on April 14, 1999, police interviewed Jacqueline Geist-Huth, who recalled an incident involving her husband a few days before Buglia’s body was found.
The woman told police that during the early morning hours of July 8, 1993, between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m., her husband came home with a deep cut on his leg, wearing shorts and not the pants he had left the house with previously.
Huth, police said, would not tell his wife how he got the cut and after she was unable to stop the bleeding, the woman suggested he go to the hospital.
While being treated, the attending physician, Dr. May Christenson, determined the injury resembled a puncture wound, not the type of laceration that would be caused by a broken beer bottle.
After leaving the hospital, Geist-Huth told police her husband dropped her off at her mother’s house in Hegins and, as she was getting out of the car, told her that if state police should talk to her she should tell them that he had cut himself on a beer bottle.
The woman also told police that Huth had “junked” his car a short time later at Klinger’s in Pine Grove.
During the service of a subsequent search warrant, Huth told Lipsett that he did not know Buglia and also that he remembered injuring his leg while he was drinking along Silver Creek Road.
A check on the records at Klinger;s Used Auto Parts and Recycling showed that Huth junked a Dodge Diplomat on October 16, 1993. On February 26, 2002, a search of the property produced the vehicle.
A forensic search of the vehicle found three hairs in the trunk of the auto and testing determined two of the hairs were microscopically similar to both Buglia and Huth. The third hair was gray and could not be compared, police said.
The samples were sent to Cellmark Diagnostics in Germantown, Maryland, for DNA testing but the tests could not be done due to the time the hairs were in the trunk and their deterioration.
They were then forwarded to the FBI Forensics Lab for Mitrochondrial testing and one of the hairs was found to be that of Huth, but nothing conclusive was found on the other hair, complaint said.
Police continued to close in on Huth.
In an interview with Huth’s brother, John F. Huth, the man said he remembered on night in the summer of 1993 driving along Silver Creek Road on his way to a party when he saw his brother’s car parked alongside the road. It was dark out and John Huth believed it was around midnight, police said, when he saw his brother exiting the woods with his pants all bloody.
John Huth stopped and was told by his brother that he had tripped and fallen onto a beer bottle. Seeing that his brother was intoxicated, John Huth drove away, police said.
Police then learned that in the early morning hours of July 7, 1993, Huth went to his mother’s home at 74 Clay Street, in Tremont to clean up.
Police said the woman, Laverne Agnes Huth, found bloody towels near a garbage can and a pair of her son’s shorts missing when she got up in the morning to make coffee.
Knowing they needed more evidence, on November 17, 200, Lipsett obtained a search warrant for Huth’s medical records at Pottsville Hospital.
The records revealed Huth was treated at 12:04 p.m. on July 7, 1993 for a puncture wound, police said.
As a result of the findings in the medical report, another search warrant was obtained for blood and hair samples from Huth that were collected on March 13, 20001 and given to Cellmark Lab for testing with blood found on Buglia’s vehicle and foreign hair found on his clothing.
On February 12, 2002, another search warrant was served on Huth, who was an inmate at SCI/Mahanoy at the time, to collect pubic hairs.
Lipsett said when he again read Huth his Miranda Rights, the man’s hands began to shake.
“After the samples were obtained, I asked Huth if he wanted to talk about this,” Lipsett said in the complaint. “He said that there was nothing to talk about and that I was barking up the wrong tree, that his blood was not at the scene”
Lipsett said that when he told Huth that he had a good reason to believe differently and that he would not be there otherwise, the man became very quiet and stared at the floor. “He seemed to suddenly become very worried,” Lipsett said.
The final piece of evidence investigators needed came from Cellmark after a comparison was done between a sample of a blood smear found on the rocker panel of Buglia’s truck to a blood sample taken from Huth.
They were a match.
“The test conclusion is that they were a match with a frequency of one in 98 trillion unrelated Caucausian individuals,” Lipsett said.
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News articles from Newspapers.com.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.