Megan McDonald cold case's new prosecutors are Westchester DA veterans

Julia Cornachio won the conviction of a man who bludgeoned a Westchester woman to death with a fire extinguisher. Laura Murphy secured a long-sought indictment of headline-grabbing defendant Robert Durst in a cold-case murder spanning 39 years. On Wednesday, the veterans of Westchester County's district attorney's office took on Orange County's highest-profile cold case.

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Cornachio and Murphy were in Wallkill Town Court to officially take over the case of Edward Holley in the 2003 bludgeoning death of 20-year-old Megan McDonald. The Orange County college student's lifeless body was found in a remote Wallkill field on March 15, 2003.

They were in court Wednesday — where Judge Peter Green adjourned the case till June 7 — because Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler wasn't.

Hoovler last week recused himself and his office from handling the case. He said that before becoming district attorney he was a defense attorney and was negotiating on behalf of a client "regarding potential information that client might provide regarding Ms. McDonald’s death."

James A. McCarty, supervising judge of the Ninth Judicial District, named Cornachio special district attorney to lead the prosecution of the case. Murphy, who was chief of the Westchester DA’s cold case bureau until she retired three months ago, will assist Cornachio.

McCarty was a longtime Westchester prosecutor who worked with Cornachio and Murphy for years.

Holley is charged with second-degree murder; a conviction could send him to prison for 25 years to life. He declared his innocence after his arrest April 20.

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Key cases include Lois Colley murder, Robert Durst

Cornachio and Murphy declined to comment after Wednesday's hearing, saying they had only just received the mountain of evidence they'll have to pore over to get up to speed on the case.

They have decades of experience in the Westchester County District Attorney's office.

Among Cornachio's highest-profile cases in her time there was the 2015 murder of Mike Nolan, who was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the 2014 MLB draft. He was shot in the head outside a Yonkers Burger King after a drag-racing incident and died a month later.

She also handled the 2019 murder of Lois Colley, bludgeoned to death at her 300-acre North Salem farm by a day laborer who had once worked for her. Esdras Marroquin Gomez was sentenced to 22 years to life in prison.

Murphy retired three months ago, after 34 years at the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office that included a cold-case indictment of headline-grabbing defendant Robert Durst.

Over the course of her career, she led the DA’s bureaus on child and elder abuse, sex crimes and career criminals. She was also deputy chief of the homicide bureau. In 2021, she was tapped to lead Westchester DA Miriam Rocah’s newly formed Cold Case Bureau.

Working with state Police and DA investigators, she led the investigation into the 1982 cold case murder of Kathleen McCormack Durst, securing an indictment of her husband, Robert Durst, for second-degree murder, on Nov. 1, 2021. (Durst died two months later.)

Durst, a Scarsdale native and millionaire real estate scion, had been convicted of the 2000 execution-style murder of his friend, Susan Berman. He was acquitted in the 2001 murder and dismemberment of a neighbor. It wasn't until months before his death that he was finally charged in his wife's 1982 murder and disappearance from their South Salem cottage, through the efforts of Murphy and her investigators.

Getting down to work

Cornachio said she has already begun reviewing materials in the Holley case.

"What's going to happen now is we'll evaluate the case, and we'll get up to speed with everything that was … 20 years’ worth of material … It's going to take a little while," she said. Asked if that review would take weeks or months, she laughed.

"Weeks, I hope," she said. "I would say weeks. I don't want this to languish at all. I'm not putting it on the back burner at all. I'm going to dive right in. I've already gotten a substantial amount of the digitized paperwork."

Cornachio said she'll meet with the State Police investigators this week.

"We're very motivated, and I know the police are, to move forward," she said.

Still an Orange County case

The special prosecutor said she has had a few cases in Orange County, but otherwise brings an outsider's perspective to the proceedings.

Asked if she had heard of the McDonald case, she said she had read about it in the papers through the years, and had seen the billboards seeking information in the case.

"I had seen the billboards, but I'm not over there that much," she said. "I live on the other side of the river, so I'm kind of glad that I didn't have any preconceived notions of it. It's always a better way to go in on a case."

Despite the Westchester connections of its top prosecutors, Cornachio said: "The case is still an Orange County case because that's the venue that it happens in. So Orange County courts have jurisdiction over it. It's the district attorney of Orange County who has requested that he's concerned with an appearance of a conflict."

Orange County grand jury

Cornachio said she wasn't sure when the case might reach a grand jury, but when and if it does, "the Orange County grand jury are the people who will hear any evidence about it. But the prosecutor, the Orange County District Attorney's office, will not have any influence on the case at all."

"Let's say there's an indictment. I will draft that indictment. I will be filing it as the special district attorney, and I'll be in the grand jury. There'll be no other. ... Their assistant district attorneys, meaning Orange County's, they'll have nothing to do with this presentation in any way, shape or form."

Cornachio still considers her background to be all Bronx.

"I was born in the Bronx," she said. "When I was a Bronx prosecutor, I lived in the Bronx. I went to school in the Bronx, at Fordham."

Praise for Murphy

In January 2022, Murphy was awarded the Morgenthau Award from the District Attorneys Association of New York. In presenting the award, Rocah said: “Laura’s willingness to take a fresh look at hard cases exemplifies her tenacity to see each investigation through to its end and the commitment she makes to every victim to never stop working on their behalf."

Patrick Oehler and Jonathan Bandler contributed to this report. Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: Megan McDonald murder case: Who are the special prosecutors?