STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) - Trial has begun for a man accused of having killed a woman whose body was found hanging in a refrigerated trailer parked at an eastern Pennsylvania scrapyard almost nine years ago.
Fifty-three-year-old James Bidwell of Tobyhanna is accused of having killed 27-year-old Kristen Wagner, whose body was found in June 2011 in the Stroud Townshp scrapyard operated by a company owned by the defendant.
The Pocono Record reports that paramedics considered the death suspicious, but investigators and the Monroe County coroner’s office concluded she had taken her own life.
In 2014, however, a co-worker of Bidwell’s reported that the defendant told him he had killed the victim, with whom he had been having an affair, and hung the body from a wire in a scrapyard trailer to make it look like suicide. Bidwell was charged with homicide and evidence-tampering in 2016.
Prosecutors said in opening statements Wednesday that Wagner had provided information to authorities about Bidwell’s alleged drug trafficking a few days before her death. A Superior Court said earlier after a pretrial hearing that Bidwell had “expressed his suspicions” to his wife that Wagner had spoken to authorities.
Bidwell’s defense attorney, however, argued Wednesday that Wagner’s death actually was a suicide and alleged that she had spoken of suicidal thoughts two months earlier while at a drug treatment facility.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.