Judge says a jury should decide if Connellsville woman was tortured
A Fayette County judge has denied a request to dismiss charges against a Connellsville man accused of torturing and killing a woman before throwing her body in the river last summer.
Craig Rugg, 25, is charged with criminal homicide, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, unlawful restraint, abuse of a corpse and conspiracy to commit each, plus one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
He and and Paul Bannasch, 25, of Hopwood are accused of fatally beating 52-year-old Margaret “Peggy” Kriek and dumping her body in the Youghiogheny River on June 22, 2013. They will be tried separately, and the prosecution is seeking the death penalty against both of them if they are convicted of first-degree murder.
The prosecution alleges Kriek was kidnapped and tortured, and that those two aggravating factors raise the alleged killing to the capital level.
Court-appointed attorneys Dianne Zerega and James Geibig have asked the court to quash the torture aggravator, arguing Kriek was dead or unconscious before many of the injuries were sustained to her body.
Wagner rejected the notion that proving the aggravator of torture depends on determining whether Kriek was conscious while she was being brutally beaten and sexually assaulted.
“While the victim’s state of being conscious or otherwise is one factor in assessing whether torture occurred, it is not controlling,” Wagner wrote. “The intent to torture may be proven from the totality of the circumstances.” For example, the court can consider how the killing happened, the type and number and placement of wounds, and the duration of the episode.
“Although the commonwealth bears the burden of proving at trial that which actually was, not what might have been,” the judge wrote, “it does not have to prove how long the victim withstood the cruel, depraved attacks upon her before she became unconscious.”
Torture can be proven if there’s medical evidence the victim could be have alive during the attack, he added.
Wagner was also not swayed by the argument that Rugg’s constitutional rights were violated when state police failed to record a portion of his verbal statement. Wagner pointed to a Superior Court decision that held there is no legal authority to support the claim that recording is required by the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects due process rights.
Because that argument lacked merit, Wagner said it would not be necessary to suppress the recorded statement Rugg made to police.
Rugg will be scheduled for trial at a later date.