Ex-councilman gets 8-16 years for 1979 Beaver Co. murder

BEAVER, Pa. — A former Bridgewater borough councilman has been sentenced to eight to 16 years in prison in the killing of a young woman in 1979.

Gregory Scott Hopkins, 67, was convicted in November of third-degree murder for the death of Catherine Janet Walsh.

Walsh was found strangled and bound in her Monaca apartment in September 1979. She was 23.

Hopkins was charged in 2012 after DNA analysis found his previously undetected DNA on her nightgown, a bedsheet and the rope used to bind her hands.

Hopkins has acknowledged an affair with Walsh but denied killing her.

“This case has followed me my entire career. It’s great to close it and great to get closure to the family,” Beaver County detective Andy Gall said.

Walsh’s brother, Francesco Caltieri, said he thinks Hopkins should be headed to hell.

“If God came down and asked me what I would like to see happen to him, I would tell him, ‘Fire and brimstone to be damned to all eternity to hell,’” Caltieri said.

Caltieri added that he thinks Hopkins is a monster who has roamed free for 34 years, but now justice is finally served.

“We got him, Janet. We got him,” Caltieri said as if he was talking to his sister.

Defense attorney Chad Bowers said Hopkins will appeal.

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