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More than two years after finding her remains on a Franklin County, Pa., farm, investigators Thursday filed criminal charges in the 1995 bludgeoning death of a Waynesboro, Pa., teenager.
Jeffrey E. Miles Sr., who is jailed awaiting trial in another case, was charged with criminal homicide in the killing of Angie Lynn Daley. Magisterial District Judge Larry Pentz arraigned Miles, 49, on the single count.
Franklin County District Attorney Matt Fogal said in a news conference that DNA results only recently affirmed the bones found April 6, 2010, were Daley’s. She previously had been identified through dental records, but Fogal said he wanted the best evidence available for a possible trial.
Miles gave a confession to police on the day he took them to where Daley’s body was dumped near the border of Antrim and Washington townships, according to Fogal.
That same morning — two days after Easter Sunday in 2010 — authorities pulled another body out of a wooded area off East Ninth Street in Waynesboro. That woman, 29-year-old Kristy Dawn Hoke of Hagerstown, had been slashed with scissors.
Police charged Miles, formerly of State Line, Pa., with criminal homicide in Hoke’s death. He is scheduled for trial in that case in February 2013, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Miles’ court-appointed attorney said his client did not have counsel present at Thursday’s arraignment.
“My office was not called or contacted in any way about these charges,” Waynesboro-based lawyer Eric Weisbrod said.
A paralegal planned to meet with Miles on Thursday afternoon after learning of the court filing through the media, Weisbrod said.
“We’ll contest this vigorously, as vigorously as we have the other homicide case, the Hoke case,” he said.
Fogal said the new case will proceed separately through the court system. The district attorney said he does not intend to pursue the death penalty in Daley’s death.
An affidavit of probable cause filed in Pentz’s office details how parts of the Daley investigation unfolded.
Authorities retrieved a notebook in which Miles made a written reference to a killing that took place in 1995, police said in the affidavit.
Police showed Miles a picture of the teen and asked him to show them where she was, telling him he could give the girl’s parents some closure, the affidavit said.
“I asked Miles to explain what happened to Daley. Miles related that ‘something (compelled) him to hit her upside the head with a 2-by-4 board,’” Trooper Aaron Martin wrote in the affidavit.
The affidavit alleges Miles hit Daley at his then-home in Greencastle, Pa., and put her in the trunk of a car.
He allegedly drove to the farm to dump her, but when he opened the trunk, she was conscious and asked that he not kill her.
“Upon arrival at the site, he discovered she was not dead and struck her two more times with that same board,” Fogal said. “Those blows killed her.”
Daley’s skull had “three distinct areas of impact consistent with the statement given by Miles,” Fogal said.
“The weapon used in this murder has been recovered.”
The district attorney said having two victims connected only by their alleged killer is rare for the rural county. He said Miles is not being considered as a possible suspect in other Franklin County cases.
He praised the investigators who worked on the case over the years.
“I think this case is a shining example of law enforcement’s diligence and persistence,” Fogal said.