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Accused Killer of Elderly Woman Bound for Trial

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — A man accused of a murder in 2013 was in court Friday for a preliminary hearing at the Luzerne County Courthouse. Anthony Spudis was f...

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. -- A man accused of a murder in 2013 was in court Friday for a preliminary hearing at the Luzerne County Courthouse.

Anthony Spudis was free for four years following the death of 97-year-old Gertrude Price until police picked him up late last year.

It took investigators more than four years to get enough evidence to charge a 35-year-old man for murdering Price at her home in Nanticoke.

It took a judge just three hours to rule there is enough evidence to bring Spudis to trial.

"Whatever he did, monsters strike in the night," said the victim's daughter Carol Belmont.

In court, an inmate who was in jail with Spudis in 2014, when Spudis was in jail on an unrelated break-in testified Spudis admitted murdering Price and worried about DNA.

And Spudis' former live-in girlfriend testified that when she confronted Spudis about leaving her 7-month-old baby alone the night of the murder, he later brought her into Gertrude Price's home and showed her the body.

"She wouldn't put up a fight. I don't think she would have even got out of her bed. He went upstairs and just whatever he did," Belmont said.

At the hearing, the Luzerne County coroner said Price was beaten and stabbed.

The next steps include setting a trial date, and prosecutors will determine whether or not to seek the death penalty.

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