The man who shot and killed a Pine Grove Mills woman in her home seven ago was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility parole.
Christopher G. Kowalski, 36, was found guilty but mentally ill on the charge of first-degree murder in November for the death of 60-year-old Jean Tuggy on Jan. 20, 2016 at her Irion Street home. Centre County Judge Brian Marshall handed down the life sentence on Wednesday at the Courthouse Annex in Bellefonte.
“Jean’s family and friends have sought justice for the better part of a decade now,” Acting Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a statment. “Thanks to the hard work of the investigators, prosecutors, and law enforcement partners who never gave up on this case, we were able to bring Christopher Kowalski to justice. I hope today’s sentence brings some measure of peace to the Tuggy family.”
Tuggy’s death had been one of Centre County’s most high-profile cold cases as friends and family said they could not imagine who would want to harm the mother of three, school bus driver and church librarian.
But Ferguson Township police and investigators from the attorney general’s office continued their pursuit of the killer and got a break in 2019 when witnesses recalled that Tuggy had mentioned a former co-worker at Wegman’s named “Chris,” with whom she had a friendship and who Tuggy said had developed a romantic interest in her.
“Chris” was later identified as Kowalski. A firearms check found that Kowalski purchased a 9 mm handgun a month before Tuggy’s death and sold it about eight months later to a gun shop, around the time he moved to South Carolina. The gun was tracked down to its current owners, a State College couple who were the only other owners, and sent for testing that found the test bullets and bullets recovered from Tuggy had “significant similarities,” and “matched… in all class characteristics.”
Ferguson Township Detective Caleb Clouse and attorney general’s office investigator Chris Weaver traveled to South Carolina to interview Kowalski in February 2021. After offering changing stories, admitted that he intentionally shot her “in cold blood.”
“The truth is, I killed her,” he said. “I killed her because I was depressed, down and hopeless. I was having a mid-life crisis.”
Kowalski thought about killing Tuggy for months and told investigators “It was time to get the job done.” He told police he long thought about being a “gunslinger,” and admitted to choosing Tuggy as his victim because of her vulnerability.
He said he picked Kowalski because she was “an easy target,” a friendly woman who twice battled cancer and faced several health problems that required her to use oxygen and a cane.
Tuggy was killed by a 9mm gunshot wound to her face and also was shot once in the hip, a medical examiner found. Police said there were no signs of forced entry to her home.
Kowalski went to Tuggy’s house with tea to use as “bait,” he told police, and cocked the gun slowly in the bathroom so she wouldn’t hear it before he shot her. He said that after the first shot, the gun jammed and after he cleared it he shot her again. His description of the shots, the ammo used, what Tuggy was wearing and her condition after being shot all matched the evidence.
He said he collected the shell casings and disposed of them at a State College area restaurant later that night when he went out for pizza with his father. He locked the front door before leaving Tuggy’s house and exited through the back. Then he took a circuitous route home out of concern that he might pass responding police on the way if a neighbor had heard the shots and called the police.
Kowalski’s attorneys mounted a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing that Kowalski’s long history of mental illness made him unable to reason to the point that he did not know what he was doing or was unable to stop himself. They called a clinical psychologist and Kowalski’s counselor prior to his arrest, who testified that he was chronically depressed, hyper-focused on certain subjects and prone to paranoia and grandiose delusions that made him believe killing Tuggy was not wrong.
Prosecutors called their own expert witness to rebut the defense testimony about Kowalski’s mental competence and argued his own words and actions showed he fully knew what he was doing when he shot Tuggy and that it was wrong.
A jury of eight women and four men rejected Kowalski’s insanity defense, a narrowly defined legal term which sought to have him sent to a state hospital instead of prison. The conviction of guilty but mentally ill means he will receive prescribed psychiatric treatment while in prison.
Defense attorney Thomas Egan said in November that an appeal was unlikely.
