Nearly seven years after Jean Tuggy was shot dead inside her Pine Grove Mills home, the trial of the man charged in her killing got underway on Monday at the Centre County Courthouse Annex in Bellefonte.
Christopher Kowalski, 35, admitted in a 2021 interview with investigators that he fatally shot the 60-year-old school bus driver and church librarian on Jan. 20, 2016, but he has pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal homicide by reason of insanity.
Prosecutors from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office say Kowalski’s own words and actions show he fully knew what he was doing when he shot Tuggy and that it was wrong.
“Make no mistake, it is the commonwealth’s position that Christopher Kowalski is guilty of first-degree murder,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Kelly Sekula said as she laid out an overview of the prosecution’s case.
Kowalski’s attorneys have argued that he has autism that made him prone to chronic depression and grandiose delusional disorder, which they say left him unable to reason and legally insane at the time of the killing.
“What we intend to show is that on January 20, 2016, when Christopher Kowlaski set foot in Jean Tuggy’s home, is that he was legally insane,” defense attorney Christopher Mohney said during opening statements. “In a nutshell, our contention is that on January 20, 2016, he was sick.”
A jury of eight women and four men will decide whether Kowalski will go to prison or a state hospital.
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 Irion Street residence.
After Tuggy’s body was discovered by two friends concerned about her well-being when she didn’t answer the phone, her death remained a mystery for years. Friends and family described Tuggy, who lived alone, as friendly and caring and could not imagine who would want to harm her.
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.
Investigators ultimately identified “Chris” 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 went to South Carolina to interview Kowalski on Feb. 8, 2021, first at the supermarket where he was working and then at a detention center.
Sekula stressed that interview and Kowalski’s confession— which the defense unsuccessfully sought to have quashed — throughout her opening statement.
“In this case the story will not be told to you by anyone but Christopher Kowalski himself,” Sekula said. “You’ll be hearing the before, during and after from the person who did it.”
Kowalski first said he was only generally aware of the Tuggy case, according to investigators, then claimed he knew Tuggy through her son. Confronted with evidence of their relationship, Kowalski said he did go to her home that day and that as he was taking off his coat a gun he had in the pocket fell to the floor and discharged, with the bullet striking Tuggy. He then said that he picked up the gun and it was jammed. When he attempted to clear it, he claimed, the gun discharged a second time and struck Tuggy again.
Told his story made no sense, Kowalski admitted that he intentionally shot her “in cold blood.”
“The truth is, I killed her,” he said, according to the criminal complaint. “I killed her because I was depressed, down and hopeless. I was having a mid-life crisis.”
Sekula said Kowalski thought about killing Tuggy for months and told investigators “It was time to get the job done.”
Kowalski told police he long “thought about being a gunslinger,” an investigator testified at an earlier hearing. He chose Tuggy, he said, because “she was an easy target,” a friendly woman who twice battled cancer and who faced several health problems that required her to use oxygen and a cane.
He went to Tuggy’s house with tea to use as “bait,” he told police, and cocked the gun slowly in the bathroom so Tuggy 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, Sekula said.
Kowalski told police 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.
Sekula said Kowalski’s actions demonstrated that he knew what he did was wrong, adding that he did not discuss the killing with family, friends or therapists.
Kowalski also told investigators that he planned to take photos of Tuggy undressed but decided not to because he was afraid of getting blood on himself. Sekula argued that Kowalski was motivated was his fixation on photographing a woman naked.
Friends who discovered Tuggy’s body testified on Monday that her shirt was pulled up to expose her stomach and her pants were pulled down enough to expose her underwear. One of the friends pulled the clothing back in place “out of respect.”
Mohney told jurors, however, that the defense will present expert testimony to back their claim that Kowalski was legally insane at the time of the killing after he “waged a lifelong battle with mental illness.”
Kowalski had diagnosed episodes of paranoia and delusion, Mohney said. He and co-defense attorney Thomas Egan plan to call a forensic psychologist who Mohney said reviewed “a lifetime of records,” from Kowalski’s schools, counselors and psychologists and who has researched autism and mental illness.
Kowalski’s counselor leading up to his arrest will testify about his “hyper-focus” and “creation of [his] own reality,” Mohney said.
The trial, over which Centre County Judge Brian Marshall is presiding, is tentatively scheduled to last nine days.
