Bracken, Raymond and Marjorie: 2002

*Please note: this case continues to have much interest, and the research into the timeline of the various court hearings is ongoing.*

Raymond and Marjorie Bracken were harmless people who took care of their home.  Raymond was 83, and Marjorie was 82.  They lived on their own, and bothered no one.  Like many elderly people living on their own, they needed help doing things they used to do independently.  One of these things was to shovel snow from their steps and from their sidewalk, and they hired William Thompson to do the job.
A few weeks before their deaths, Raymond had fired the 21-year-old man.  He had not done a good job.  William Darwin Thompson, who was also known by the nicknames “Billy” or “Bighead,” had stormed off in a rage.
On March 19, 2002, the Bracken home was broken into.  The frail couple returned to their house following their weekly shopping trip.  Their killer was already in the house waiting, or broke in shortly thereafter.  The killer stabbed both of them repeatedly, cut their throats, and left them to die.  A checkbook, ring, wallet, and wristwatch were taken.  So was a telephone.  That telephone was used by William Thompson to call his girlfriend to say that he would be home soon.
The crime scene was discovered by a neighbor the next day.
Altoona police suspected Thompson within three days of the murders.  An anonymous caller to the local 911 center had given his name, but Thompson told investigators he had been home with his girlfriend and their two children.
Altoona police did, however, have the testimony of Nicole Allshouse,   Ten days after the killings, she talked with the police.  She said Thompson left her kitchen on March 19, 2002, with one paring knife from a set.  He told her that he was going around the corner and would be right back.  When he returned, he was nervous and jumpy.
Altoona police watched and investigated for fourteen months.  The remains of a bloody kitchen knife had been found at the Bracken house, and it seemed to match the set at the Allhouse home, but the knives had been borrowed from a neighbor.  In the house the two shared, police did find a ring they thought was Raymond Bracken’s, as well as a telephone.  There simply was not much hard evidence linking him to the terrible crimes.
During that time frame, Thompson was involved in the Potter county court system and sentenced to 1-2 years for a charge from July 7, 2002. He was charged with failing to show up for a hearing on a DUI crash in 2001 which had injured both himself and Ms Allshouse.
Thompson then began a lengthy journey through the legal system.  Prosecutors contended that Thompson committed the murders to get drug money.
Thompson would be tried three times.  The first trial, in September 2004, was stopped after prosecutors asked for a delay to investigate unknown DNA samples found at the scene, and for an exhumation to gather hair and fingerprint evidence.
In January 2005, Judge Hiram Carpenter declared a mistrial because the District Attorney’s office, headed at the time by David Gorman, failed to give the defense team notes from an FBI agent.  During the autopsy of Mr. Bracken, the forensic pathologist mentiend that a second weapon, possibly an ice pick, had been used to stab Mr. Bracken, and that it was possible another person was involved.  Thompson’s attorney, Steve Passarello, felt that the oversight proved prosecutional misconduct, entailed double jeopardy, and was grounds to dismiss the charges.   DA Gorman stated that the oversight was a simple error, and the wounds on Mr. Bracken’s back were abrasions, not stab wounds.  Mr. Bracken’s body had been found on a heating grate, with broken ribs, and the wounds could have been caused by Thompson stomping on him.
The defense offered the lame defense that the items might link Thompson to theft, but not to murder.  The central question was the presence, or absence, of blood.  Forensic testing has entered an era such that even though Thompson had no apparent blood on him when he returned to Allshouse’s, testing could show blood.  Thompson was arrested by Altoona police on June 6, 2003 after the test results came back from the FBI.  No doubt by that time he thought he had gotten away with murder.
However, there was a bloody footprint that remains unexplained, and the doctor who performed the autopsy did note that Mr. Bracken’s wounds showed the possibility of a second weapon.  As late as the night before the trial, Thompson told the police of two other suspects he claimed could have committed the robbery.  The trial was to begin in September of 2004, but was delayed while police investigated.  Nothing came of Thompson’s allegations.
The failure of the prosecution to fully make the defense of the notes from the autopsy led to a mistrial in January of 2005.
Thompson was not finally tried until April 23, 2007, and the trial before Judge Carpenter lasted until May 4, 2007.
Thompson is serving consecutive live terms at Coal Township State Correctional Institution, a male-only, medium security prison in Coal Township, Pennsylvania, in Northumberland County.
The week of July 6, 2009, Judge Hiram Carpenter issued an opinion on Thompson’s request for a new trial.  He continues to insist that his trial was not fair, and that the District Attorney’s office withheld evidence of a second person in the home.  Judge Carpenter ruled that the District Attorney at the time, David Gorman, had conducted the prosecution fairly.  The jury was not charged as to “accomplice liability” or that Thompson could be found guilty of second-degree murder even if another person was the Brackens’ killer during the robbery.
No one else was ever charged in the crime.  Judge Carpenter stated that a great deal of evidence place Thompson at the scene.