Katherine Heckel: Disappearance, Trial, and Sentence

The Katherine Heckel case is a Pennsylvania cold-case homicide that began on July 15, 1991, when 40-year-old secretary and mother of two Katherine “Kathy” Dolan Heckel left her job at a Lock Haven paper mill for lunch and was never seen again. Her body has never been found. Nearly 24 years later, in January 2015, her coworker Loyd Groves was arrested after DNA testing matched blood recovered from his van in 1991 to Heckel. A Clinton County jury convicted him of third-degree murder in December 2018, and he was sentenced the following month to 10 to 20 years in state prison.

The Day Kathy Heckel Disappeared

Heckel reported to work at the International Paper Company mill outside Lock Haven on the morning of July 15, 1991, where she worked in human resources. That morning, coworkers heard a loud argument between Heckel and Loyd Groves, a fellow employee.¹ Shortly before noon, Heckel called her two children to say she planned to run an errand and grab lunch.² She left the plant around noon, and coworkers saw her and Groves leaving at the same time.

She never returned. Her husband, John Heckel, was away on a two-week Pennsylvania National Guard training exercise.² Three days later, on July 18, her silver 1990 Ford Festiva was found abandoned in the parking lot of Lock Haven Hospital. The FBI said evidence pointed to foul play from the start.³ She was declared legally dead on July 15, 1998.⁴

What Police Found in 1991

Groves was a suspect almost immediately.⁵ Within days of the disappearance, police searched his 1987 conversion van with his consent. Sections of carpeting had been crudely cut out of the floor and walls, and a reddish-brown stain was found inside.¹ Investigators also recovered what prosecutors later called a “kit made for murder”: duct tape, .25-caliber ammunition, running shoes, and a knife.⁶

The same day, the mill’s human relations director searched Groves’ workplace desk at police request and found a loaded .25-caliber Colt semi-automatic handgun.⁷ The ammunition in the van matched the weapon.⁶ The mill had a no-guns policy.⁸

Why the Case Went Cold

Despite the stained van and the gun, the case stalled. No body was found. The forensic science available in 1991 could not definitively link the blood in Groves’ van to Heckel, and prosecutors did not move forward. The investigation sat quiet for more than two decades.

What Reopened the Investigation

State police and the FBI formally reopened the case in November 2013.⁹ By then, DNA technology had advanced enough to test the preserved blood from the van. The results were described as a “mathematical certainty” that the blood was Heckel’s.¹

In February 2014, investigators presented the case to Pennsylvania’s Thirty-Sixth Statewide Grand Jury.¹ On January 29, 2015, Groves — then 65 and living in Beaver, Pennsylvania — was arrested and charged with first-degree and third-degree murder.⁹ The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office prosecuted the case.¹⁰

The 2018 Trial

The two-week trial took place in late 2018 before Lycoming County Senior Judge Kenneth Brown.⁵ Senior Attorney General Daniel Dye led the prosecution, telling jurors Groves killed Heckel because she wanted to end their affair, then disposed of her body where it would never be found.⁶

The Affair and the Motive

A grand jury found that Heckel and Groves had been involved in a brief romantic relationship.² Heckel was also seeing another man, Dennis Taylor, who testified that their relationship began in June 1991. According to Taylor, on July 9, 1991 — six days before Heckel vanished — she told him she wanted to end things with Groves, calling him a “clinging vine” who refused to let go.¹¹

Taylor also testified that at around 11:30 a.m. on July 15, Heckel called him sounding “very upset and frightened,” saying someone wanted her to go to lunch with him. The defense pointed out that Taylor’s 1991 police reports contained no mention of Heckel being frightened and that the lunch-invitation detail did not surface until a 2014 preliminary hearing. Taylor conceded he should have included those details earlier.¹¹

Forensic and Physical Evidence

Blood analysis expert Donald Bloser testified that the reddish-brown stain in Groves’ van was Heckel’s blood.⁶¹¹⁰

Two Damaging Witnesses

Gayle Taylor, a former coworker of Groves at the Portage County Health Department in Ohio, testified that during a conversation in the early-to-mid-1990s, she mentioned frustration with her teenage son’s drug problems. According to Taylor, Groves responded by telling her he could show her how to dispose of a body so it would never be found.¹² Dye called the remark a confession.⁶

Groves’ ex-wife, Kathy Groves, testified for the first time after avoiding police for nearly 27 years on the advice of an earlier lawyer. After receiving a trial subpoena in June 2018, she consulted a different attorney and spoke with state police. She told jurors Loyd came home early on July 15, 1991, around 12:45 p.m., appearing anxious and saying his clothes had gotten “messed” at work. He was unusually insistent on doing his own laundry. In late July of that year, he left her a handwritten note saying he needed to “get away for awhile” and telling her to tell the children he was at work. A separate note laid out household tasks and instructions to sell their guns, as if he might not come back. The couple divorced in February 2016.¹³

The Defense

Defense attorney George E. Lepley Jr. challenged the DNA match, questioned Dennis Taylor’s shifting recollection, and emphasized that no body had ever been recovered.⁶ The defense also raised questions about John Heckel, who admitted throwing out his wife’s purse in a dumpster at his National Guard armory after drug-sniffing dogs searched the home. He testified he was “under psychological care” at the time and not thinking clearly.¹⁴ In closing, Dye described John Heckel as a “broken man.”

Verdict and Sentence

In December 2018, the jury found Groves guilty of third-degree murder. Officials said it was unlikely Heckel’s body would ever be recovered.¹⁵

On January 17, 2019, Judge Brown sentenced Groves to 10 to 20 years in state prison, the maximum under the sentencing guidelines that applied to the 1991 crime. Brown called the crime “horrendous” and placed the sentence in the aggravated range, citing three factors: Groves disposed of the body in a way that compounded the family’s trauma, the victim was a mother of two young children and Groves knew it, and Groves showed no remorse. The judge said that if the current guidelines of 20 to 40 years had applied, he would have imposed the maximum.¹⁶ Heckel’s family delivered victim impact statements, speaking about the loss of their “daughter, mother, wife and friend.” Groves denied the accusations at sentencing.⁵

Appeal

Groves appealed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. He argued that Judge Brown should have suppressed the evidence from the searches of his van and his workplace desk, that the court wrongly admitted Dennis Taylor’s testimony about Heckel wanting to end the affair and Gayle Taylor’s testimony about the body-disposal remark, that the evidence was insufficient to support a murder conviction, and that the maximum sentence was an abuse of discretion.¹⁷

In October 2020, a Superior Court panel rejected every argument and affirmed both the conviction and the sentence, finding the evidence sufficient and the trial court’s rulings sound. Groves retained the option to petition the full Superior Court or the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for further review.¹⁷

1
Lock Haven Express. Kathy Heckel Disappeared 25 Years Ago Today
2
PennLive. Arrest Made in 1991 Cold Case
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FBI. Katherine Dolan Heckel
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Charley Project. Katherine Dolan Heckel
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Lock Haven Express. The Story of Kathy Heckel and Loyd Groves
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Williamsport Sun-Gazette. Commonwealth: Groves Planned Woman’s Murder
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PennLive. Defense Seeks Evidence Suppression
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Lock Haven Express. Court Affirms Groves Murder Conviction
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Times Online. Beaver Man Charged in Decades-Old Murder
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Times Online. Former Beaver Man Sentenced
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Lock Haven Express. Defense Attacks Boyfriend’s Claim Heckel Was Afraid of Groves
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PennLive. Accused Offered Advice on Getting Rid of a Body
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Williamsport Sun-Gazette. Groves’ Ex-Wife Talks About Case After 27 Years
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PennLive. Husband Blames Accused Murderer
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NJ Herald. Man Found Guilty of Murder
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Williamsport Sun-Gazette. Groves Sentenced to 10-20 Years on Murder Charge
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PennLive. Court Affirms Murder Conviction in 1991 PA Cold Case With No Body