Selenski could be tried in April

BY MICHAEL SISAK

Times-Shamrock Writer

WILKES BARRE - In the six-and-a-half years since the bodies of Eaton Township pharmacist Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett of meshoppen were discovered buried in a Kingston Township backyard, the man accused of putting them there has rappelled from prison on a rope of bedsheets, won an acquittal on two other murder charges and lost in a Monroe County home invasion trial.

After dozens of appeals and postponements, Hugo Selenski could finally stand trial for the Kerkowski and Fassett killings in late April, Luzerne County Judge William H. Amesbury said Friday.

Prosecutors must bring Selenski to trial by May 7 or risk having the charges dismissed under a state speedy-trial statute, Luzerne County District Attorney Jackie Musto Carroll said.

The lone remaining appeal, centering on a newspaper's attempt to have recorded testimony unsealed before the trial, should not delay the case from moving forward, Musto Carroll and Selenski attorney John Pike said.

The state Superior Court held a hearing on the appeal, filed by The Times Leader, in August, but has yet to rule.

An attorney for The Times Leader did not return a telephone message Friday.

President Judge Thomas F. Burke Jr. assigned Amesbury to the case after the former president judge, Chester B. Muroski, retired to senior status and Senior Judge C. Joseph Rehkamp was suspended after a domestic altercation last month.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to provide Amesbury with background on developments in the case so far, including a list of pre-trial motions filed in the case and the rulings issued by the previous judges.

Amesbury disclosed to the attorneys three potential conflicts of interest - none of which, they said, would cause them to question his involvement in the case:

*His sister, a teacher in the Dallas School District, may have had Selenski as a student in the seventh grade (she did, Selenski said).

*He once represented a couple with the last name Fassett in a civil case and was unsure if they were related to the victim (they were not, Musto Carroll said).

*And, he and one of Selenski's attorneys, Michael Senape, have a common, distant relative.

Selenski, 37, is facing the death penalty. He is already serving what Pike called "tantamount to a life sentence" - 32½ to 65 years in state prison for the Monroe County case.

Prosecutors said Selenski used similar methods to bind the victim in the home invasion as he did in the Luzerne County killings and amended a death penalty filing to note his "significant history of felony convictions involving the use or threat of violence."

The bodies of Kerkowski and Fassett were discovered in the backyard of a Kingston Township home where Selenski lived with a former girlfriend in June 2003.

Selenski allegedly accosted Kerkowski and Fassett at Kerkowski's home in May 2002, weeks before Kerkowski, a pharmacist, was scheduled to be sentenced in federal court on drug charges.

Kerkowski and Fassett were bound at the ankles with plastic ties and their eyes were covered with duct tape, prosecutors said.

Selenski was acquitted in 2006 of killing two other people whose bodies were discovered in the Kingston Township yard, Frank James and Adeiye Keiler, but remained imprisoned after a conviction for abusing their corpses.