Orange County Jury Acquits Edward Holley in Retrial for 2003 Murder

Edward Holley walked out of Orange County Jail at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, hours after a Goshen jury found him not guilty of murdering Megan McDonald 23 years ago. "It was only right. I was innocent all along," he said shortly after his release. "I didn't do anything. I should have never been in jail."

The verdict ended a retrial that tested the limits of jury deliberation. For 13 days, jurors repeatedly sent notes to Orange County Court Judge Hyun Chin Kim indicating they were deadlocked, and she repeatedly directed them to continue. At one point she delivered an Allen charge, a formal instruction urging a divided jury to press toward a unanimous verdict. More than two dozen notes passed between the jury room and the bench before the panel finally reached its decision.

Holley, 45, of Wawayanda, faced up to 25 years to life in state prison on a charge of second-degree murder. Prosecutors Julia Cornachio and Laura Murphy alleged he struck McDonald repeatedly on the head with a blunt instrument, possibly a hammer, while she sat in the driver's seat of her car on the night of March 14, 2003, with the attack continuing outside the vehicle. No murder weapon was ever recovered. McDonald's body was found the following day by a passerby in a field off Bowser Road in the Town of Wallkill. The cause of death was blunt force trauma with multiple fractures to the skull.

The case had gone cold for two decades before state police arrested Holley in April 2023. This was his second trial; the first ended in a mistrial in April 2025 after a different jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict following more than a week of deliberations. One juror was replaced by an alternate before the current jury returned its verdict.

McDonald's family was present in the courtroom Wednesday. Her sister, Karen Whalen, has advocated publicly for justice since the killing. In a prepared statement, Cornachio and Murphy wrote: "More than two decades have passed since the murder of Megan McDonald, yet the tragic impact of her death is felt every day by her mother, sister, brothers, and other family members and friends. We are disappointed by the verdict reached by the jury, but we accept it and thank the jury members for their service." The prosecutors declined to comment outside the courtroom beyond the statement.

When asked if he had anything to say to McDonald's family, Holley answered: "Not yet."

Defense attorney Paul Weber could not immediately be reached for comment.