More than four years after a Potter County man was tortured in his Galeton home and later killed in a remote area , a trial date has been set for two of the three people charged in his murder.
Police found the battered body of Joshua Ramos, 19, in a remote corner of Potter County in early July 2020 after Pennsylvania State Police at Coudersport received a tip about his death.
Following an investigation, state police arrested Felicia Kay Cary, Krysten Lauren Crosby, and Kyle Michael Nathan Moore, all of Galeton, and charged them with multiple felonies, including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, third-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping and tampering with evidence.
Crosby was Ramos' girlfriend at the time, according to investigators.
Since the arrests, the case has been plagued by delays, including a court backlog triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, defense motions to split the case into three separate trials, and other factors, according to Potter County District Attorney Andy Watson.
Watson confirmed Crosby and Cary, who will be tried together, will go to trial this fall, with jury selection scheduled for the week of Sept. 16 and a trial set to get underway the week of Oct. 7.
Moore will be tried separately at a later date.
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Police: Ramos was tortured, killed in April 2020
Cary and Crosby lived with Ramos and several other people, including the witness, in the Galeton residence, Watson said.
Testimony by a state trooper at a preliminary hearing indicated the three suspects attacked Ramos on a day in April 2020 because he had shoved Crosby the day before.
The trio beat and tortured Ramos for more than an hour, and then forced him to lick his own blood off the floor and off the shoes of the others, according to the criminal complaint.
The suspects then loaded Ramos into a van and drove around for a while before taking him into a wooded area in Harrison Township in the northeast corner of Potter County and strangling him with a set of jumper cables, the complaint stated.
After the witness gave his statement, a state police cadaver dog located Ramos' decomposing body covered in a blanket and buried under rocks. The jumper cables were reportedly still wrapped around his neck.
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Cary and Crosby were later arrested in Potter County, while Moore was located in Steuben County and taken into custody by U.S. marshals and New York State Police.
First-degree murder is a capital offense in Pennsylvania, and Watson said the death penalty will definitely be on the table when the suspects go to trial.
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This article originally appeared on Elmira Star-Gazette: Potter County torture, murder of Galeton man set to go to trial. What we know.
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