An old murder story with a new twist

Barbara Pelkey, a Wallingford, Conn., mom was brutally murdered in 1987 while working the late shift alone in a manufacturing plant in town. About two years later, a young man by the name of Kenneth Ireland Jr. was sentenced to 50 years for the murder of Mrs. Pelkey.

Last week, Ireland, now 39, was released from prison. Recently discovered DNA evidence proved that Ireland was not the murderer. Quite a shocking revelation.

The murder was big news in a small town. I won't get into the details, but the death of Pelkey was particularly gruesome. I know this because I was the bureau editor in Wallingford while working for the Meriden Record-Journal newspaper. I heard the stories about the crime scene from my reporters and from the local cops. There was a lot of pressure on the police to solve the crime. We published many stories about the homicide in the months of investigation that followed.

You can imagine my reaction a couple weeks ago when, out of the blue, a former reporter of mine, Ralph Tomaselli, e-mailed to inform me of what was going on with Ireland and the new DNA evidence all these years later. As a side note, Tomaselli is now executive editor of that same newspaper in Connecticut.

Not only was the freeing of Ireland an interesting new twist on an old story, it was also a reminder of the rewarding brand of journalism that we practiced in the bureau of the Record-Journal. The Pelkey murder wasn't the only big story we consistently scooped the competition on. The Hartford Courant, 30 miles to the north, was king of all media in Connecticut. Yet, we beat them to the punch on local breaking news and enterprise almost every time, and it paid dividends as our circulation in Wallingford increased.

We did our best to follow the Pelkey-Ireland story and there was little reason for us to believe that the police were off base on the arrest. But I still believe this underscores the importance of watchdog journalism.

The latest news on this case stirred my journalistic instincts. I found myself wanting to get back into a newsroom as soon as possible. A million questions ran through my mind about Ireland and what I would ask him if I could get an interview with him.

This bit of news that fell from the sky a couple weeks ago reminded me that local journalism will always be important to small-town America. People will read the news if the news is relevant and timely. They still want to know what is going on in their towns. The exploits of Britney Spears is of little concern to most folks who are community minded. No matter how much certain segments of society and even the fringe media want to dumb down the culture, people will always want to be informed through credible reporting via newsprint, computer screens, Kindles and whatever other devices are invented in the future.