JAMESTOWN, N.Y. — Michael Burham is now charged with murder and arson.
He is the same man who led police on a multistate manhunt last year from Jamestown to South Carolina. He also managed to escape from prison in Pennsylvania after that, all while prosecutors in Chautauqua County were working on these latest charges.
Michael Burham, 35, sits in the Chautauqua County Jail charged with murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, and arson in connection with the shooting death of ex-girlfriend Kala Hodgkin in May of last year.
The Chautauqua County District Attorney's Office says Hodgkin was killed in her Jamestown home while she was sleeping and that her three children and dog were home when it happened.
The District Attorney's office says Burham was wanted on rape and unlawful imprisonment charges at the time. Burham led law enforcement on a 13-day manhunt that May, where he kidnapped a Pennsylvania couple at gunpoint before his arrest in South Carolina.
He was taken to the Warren County Prison but escaped for nine days in July.
In November, Burham pleaded guilty to several charges having to do with the manhunt, kidnapping, and escape.
In January, he was sentenced to 25 to 50 years.
Meanwhile, the Chautauqua County D.A.'s Office was busy working on the murder investigation. In February, the case went to a grand jury which issued a secret indictment that was unsealed after Burham was taken from the Pennsylvania prison to Chautauqua County on Tuesday.
2 On Your Side asked attorney Barry Covert about the strategy of waiting until now to charge him in the murder case.
"If they would have charged him earlier, presumably, it would have been without having the forensics come back. All the proof that he was actually in the room, that he shot her, that he was a person who escaped, that he left. All those tests and forensics were able to come back because they waited while Pennsylvania charged him, he took a plea," Covert said.
Burham was arraigned Wednesday and is being held without bail.
In a statement released Thursday morning, the Chautauqua County D.A. says he does not expect this case to go to trial before next summer. Jamestown Police and the Chautauqua County D.A. did not want to speak on-camera Thursday.
Instead, they will hold a joint news conference Friday in Jamestown at noon.