LOCKPORT, N.Y. — Things didn't go quite as planned at a preliminary hearing for accused "cold case killer" Joseph Belstadt on Wednesday.
Belstadt, 43, is charged with a murder which occurred more than a quarter century ago and is scheduled to stand trial in the fall.
However, some thorny legal issues surfaced which caused Niagara County Court Judge Sara Sheldon to delay the resumption of pretrial hearings until next month.
It is unknown whether these issues will impact the start of Belstadt's trial, now scheduled for September.
Belstadt remains free on bail after being charged in April of 2018 with the 1993 murder of 17-year-old Mandy Steingasser--an acquaintance of his when both were North Tonawanda High School students.
Her body was found in Bond Lake Park months after she went missing.
Some retired North Tonawanda Police detectives were waiting outside court on Wednesday to testify about their dealings with Belstadt several years ago but were sent home without doing so.
Prosecutors wanted one of them, Ross McQuaid, who they previously called to the stand, to be allowed to return to amend his prior testimony.
McQuade had testified on May 3 that he was present when a jailhouse informant, Carlos Rodriguez, told investigators that Belstadt shared intimate details about the murder with him while both were inmates at the Niagara County jail in 1995.
Following his testimony, however, McQuade realized portions of his testimony might have been incorrect when he reviewed the notes of another retired investigator.
Though prosecutors had rested their portion of the case at that point, they sought permission to bring McQuade back to the stand to clarify.
However, because the prosecution had already rested its case in this portion of the hearing, the defense objected to the unusual request to re-open testimony.
The judge announced she'll take a little over a week to decide if this can be allowed.
During that time she will also decide on a defense motion to have the indictment dismissed, amid claims by Belstadt's lawyers that the grand jury which handed up murder charges, was presented with an "inordinate amount" of hearsay, which is inadmissible.
Meanwhile, the defense lost on a motion to have evidence seized from a search of Belstadt's car back in 1993 car thrown out, with the judge saying his lawyers didn't raise their objection, that the search warrant was invalid, within the time frame allowed by law.
So for now, it appears that evidence- which was not revealed in court- will stand as admissible.
However, Belstadt's lawyers may not be done with their efforts to have it quashed, as they may raise in a future motion the issue of whether police seized evidence beyond the scope of the warrant.
"There are substantive issues with the search warrant. These aren't things we are just throwing up at a dart board, but things which could change the course of the case," Belstadt's co-defense counsel Dominic H. Saracenoco, said while in court.
Both sides are honoring the judge's request to not speak with reporters about the case- so they declined to comment on the way out.
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