Stories that the Butler Eagle covered during the past 12 months included the addition of new health care facilities and construction of two bridges in Butler, the unsolved murder of a man found in a Lyndora basement and the seeming lack of progress in teacher contract negotiations in the South Butler School District.

The year's only homicide in Butler County remains unsolved.Eleven months after 24-year-old Shawn Michael Murphey's partially clad, decomposed body was found hidden under a tarp in a basement outside a Lyndora tattoo shop, Butler Township police have made no arrests in the case.The Butler man was fatally shot in the head, probably in late January, police suspect. The landlord at the Bessemer Avenue building that houses the tattoo parlor and several apartments found the body.Blood spatter was found on the wall of the stairway outside the tattoo shop. A plastic garbage bag had been placed over the victim's head.Investigators have remained tight-lipped about the homicide case, and have refused to discuss evidence collected. County court has issued an unknown number of sealed search warrants in the case.While the slaying has not been solved, authorities this year nabbed three suspects in a string of bank robberies in Butler County.Walter Cody Tribble, 35, of Cherry Township in July pleaded guilty to robbing three banks at gunpoint, and is awaiting sentencing next month in federal court.Tribble confessed to the armed heists in Butler, Center Township and Slippery Rock, prosecutors said, which occurred during a two-week period that ended Jan. 5A grand jury in February indicted Tribble and Bruce Edwin Tyson, 51, who has no known address, on unrelated bank robbery charges.Tyson was arrested Jan. 14, the same day he allegedly robbed a bank in Buffalo Township. He also is accused of robbing a Middlesex Township bank one month earlier.Tyson pleaded guilty in August and is scheduled to be sentenced in January.Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh this summer indicted Edward Gene Clutter, 44, of Evans City on charges he robbed another bank in Buffalo Township in May.Clutter's case is pending in federal court, and no trial date has been set.

An Aug. 13 warehouse blaze in Jackson Township caused more than $1 million damage, the largest of several fires this summer.Destroyed in that fire were Plant Grower's Workshop, a garden supply distributor, and Zack Products, a records management company.One day before that, the Petroleum Valley Youth Center in Fairview was damaged by an arsonist's blaze.The youth football program there lost all of its equipment, and the Karns City Quarterback Club organized a golf outing in September to raise money for replacement gear.An early-morning fire on Aug. 20 in Connoquenessing Township destroyed two condominiums at Brandywine Village and left two others heavily damaged. The four adjoined units are being rebuilt.Several family businesses were destroyed by a garage fire on Jan. 27, and Basilon's Quality Cleaners in Mars was leveled by a fire on March 2.

The state Department of Transportation's major accomplishment in the county in 2009 was completion of the new Wayne Street Viaduct in Butler in October, following four months of detours complicated by PennDOT and the city's joint efforts to rebuild the South Monroe Street Bridge.The city in December also approved a $500,000 loan in 2010 to fix Butler's dilapidated streets, which have received very little funding in recent years.The new Wayne Street Viaduct opened Oct. 23, while the renamed Lookout Point Bridge on South Monroe Street opened Oct. 29.In Cranberry Township, a plan to improve traffic flow in the Route 228 corridor was scaled back but still resulted in work on three state projects.A "slip ramp" to allow direct access to Cranberry Woods Drive was completed in September, and reconstruction of the Route 228/Interstate 79 ramps is scheduled to begin in 2011.Replacement of the Route 228 bridge over the CSX Railroad tracks in Adams Township, as well as the replacement of about 3,000 feet of road around the Route 228/Mars-Valencia Road intersection, will include extension of the culvert that carries Breakneck Creek underneath the road and is scheduled for spring of 2012.

A joint effort between PennDOT and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to toll Interstate 80 twice failed to gain approval from the Federal Highway Administration, which said it was unclear exactly how profits would be spent.A third application was submitted to the FHWA in November, and word of its approval or denial should come by early 2010.A copy of the filing is available online at www.paturnpike.com/i80.The proposed tolling project is intended to support state highway improvement projects, with a focus on I-80, to the tune of about $1 billion annually.

South Butler School District and its teachers spent another year trying to reach a labor settlement.The district is now in arbitration, the second time that has happened in this dispute. In March, an arbitrator formulated a contract. The teachers OK'd the contract, but the school board rejected it and new talks began. After a strike in September, teachers began the arbitration process again. They are awaiting a ruling, which is expected in the early part of the new year. This is the second year of negotiations. The last contract expired June 30, 2008, and teachers staged a walkout that fall.Karns City School District teachers were without a contract, too. The teachers in November asked a fact-finder to step in and help with a contract.Wages, health care, and early retirement incentives are the sticking points in both contracts.Karns City School District got some good news in September when Sugarcreek Elementary was named a Blue Ribbon School for its academic achievement. School officials traveled to Harrisburg to receive the award.

VA Butler Healthcare has gone through a number of changes and updates in 2009.In March, the VA announced it had received $13 million in federal stimulus money for the construction of a new skilled nursing facility to be called the community living center, a one-story structure for veterans who need physical rehabilitation. It will feature about 60 private rooms with bathrooms.The center is being built in the front of the VA property near New Castle and Duffy roads. It will be built in three phases for between $14 million and $15 million.Another addition to the campus is a domiciliary for veterans with substance abuse problems, along with those with social problems re-entering civilian life after having served in either Iraq or Afghanistan.At the same time these projects are being developed, the finger buildings at the back of the main hospital facility — narrow buildings that jut from the back of the hospital like fingers — are slowly being removed. Built in the 1950s, the long narrow buildings continue to house many VA operations, including the chapel.VA Butler Healthcare also opened an outpatient clinic in Cranberry Township this month. The new facility is operated by a Valor Healthcare, a government contractor that specializes in outpatient clinics for veterans. The facility will allow an additional 3,000 veterans to be seen annually.VA Butler Healthcare is leasing the clinic through a $16.4 million grant from the VA.

A mother accused of killing her newborn and leaving the remains under a bed was sent to state prison in April.Investigators believe Lauren Jones, 26, hid this pregnancy from friends and family. She gave birth to a full-term baby girl in the cellar of her parent's house in Buffalo Township on Feb. 28, 2007.Autopsy reports, according to court documents, show the baby was stabbed in the neck before being placed, still alive, in a trash bag and then again in a book bag under her bed.Jones pleaded no-contest to third-degree murder, concealing the death of a child and abuse of a corpse.In exchange for her plea, prosecutors recommended a prison term of from 8 to 20 years. Butler County Judge Timothy McCune sentenced Jones in April.A few months later, in June, a man convicted of killing a toddler also was sent to state prison.Jarred Knight, who once raised victim Tyler Davis as his son, was issued the statutory maximum sentence for third-degree murder: 20 to 40 years in prison.Tyler died June 24, 2007, a day after incurring massive head injuries while in the care of Knight.Trial began in August for a former high school Junior ROTC instructor accused of sexual misconduct. But minutes into testimony by the first witness, a mistrial was declared.Sgt. Maj. Kevin Johnson Johnson, 51, of Portersville is accused of sexually assaulting two male students in the Junior ROTC program in the Seneca Valley School District between spring 2005 and January 2008.Johnson now is asking a state appellate court to ban prosecutors from bringing the case back for a new trial.Heading into the new year, a local physician Dr. David Evanko of Butler Township will face allegations in Butler County court that he sexually assaulted three boys.One of the boys was a Boy Scout when he encountered Evanko in the 1990s. The other two allegations involve youths at Summit Academy who were treated for medical issues by Evanko in 2008 and 2009.Meantime, the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine has ordered Evanko to temporarily stop practicing medicine.

The Pittsburgh Steelers made history in January by beating the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl and becoming the first team to win six Lombardi trophies.The teams traded the lead until Steeler Santonio Holmes made the winning catch in the last minute of the game in Tampa.Pittsburgh truly became the City of Champions this year, as just a few months later the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup after a brutal battle with the Detroit Red Wings. Sidney Crosby led the Penguins to the victory in June.About 200 union workers at the Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center got a new contract in November nearly a year after their old one expired. The Butler County commissioners approved a one-year contract that includes a 3 percent wage hike and requires workers to pay a portion of their health care benefits.About 140 workers in the county government center are still working under the terms of their expired contract.The state budget was approved in October after it was more than three months late.Gov. Ed Rendell fought lawmakers over how to resolve a multibillion-dollar shortfall, eventually signing a $27.8 billion budget that raised new revenues but still required spending cuts.The state has eliminated 2,200 open jobs, bringing the state's work force down to about 76,600 from more than 81,600 when Rendell took office in January 2003, officials said. The 319 job cuts in November brought the number of layoffs since January to 769, according to the Rendell administration.

<A HREF="http://www.butlereagle.com/section/YEARINREVIEW">For more stories from the past year check out our Year In Review section.</A>