Man arrested in connection to 2003 cold-case murder of an NYPD detective’s daughter

MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. — Investigators announced an arrest Thursday in a 20-year-old murder case in New York.

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In a news release, New York State Police said officers arrested Edward V. Holley, 42, and charged him with second-degree murder in connection with the murder of Megan McDonald.

McDonald was killed twenty years ago in March 2003. Her body was found in Wallkill, Orange County, New York, police say. She had suffered blunt force trauma to the head, according to officials.

Major Crimes Investigator Brad Natalizio said that investigators have a clear motive, according to WPIX. He also said, “This was an ‘intimate partner’ homicide.”

State police said, according to the news outlet, that McDonald and Holley had been dating in early 2003, and they had broken up after an argument. McDonald started to date someone new but investigators found a voicemail on her phone that Holley had reportedly left her before she died.

When she was killed, McDonald had finished working and went to see some friends. According to police, her killer hit her from behind while she was in the driver’s seat of her car, WPIX reported. McDonald’s body was found on a dirt path in a remote area.

The arrest came together as new people came forward with information and DNA and cyber evidence came to light, Natalizio said, according to WPIX.

McDonald was a SUNY Orange County Community College student at the time she was killed, WNBC reported. She had also started working at the American Cafe in the Galleria Mall.

Holley has been paralyzed since 2007 from the waist down due to a car accident, WPIX reported.

WNBC reported that there was apparently a second suspect but that person has died.

McDonald, who was 20 when she was killed, was the daughter of a retired New York Police Department detective, Dennis McDonald, WPIX reported. Dennis McDonald died of a heart attack a year before his daughter was killed.