BOSTON, Oct. 9, 2015—A South Boston man has been convicted of all charges in the homicide of 67-year-old Barbara Coyne during a 2012 robbery at her East 7th Street home, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
After about two full days of deliberations, a Suffolk Superior Court jury today found TIMOTHY KOSTKA (D.O.B.4/28/85) guilty of home invasion and first-degree murder under the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty in Coyne’s stabbing death. Sentencing will take place Wednesday, at which time Judge Mitchell Kaplan is expected to impose the mandatory term for first-degree murder of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“Given the facts of this case, first-degree murder was the only appropriate verdict,” Conley said. “Barbara Coyne was an innocent victim, and the man who killed her deserves nothing less than life in prison.”
During a trial that lasted nearly two weeks, Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight, chief of the DA’s Elders and Persons with Disabilities Unit, presented evidence and testimony to prove that Kostka broke into Coyne’s home on the morning of April 16, 2012, with the intention of stealing high-end fishing equipment from her son. Coyne encountered him as he rifled through her jewelry boxes and coins. The evidence showed that Kostka beat her and slashed her throat. He then continued to search the home for items of value and took items including about $100 worth of winning lottery tickets.
Coyne was found by a relative and rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
An exhaustive investigation revealed Kostka’s fingerprints on two jewelry boxes and an envelope and DNA under the victim’s fingernails that proved to be a match to Kostka. Surveillance video from a nearby business captured Kostka cashing in the winning lottery tickets; witness statements proved that Kostka then used the money to purchase drugs.
Assistant District Attorney Nick Brandt second-seated Knight at trial. Katherine Moran was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Kostka is represented by William Gens. Sentencing will take place at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday in courtroom 907.
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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
