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On Thursday, April 20, after 20 years, state police arrested Orange County resident Edward V. Holley, age 42, of Wawayanda, and charged him with second-degree murder of the 20-year-old woman who disappeared after a night of attending a party and looking to purchase marijuana, a criminal complaint shows.
McDonald's body was found in Orange County on Saturday, March 15, 2003, in a field off Bowser Road in the town of Wallkill, state police said.
Many believed McDonald, who worked as a waitress at the American Cafe restaurant at the Galleria Mall in the Wallkill, had been killed in that field.
But the complaint shows that when police found her 1991 white Mercury Sable in an apartment complex parking lot in Wallkill, on Monday, March 17, 2003, the evidence showed she was brutally beaten in the head and face inside the car.
The evidence inside the vehicle would years later lead investigators to Holley whose DNA was present inside, the complaint said. They believed her body was moved from the car to the field and dumped.
Chillingly, Holley could see the vehicle from the back door of his apartment as it sat there for days before being found by police. He never notified anyone the car was there, the complaint said.
On the night she was killed, McDonald, who lived in the town of Wallkill, was at a party with friends in Middletown, the complaint shows. Cell phone records revealed she made numerous phone calls looking to purchase marijuana.
Her efforts took her to another party in Wallkill in the neighborhood of Greenway Terrace around midnight where she is believed to have met up with Holley to purchase marijuana, the complaint said.
Evidence shows Holley was in the backseat of her vehicle and another person who died in 2010 in the front seat.
Days before that encounter, McDonald had broken off her relationship with Holley because he refused to pay her back around $3,000 he owed her to purchase a vehicle, the complaint shows.
She had been avoiding him, the complaint says but ended up meeting up with him on that fateful night.
State police believe her death took place when Holley saw a phone message on her phone from her new boyfriend which sent him into "an explosive partner violence" mode in which a person acts in extreme violence, the complaint said.
The complaint says: "The forensic processing of the victim's vehicle was consistent with a vicious assault where the assailant used repeated blows to the head with a hand-held weapon. This evidence suggested that the victim was apparently struck with a blunt object while in the driver's seat of her vehicle."
An autopsy determined the official cause of death was multiple skull fractures and brain injuries due to blunt force trauma.
DNA from the scene would prove that Holley was in the vehicle, the complaint says.
Over the years Holley provided numerous alibis to state police, all of which have been disapproved by several witnesses, the complaint said.
On Thursday, after Holley was charged when he was wheeled out of the courthouse in a wheelchair he reportedly yelled " "They're parading me out here like some freaking monkey out here, but it's all good." He then said he was not guilty when asked.
Following the arrest and the press conference, Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler released a statement saying the arrest had not been done in conjunction with his office, which is not normal, and that the case had not been presented to a grand jury.
He did add that his office would continue working closely with state police to a conclusion on the case.
Now that an arrest has been made, the large billboards that have hovered over area highways with McDonald's face, can come down.
And her family, including her mother and sister, who were present at the press conference, say they now have a name for the killer.
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