Solobay questioned by state police
State police investigate at the house just outside Old Concord, Morris Township, where James Leroy Durbin was found murdered in August 2011.
State Sen. Tim Solobay speaks at an energy forum at Western Area Career & Technology Center earlier this year.
A state senator representing Washington and Greene counties was questioned by state police three years ago over claims he was having an “ongoing relationship” with a woman whose husband was murdered.
State Sen. Tim Solobay, in an interview with state police following the still-unsolved James LeRoy Durbin homicide, discussed his relationship with Amy Durbin, the victim’s wife, according to a Washington County Court record in the case unsealed last week at the request of the Observer-Reporter.
Solobay’s name appeared in the record immediately following a paragraph the chief prosecutor wrote stating “through the course of the investigation it was learned that Amy Durbin carried on a series of extramarital affairs with other men.”
Solobay, D-Canonsburg, said Monday he was friends and nothing more with the Durbins, whom he knew for about a year while they lived on a farm where he hunted.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Solobay said Monday, when asked about the allegations in the court document.
Solobay said he was questioned about the case by state police and never felt as if he was a suspect in the homicide. He said police also questioned him about what he claimed were untrue rumors that he had taken Amy Durbin to Super Bowl XLV in Dallas on Consol Energy’s corporate jet in February 2011.
Solobay, 58, is on the November ballot seeking his second four-year term in office.
The statements about the supposed relationship between Solobay and Amy Durbin were included in a petition seeking her cellphone records, a document filed by then-Washington County District Attorney Steve Toprani on Aug. 29, 2011, a week after James Durbin, 43, was discovered shot in the back of his head in his Morris Township home.
Toprani received permission to search the phone records by Washington County Judge John DiSalle, after stating in his petition that “the requested information may reveal the identity of the actor(s) responsible for the homicide of James Durbin.” Toprani never approved the filing of any charges in the case before he left office at the end of 2011. Toprani did not return phone messages from the Observer-Reporter on Friday.
Trooper Matthew J. Jardine said state police have a suspect in the case, and that it remains under investigation.
“The case is pending a prosecutorial determination by the district attorney,” Jardine said. “At the moment, that is all I am permitted to release.”
Washington County District Attorney Eugene Vittone declined to discuss a suspect in the case.
“We are going to continue to investigate, and when we have the evidence we will charge a suspect,” Vittone said Friday.
State police immediately focused the investigation on James Durbin’s co-workers at Consol’s Enlow Fork mine in East Finley Township, where he was a supervisor for a subcontractor, according to an affidavit accompanying a search warrant that was not sealed at the time.
Investigators obtained at least nine other search warrants the day after the homicide, records signed and sealed for as long as 90 days by Washington County Judges DiSalle, Paul Pozonsky or Phillippe Melograne.
The Observer-Reporter last week asked the county clerk of courts office to open the records in the Durbin case, which were still sealed in a cardboard box. Two other files remain in the box from the same date, sealed until further order of the court.
In them, police said Amy Durbin was the last person to have seen her husband alive when she left their 267 Elwood Day Road residence for work about 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 23, 2011.
She told police she attempted to contact her husband on her cellphone throughout the day to no avail, and that she eventually contacted his son and asked him to check on his father at the couple’s residence. The affidavit indicated she also told police her husband “was physically abusive towards her” and that she planned to leave him soon for another man.
Her vehicle was transported the day of the homicide to a state police garage in Washington, where a trooper made note of a possible blood smear and/or transfer on the front of its rear center seat. A blue and white bandana with possible blood on it was found tucked between the front passenger seat and center console, an affidavit indicated.
Police also obtained warrants to see the couple’s banking records and Amy Durbin’s employment records at Washington and Canonsburg hospitals, as well as to search her employee locker at Canonsburg Hospital.
Amy Durbin could not be reached Monday.