A jury on Friday convicted a man in the 1993 killing of a woman near Buffalo, ending his third trial after a legal odyssey that has stretched on for decades.
Brian Scott Lorenz, 56, was originally convicted in 1994, along with another man, James Pugh, of murdering Deborah Meindl. The 33-year-old nursing student and mother of two had been stabbed dozens of times and strangled inside her home in Tonawanda that year. Her body was found by her 10-year-old daughter.
Both Lorenz and Pugh denied involvement in the killing. A judge in 2023 ordered new trials for the men, after new testing did not find their DNA at the crime scene, including on a knife used in the attack. The judge also said prosecutors withheld some evidence that could have helped the defense…