FOI Hearing Continues In Connection With Joyce Stochmal Murder

By Jack Kramer, Correspondent

It’ll be round two next week as the sister of a teenager who was brutally murdered in 1984 once again appears in front of the state’s Freedom of Information Commission.

A hearing last month on whether the family of a teenager could receive the prison records wasn’t completed and on October 19th Marianne Stochmal Heffernan will be back up in Hartford to finish her plea for the records.

She has been asking the FOI, and hearing officer Valicia Harmon, information on the prison records of David Weinberg, who was recently released after serving 26 years for the killing of 19-year-old Joyce Stochmal.

Heffernan believes that prison records are “public records,” and her family is entitled to see what type of prisoner Weinberg was while behind bars.

Weinberg was convicted of killing Joyce Stochmal.

According to testimony in his trial, Weinberg drove by Joyce Stochmal as she was walking along Route 188 in Seymour to her job at a dog kennel. Police said he grabbed her and took her to an area beneath Steel Bridge in Newtown, where he stabbed her 17 times before leaving her body in Lake Zoar.

Her body was found three days later.

Recently, a Waterbury Superior Court judge ordered Weinberg released on time served.

The approval of a “sentence modification” allowed Weinberg, 58, to be released after serving 26 years of a 60-year “life sentence,” although credit for good behavior and other time he earned raised the time he is credited with serving to more than 39 years.

Photo courtesy of the Stochmal family