The Pennsylvania Superior Court, in an opinion dated Sept. 24, has denied the appeal of a Monroe County man from his conviction of first degree murder, tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension or prosecution.

James Bidwell, 53, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2011 murder of 27-year-old Kristen Wagner, his girlfriend, lost his appeal by way of an opinion signed by judges Alice B. Dubrow, Mary P. Murray and James G. Colins of the Pennsylvania higher court.

The jurists found Bidwell’s claims on appeal were not supported by the facts and the law. Multiple times in the 28-page opinion, the judges complimented the findings of the trial judge, Monroe County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Margherita Patti-Worthington.

Bidwell was found guilty earlier this year in the trial in which Patti-Worthington presided and Monroe County First Assistant District Attorney Michael Mancuso prosecuted. Philadelphia Attorney James McMonagle defended Bidwell.

Wagner’s death was originally ruled a suicide when her body was found hanging in a broken refrigerated trailer in a scrap yard located off Crowe Road in East Stroudsburg in June 2011. Three years later, after a co-worker of Bidwell’s reported the defendant told him he had killed the victim, with whom he had been having an affair, and hung the body from a wire in a scrapyard trailer, the case was reopened.

Prior to the trial, the case proceeded through a Monroe County Investigating Grand Jury where Mancuso obtained a presentment recommending the defendant be charged with criminal homicide and related charges.

After extensive pretrial litigation, the case went to trial in February 2020. Nearly three dozen witnesses testified for the commonwealth and the prosecution alleged, among other things, that Bidwell killed the woman because she provided information to authorities about Bidwell’s alleged drug trafficking a few days before her death.

The lead detectives on the case were Monroe County Detective Sergeant Wendy Serfass and Detective Richard Luthcke.

At the conclusion of the trial, a jury convicted Bidwell of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison last July.