A horrific murder of a 54-year-old woman made headlines in Ulster County and across the state last week. On December 21, Ann Gaffney was found beaten to death in her home on Old Route 209 in the Town of Hurley.
According to a press release from the New York State Police, Gaffney was killed during a robbery, and the suspect fled on foot.
Shawn Tyler: New York State PoliceHours later, one of Gaffney's tenants, 34-year-old Shawn E. Tyler, was found hiding on a neighboring property and was arrested as a suspect.
Daily Freeman reporter Ariel Zangla attended a preliminary hearing in the murder case against Tyler yesterday, Tuesday, December 27. According to Zangla's story, a state police investigator testified in court that Tyler had admitted to hitting Gaffney with a hammer 15 times in the process of stealing her cash and a credit card.
Gaffney's killing is the first homicide in Ulster County this year. But it's the second killing this year in the region with a hammer as the alleged murder weapon; Deposit resident Andrew Hafele currently stands accused of killing 20-year-old Michael Mills with a hammer during a fight on September 17.
The Daily Freeman has led the reporting on the story from the beginning. The newspaper's managing editor, Tony Adamis, wrote the preliminary report of Gaffney's death himself. Adamis caught a load of flack from readers in the comments section of the newspaper for his reporting, which included some background information about Gaffney's own run-ins with the law in recent years.
Many readers felt that information about Gaffney's past had no place in the story about her tragic death. The criticism was heated enough that Adamis wrote a separate blog post explaining the reasons for his reporting:
