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Mistrial in murder trial of Campbell soldier

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — A Kentucky judge declared a mistrial Monday in the case of a soldier accused of killing his estranged wife and her former mother-in-law two years ago.

Attorneys for Army Sgt. Brent Burke requested the mistrial last week during jury selection.

The defense attorneys said that prosecutors had only recently given them police interview tapes that included a juvenile claiming to have committed the slayings, but later recanting.

Prosecutor Chris Shaw had said the boy’s claims were not credible.

A new trial date was set for Jan. 11, The News-Enterprise of Elizabethtown reported. Burke remained in jail on $2 million bond.

Burke is charged with murder in the 2007 shooting deaths of his estranged wife, 31-year-old Tracy Burke, and her former mother-in-law, 53-year-old Karen D. Comer of Rineyville in Hardin County. The two women were found dead in a home in Rineyville, about 35 miles south of Louisville.

Defense attorney David Broderick said Monday that the police interview tapes could have an impact on the case and they had apparently been available for two years.

“We’re frustrated,” Broderick said in a phone interview. “You always want in an important trial to have explored every avenue. And these were not areas that we’d been given the opportunity.”

Shaw did not immediately return phone calls Monday seeking comment on the mistrial.

Burke was stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky. He was raised in the western Illinois town of Ursa and graduated in 1996 from Unity High School in Mendon, Ill.

Divorce papers filed by Tracy Burke had described Burke as dangerous, violent and on-edge, a changed man since his return from Afghanistan. The divorce was scheduled to be completed the week Tracy Burke died.