¶ 1 Appellant, John Passmore, asks us to determine whether the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County had jurisdiction to convict him of second degree murder2 following his guilty plea to murder generally. Specifically, Appellant claims there was insufficient evidence to establish that he kidnapped the victim in Pennsylvania before killing her in Maryland. Additionally, Appellant contends the court should not have waited until after the degree of guilt hearing to decide his motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. For the following reasons, we hold the Commonwealth presented sufficient evidence to establish Appellant kidnapped the victim in Pennsylvania, which properly established jurisdiction in this Commonwealth. We further hold the court properly waited to consider the facts presented during Appellant's degree of guilt hearing before making its determination regarding jurisdiction. Accordingly, we affirm Appellant's judgment of sentence.
¶ 2 The trial court opinion sets forth the relevant facts and procedural history of this case as follows:
The [Appellant's] relationship with the victim was turbulent, and, at least on one prior occasion, violent. He met Melissa Chamberlain at Kutztown University, where they were both students. On November 15, 2001, [Appellant] pled guilty to two counts of simple assault upon Melissa and her friend, Shawn Clark. During this incident, [Appellant] waited at Melissa's house for an hour. When she arrived, he hit her repeatedly, causing her to fall to the ground. He then choked her until she was breathless and had trouble speaking. He also threatened to kill her. For this offense, he was incarcerated from July 11, 2001 until March 20, 2002. As a condition of his parole, [Appellant] was ordered to not contact Chamberlain.
Despite the no contact order, [Appellant] and Chamberlain continued to write and phone one another. Chamberlain's college roommate during this time period testified that after [Appellant] was released from prison, he stayed with Chamberlain at her dormitory for several days. [Appellant] thereafter moved to Ohio to live with his mother.
At the end of the 2002 semester, Chamberlain's feelings for [Appellant] changed. Chamberlain began dating a childhood friend, Josh Briggs. Her family and friends testified she was in love with Briggs and intended to marry him. She told her friends her relationship with [Appellant] was finished.
In Ohio, [Appellant] was working at a manufacturing plant. After an argument with his mother, he fled to Pennsylvania where he was arrested on an unrelated charge in Montgomery County on June 27, 2002. [Appellant] phoned Chamberlain and asked her to post his bail. She neither returned his phone call nor paid the requested amount for his release. Defendant was incarcerated until July 11, 2002.
During the summer of 2002, Chamberlain worked as a waitress at a restaurant not far from her home. She had applied for a transfer to Temple University and was looking forward to living at home with her family and being closer to Briggs. Chamberlain had planned a fishing trip with her father, her grandfather, and Briggs for Monday, July 15 near her grandfather's shore home in New Jersey. On Tuesday, July 16, Chamberlain, her mother, and their friends were scheduled to attend a baseball game in Trenton, New Jersey; they had planned this trip several months in advance. Chamberlain was scheduled to work the rest of the week. She also had arranged to shop for her mother's birthday with a family friend on Friday, July 19.
On the morning of July 15, Chamberlain's mother, Patricia Chamberlain, spoke with Melissa while her daughter was in her bedroom packing for the trip to the shore. Melissa said she would call her father who was already in New Jersey after she and Briggs were on their way so that he would know when to expect them. Mrs. Chamberlain reminded Melissa to take cookies she had baked and to charge her cell phone. Mother and daughter also discussed their plans for the rest of the week, including the baseball game. At approximately 8:20 a.m., Mrs. Chamberlain left to go to the gym. Melissa was alone in the house.
Briggs phoned Melissa around 9:00 a.m. She told him she was about to leave, and she would be at his house in a few minutes. After about fifteen to twenty minutes elapsed, Melissa had not yet arrived. Briggs called her cell phone, but she did not answer. He left a message on her voicemail. Several minutes later, he called her again, but she did not answer. Around 9:50 a.m., he called the Chamberlains' phone. Mrs. Chamberlain answered. He told her Melissa never arrived. Both Mrs. Chamberlain and Briggs left their respective houses and drove the route Melissa would have taken to get to Briggs's house in case Melissa had experienced car trouble along the way. They also checked local fast food restaurants hoping Melissa had stopped to buy breakfast. However, they did not find her, and, in fact, they never saw her again.
Upon returning home, Mrs. Chamberlain noticed Melissa's luggage for the shore, her purse, and the cookies Mrs. Chamberlain had prepared were no longer in the house. Also, Mrs. Chamberlain testified when she arrived home from the gym, she noticed on the floor near the door a piece of an acrylic overlay which Melissa had applied to her fingernails. Mrs. Chamberlain called the Middletown Police Department and the District Attorney's office around 11:00 a.m. Through the day friends and family continued to call Melissa's cell phone, but Melissa never returned any of the phone calls.
Four days before, on July 11, [Appellant] was released from Montgomery County Correctional Facility. He phoned a friend from college, Julian Eichert, in the afternoon and asked Eichert for a ride from Philadelphia to his stepfather's apartment. Eichert obliged and took [Appellant] to an apartment complex in Falls Township, which is located in Bucks County near Middletown Township. [Appellant's] stepfather did not reside at that complex, but he did live nearby.
Between July 12 and July 15, the evidence clearly established that [Appellant] camped near the Chamberlains' house. Following Melissa's disappearance, police detectives searched her neighborhood. Behind a chiropractor's office approximately 150 yards from the Chamberlain residence, they found a lawn furniture mattress with a towel on top of it, plastic gloves, a half-empty jug of orange drink, some food wrappers, and a bag from a local grocery store. DNA testing done on the plastic gloves and the orange drink container matches [Appellant's] DNA. The DNA sample from the gloves was located inside the gloves.
Eyewitnesses also corroborated [Appellant's] presence in the community. On July 12, Nancy Karpinkski, a neighbor of the Chamberlains, saw a man fitting [Appellant's] description walk from behind another neighbor's house down the street to the Chamberlains' house at about 9:00 a.m. She testified the man stood on the Chamberlains' front stoop as though he was about to knock on the front door. On July 14 around 6:00 p.m., two young neighborhood boys, James and Jason Carnley, saw a man they identified as [Appellant] behind the chiropractor's office on their way home from a neighbor's house. [Appellant] told the boys to not enter the property again. Earlier that same day, another witness saw a man fitting [Appellant's] description walk across the street and into the bushes behind the chiropractor's office around 5:30 p.m. Fay Logan and Judith Campanele both saw a man fitting [Appellant's] description in the neighborhood and near the chiropractor's office on July 15 at 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., respectively.
On July 15, shortly after 9:00 a.m., the circumstantial evidence established that at some point [Appellant] compelled Melissa Chamberlain to drive him to West Ocean City, Maryland where they stayed at the Alamo Motel. [Appellant] registered for two nights under his name and listed his mother's address in Ohio as his home address. His fingerprints were found on the registration card.
The date and location of Melissa's death are uncertain. The evidence, however, strongly suggests she was killed July 15. Her car was found in Newington, Virginia approximately 170 miles from West Ocean City, Maryland in an industrial park. The owner of a building near where the car was parked noticed the car on July 16, 2002 around 7:15 a.m. He phoned police on July 26 to report the unattended vehicle. Police found Miss Chamberlain's body in Trappe, Maryland on August 1, 2002. The medical examiner, Dr. Ana Rubio, gave the time frame within which Melissa had died; Dr. Rubio testified that when the police found Melissa, she had been deceased for at least seven or eight days and up to two or three weeks. Also, the last phone call made from Melissa's cell phone was made on July 15 at 7:40 p.m. The caller had checked her voice mail. Phone records show the call was placed from West Ocean City, Maryland.
[Appellant], after disposing of Melissa's body and car, called Julian Eichert on July 16 at night and requested the phone number of a mutual friend who was living in Pittsburgh. After learning this information, police found and arrested [Appellant] in Pittsburgh on July 25, 2002.
After a lengthy degree of guilt hearing, [Appellant] was convicted of second-degree murder; specifically, it was concluded that [Appellant] kidnapped Melissa Chamberlain on July 15, 2002, took her to West Ocean City, Maryland, and killed her by suffocation.
(Trial Court Opinion, dated 10/01/03, at 1-7). The trial court subsequently sentenced Appellant to life imprisonment. Appellant...
