Former WWE star Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka is no longer on trial for murder after a Lehigh County (Pa.) judge dismissed the case, the Morning Call reported Tuesday.
Snuka, 73, had pleaded not guilty after being charged with homicide and manslaughter in a 34-year-old incident involving the death of his girlfriend, but last June, District Court Judge Kelly L. Banach ruled Snuka as mentally incompetent to stand trial. That appears to be one of the reasons why Banach has now decided to dismiss the case entirely.
“The Court is satisfied that the defendant remains incompetent and the Court is satisfied that the defendant will not regain competency and that it would be unjust to resume the prosecution,” Banach said in her order, according to Lehigh Valley Live.
Other reasons Snuka’s trial won’t go forward are based on his poor medical condition. In the last two months, he’s been hospitalized twice for recurring infections, according to Lehigh Valley Live’s report.
Snuka, who has maintained his innocence over the years, “understood it was a good day,” the pro wrestler’s attorney Robert Kirwan told Lehigh Valley Live on Tuesday, but added, he’s “not quite sure he understood the news.”
Prosecutors in Pennsylvania first charged Snuka with the third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter of Nancy Argentino in September 2015, more than 30 years after Snuka claimed to have found Argentino in respiratory distress in the hotel room the couple was sharing. Snuka later told varying stories about how Argentino’s condition deteriorated, but was never charged at the time.
The charges came only as a result of an investigation conducted by the Morning Call in 2015 that unearthed a previously unreleased autopsy report and resulted in police records dating from when the incident occurred in May 1983 being looked at again.
While Kirwan said he will now concentrate on fully clearing his client’s name by releasing, “at the appropriate time,” undisclosed information his team unearthed during their own investigation of Argentino’s death, Lehigh Valley prosecutors appear ready to continue to pursue the case in a different manner.
“We’re considering our options and will decide at the appropriate time what actions we’ll take,” a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office told Lehigh Valley Live.
Argentino’s family already sued Snuka for wrongful death, winning a $500,000 settlement in 1985. Snuka, who now lives in Florida, however, never paid the sum after claiming he was too impoverished.
Snuka began his professional wrestling career in the late 1970s and joined the WWF, now known as WWE, in 1982. Although the last time he was active in a WWE ring was in 2010 when he stood in the corner to cheer on former tag team champions “The Usos,” he remained under a long-term contract with the company until September 2015, when the company suspended ties to the ailing wrestler because of the charges.
WWE did not return a request for comment.