WAYNE COUNTY, IL — A status hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in Wayne County Court for a 25-year-old man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend and they burying the 15-year-old girl’s body in a rural field in 2014. Brodey Murbarger was arrested in October 2020 after a Wayne County Illinois grand jury indicted him for the 2014 murder of Megan Nichols.

He’s charged with three counts of first-degree murder, two Class X felony counts of home invasion to commit a sex offense, and Class 3 felony concealment of a homicidal death. According to the indictment, Murbarger strangled and suffocated Nichols to death on July 3, 2014, and later buried her body in a shallow grave in a rural part of Wayne County. Her whereabouts remained a mystery for three years until human remains were found on December 26, 2017.

The county will return to scheduling jury trials Tuesday, so the hearing will allow his defense and the prosecution to discuss the possibility of setting a trial date. No new evidence or motion outside of scheduling a jury trial is anticipated. The case saw little movement during the coronavirus pandemic but the county did provide the defendant with an electronic tablet to allow him to view discovery in the case. Murbarger has been held in the Wayne County Jail since his October 2020 arrest in the case. His bail is set at $300,000.

Prior to pandemic shutdowns, Murbarger had demanded a jury trial before February 4.