WAYNE COUNTY — A Wayne County judge on Thursday denied a defense motion seeking to move the location of the trial against a 26-year-old man charged with the murder of his 15-year-old girlfriend nearly 10 years ago.

Brodey Murbarger is accused of strangling and suffocating Megan Nichols to death in her Fairfield home on July 3, 2014, and later burying her body in a shallow grave in a rural part of Wayne County.

Nichols was considered a missing person until her remains were found in a farm field outside Boyleston, Illinois in 2017.

Murbarger was arrested in 2020 while working in Indiana, on three charges of first-degree murder, Class 3 felony concealment of a homicidal death, and two Class X felony counts of home invasion to commit a sex offense. He’s remained in the Wayne County Jail since that time with bond set at $300,000 cash.

The court agreed Thursday to sever the two Class X felony charges of home invasion against Murbarger but ordered all motions in the case are to be filed on or before September 6, with a jury trial scheduled for September 19.