A Suffolk Superior Court judge denied a defense motion Monday filed by the attorney for alleged ‘Craigslist killer’ Philip Markoff that demanded information about leaks to the media which he claimed ‘tainted’ the grand jury.

Markoff’s attorney John Salsberg had accused the district attorney’s office and police officials in court last month of inappropriately leaking information to the media, suggesting their actions ‘tainted’ the grand jury process. A grand jury indicted Markoff, a Boston University School of Medicine second-year student, on June 18, charging him with the April 14 murder of a 25-year-old masseuse he allegedly met on Craigslist.

‘[Salsberg] has not . . . pointed to any facts suggesting the grand jurors were influenced by feelings of bias or prejudice,’ Judge Frank Gaziano said in a written decision. ‘Mere speculation that the grand jury may have been influenced by negative media reports is not enough to carry the defendant’s burden of proof.’

Salsberg was not immediately available for comment.

Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Jake Wark said prosecutors have maintained from the beginning that the grand jury’s indictments were untainted.

‘Our position from the start has been the indictments were based on the evidence that the grand jury studied, and not on the media reports they may have encountered,’ Wark said.

Markoff, 23, pled not guilty last month to the killing of New York masseuse Julissa Brisman at the Boston Marriott Copley Place Hotel and the April 10 armed robbery of Trisha Leffler, 29, at the Westin Copley Place. He is also charged in an arrest warrant with attempting to rob a prostitute April 16 at a Warwick, R.I. hotel.
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