Police & Fire

Conkey's Court Date Moved Up, On Trial for 1992 Lexington Murder

Already a convicted murder, Craig Conkey stands accused in the previously unsolved 1992 killing of Lexington resident Kathleen Dempsey.

By Patrick Ball
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June 29, 2012

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Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn

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Credit Ryan Grannan-Doll

Kenny Dempsey, speaking at a press conference announcing the indictment last month of his sister's killer, said his sister's murder in 1992 'ruins your view of the world,' but he continues to strive for the sense of security that 'it won't happen to us' for the sake of his children, who never got to meet their aunt. His mother, his mother, Evelyn Tobin and John Tobin, her husband, look on in the background.

Credit Patrick Ball

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The next court date in the murder trial of Craig Conkey has been moved up to next Tuesday, July 2. It was previously scheduled for Thursday, July 5, but was bumped up due to a courthouse scheduling conflict.

Already a convicted murder, Conkey stands accused in the 1992 murder of 31-year-old Lexington resident Kathleen Dempsey. He's scheduled to be back in Middlesex Superior Court room 430 at 12 p.m. next Tuesday for what many hope could be the beginning of the end of a difficult saga that began nearly 20 years ago.

According to authorities, Dempsey was brutally stabbed to death in her basement apartment on Lexington's Ridge Road in the early morning hours of Aug. 23, 1992. An unknown intruder entered Dempsey’s basement apartment during the midnight hours and stabbed her repeatedly in her bedroom. The victim called for help, but dispatch botched the call and she was found dead when her cry for help was answered hours later at nearly 11 a.m.

A second Lexington woman, 49-year-old Mary Lou Sale, was slain two years later in what authorities described as a burglary attempt. And Conkey, the man twice convicted of her killing, now wants to plead guilty to the Dempsey murder, as well.

Conkey was indicted by a Middlesex County grand jury on Dec. 21, 2011 for the Dempsey murder following what Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone described as new developments in forensic investigative techniques and statements made by Conkey himself. He initially plead not guilty, but reversed course during a susbsequent status hearing.

“I’ve been waiting for this a long time, to just come in and plead guilty,” Conkey told a judge on March 30 in Middlesex Superior Court. “There’s no need to investigate it. I’m guilty. I confessed. Everything I said in the statement to the police was true.”

At the time, the judge and a doctor determined Conkey, who currently serving a life sentence for the Sale murder, is competent enough to enter a guilty plea, which he was initially expected to do on Friday, April 13.

The April hearing was postponed, and it's unclear whether Conkey will plead guilty on July 2, but he certainly seemed willing to do so back in March, when he insisted that the "voices" he was hearing weren't influencing his desicion.

“I’m intelligent enough to know that these court proceedings are a waste of time and tax dollars,” he told the court at the time.