Crime & Safety

Another Murder Charge for Man Jailed for Lexington Killings

Craig Conkey, the man jailed for the murders of two Lexington women in the 1990s, is now facing murder charges in New Hampshire.

“In theory, I’ll see the Parole Board,” Craig Conkey told a judge around this time last year. “But they’ll never parole someone like me.”

Parole is probably even less likely now.

Already jailed for the murders of two Lexington women in the 1990s, Conkey is now facing murder charges in New Hampshire. Authorities announced Tuesday that Conkey has been indicted for the murder of Plymouth resident Theresa Reed, who was found dead in her apartment in September 1991.

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According to a WCVB report, Conkey is facing a first-degree murder charge, along with an alternate charge of reckless second-degree murder. Police believe Conkey stabbed Reed to death during a burglary, WCVB reported.

Those allegations recall similar circumstances here in Lexington, where investigators have alleged Conkey took to burglarizing local homes after being suspended from his job flipping burgers at a fast food joint over in Bedford.

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The murder of Theresa Reed, according to reports, pre-dates the Lexington killings for which Conkey has been convicted.

In Middlesex Superior Court last summer, Conkey pleaded guilty to the previously unsolved 1992 murder of Kathleen Dempsey, a popular graphic designer with a promising future who was found dead in her basement apartment.

Conkey had long been a person of interest in Dempsey’s death, first coming into focus after the 1994 murder of another Lexington woman, 49-year-old Mary Lou Sale.

In 2009, after years in and out of courts appealing guilty verdicts, Conkey was finally sentenced to life in prison at MCI Cedar Junction after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and one count of armed robbery in the Sale case.

That, it seems, was the first domino to fall.

Imprisonment at Cedar Junction, along with his belief the Apocalypse is imminent, reportedly compelled Conkey to cooperate with investigators, who had been mounting a case against him in the Dempsey murder using new forensic evidence and investigative techniques.

According to the WCVB report, the 1991 murder of Theresa Reed was re-opened last year by the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit.

An Associated Press story on Boston.com reported attorney Bernard Grossberg—who also represented Conkey in Middlesex Superior Court last year—said his client approached New Hampshire authorities about his involvement in an old homicide in New Hampshire. However, the story also says Grossberg claimed no one had notified him about his client being charged


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