CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A jury convicted a man Monday of killing a co-worker nearly 22 years ago after she turned down his romantic overtures -- a case that finally went to trial after a police interview with the victim's daughter uncovered new evidence.
A Middlesex Superior Court jury deliberated for less than five hours over two days before finding Walter Emeney guilty of first-degree murder in the November 1985 killing of Patricia Clark. Emeney, now 61, was ordered to serve an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clark, 32, was stabbed to death in her Lowell apartment. Her daughter Alecia, then 11, found the body when she returned home from school.
Emeney, a former Fitchburg resident, was one of the people questioned at the time of the killing. But he was never formally identified as a suspect until a couple years ago, after police re-interviewed Alecia Clark as part of a routine look at cold cases.
Alecia Clark drew investigators' attention to a small box in which Clark had kept some of her jewelry. On the morning of her death, Clark had opened the box to give her daughter some costume jewelry to wear for her school picture that day.
Investigators didn't find the box when they combed Clark's apartment for evidence, but it was among materials seized from Emeney's car. Police didn't realize its significance until Alecia told them it had been in the apartment the morning of the killing.
Emeney, who said he was not in Clark's home the day of the killing, was indicted by a grand jury in August 2005.
Clark and Emeney worked together at a Lowell security company, and prosecutors said she had repeatedly rejected his advances. He proposed to her, but Clark turned him down.
Emeney also had a key to Clark's apartment and sometimes helped with household chores, prosecutors said. On Nov. 19, 1985, he went to Clark's apartment and they fought after she rejected him yet again, prosecutors said. Emeney then stabbed Clark so violently with a hunting knife that her spinal cord was severed, prosecutors said.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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