Murder Solved
Long-Awaited Conviction Delivers Justice
and
Reunites a Family
Commonwealth v. Walter Emeney
A Domestic Violence Murder Solved 22 Years Later
It took the Middlesex jury less than two hours to return a verdict of first degree murder against Walter Emeney. Date of verdict: June 25, 2007. Date of murder: November 19, 1985.
Alecia Clark was 11-years-old when, having walked home from school in Lowell on a Tuesday afternoon, she struggled unsuccessfully to open the front door. The body of her mother, Patricia Clark, was slumped against the door on the inside. The single mother of three children had been stabbed multiple times. The Lowell Police suspected Walter Emeney, Patricia’s former co-worker whom she had dated and who had doggedly resisted her efforts to terminate their relationship, but Emeney was never charged due to insufficient evidence.
Patricia’s murder shattered the lives of her children. One son went to foster care, Alecia was raised by her grandfather, and a second son was adopted and moved to the South. The children had no contact with one another for twenty years.
But the Lowell Police Department and the Middlesex District Attorneys Office did not forget the slaying of Patricia Clark. In 2005, they revived the investigation. Then-Middlesex DA Martha Coakley assigned veteran prosecutor Marian Ryan, who was a member of the office homicide response team in 1985 and had been at the scene after Patricia’s death. Working in tandem with Lowell Police Detectives Crosby Brackett and Joe Zanoli, Ryan and senior victim-witness advocates Anne Foley and Dottie Berrios gathered all the physical evidence collected years before and asked Alecia to review it with them. Much of the evidence appeared to be rubbish from the inside of Emeney’s car, where he was living at the time of the murder. But among the items spread out for her review, Alecia spotted an empty ring box, and this small box triggered a flood of memories.
Alecia recalled that, on the morning of November 19, 1985, her mother presented her with this same box containing some costume jewelry for the child to wear for her class picture that same day. Alecia was particularly excited about two matching rings, one with garnets and the other with sapphires. Alecia was to wear the garnet ring, and her mother was to have the sapphire ring; Alecia thought of these as mother-daughter rings. Alecia wore her new jewelry to school, and her class photo taken that day shows a smiling child with her new garnet ring and sapphire necklace and earrings. The Lowell Police, using identifiers on the box (a logo and a serial number), obtained a 1985 Act II catalog and determined that the product matching the serial number was the sapphire ring that matched Alecia’s garnet ring. Alecia still has the garnet ring, sapphire necklace and earrings her mother gave her that day.
Immediately after the murder, Walter Emeney told the police he had not been into Patricia Clark’s home for several days. Because of the jewelry box, the police now had strong circumstantial evidence to show he had in fact been in the house after Alecia went to school wearing her new jewelry, and that he had taken the empty box when he left the house. This and other evidence led a Middlesex Grand Jury to indict him for murder.
The reopened 2005 investigation and subsequent trial in June 2007 reunited Patricia’s three children. At trial, Prosecutor Ryan meticulously set forth the circumstances of Patricia Clark and Walter Emeney’s relationship, predominantly the escalating signs of domestic abuse that concluded with her violent death. Nearly 22 years later, Marian Ryan and Patricia’s children were together in the courtroom when the jury delivered its verdict – guilty of murder in the first degree – in less than two hours.
The new Middlesex District Attorney, Gerard T. Leone, succeeded Martha Coakley in January 2007. He congratulated the prosecution team and noted the grim realities of domestic violence: “Patricia Clark’s death is a classic example of what police, prosecutors and the advocate community know only too well: that a woman is most vulnerable and at the greatest risk when she tries to gain independence from her abuser. This successful prosecution is the product of meticulous investigation and teamwork by the Lowell and Massachusetts State police, Marian Ryan and our advocates, Anne Foley and Dottie Berrios. This verdict cannot restore what was taken away from Patricia’s children, and although twenty years have passed, hopefully it will provide a measure of healing to them, that this defendant has finally been held accountable.”