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Friends of Jeffrey Conroy Testify at Murder Trial

Posted March 19, 2010 by Ted Hesson
Categories: Hate Watch

In the past two days, two of Jeffrey Conroy’s friends have taken the witness stand in his murder trial for allegedly stabbing and killing Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero in a November 2008 attack. Jason Everhardt testified yesterday and Jason Moran testified today.

Yesterday, I wrote a few paragraphs about Everhardt’s testimony, which mainly dealt with overhearing Conroy and the other six defendants charged in the Lucero case talk about “beating up Spanish people.” Everhardt overheard the conversation about attacking Latinos while he and other friends were hanging out with the group in Southaven Park.

Everhardt, a 19-year-old Patchogue-Medford senior and a self-described “good friend” of Conroy also answered questions from defense attorney William Keahon about the diversity of Conroy’s friends.

“Did Jeff have Spanish friends, did he have black friends, did he have Turkish friends,” Keahon asked. “Yes,” Everhardt replied. “He was friends with everyone,” Everhardt later added.

Everhardt also spoke about seeing Conroy handle the knife allegedly used to kill Lucero.

This morning we heard from Jason Moran, an 18-year-old student Medford resident and Suffolk County Community College student. Moran also described himself as a friend of Conroy’s: “I never called him, he never called me; we didn’t really get in touch that much,” Moran said. “But we were friendly to each other.”

Moran, like Everhardt, described how he spent the early evening of November 8, 2008, hanging out at his friend Frank Grillo’s house with Grillo, Everhardt, and another friend, Matthew Rivera. Later that night, the group met up with Conroy, the other six co-defendants, and three girls at the Medford train station.

Although Everhardt’s friends had drank a few beers at Grillo’s house, Moran was completely sober, he said. At the train station, all of the teens were “discussing bullshit” and “fooling around,” until Conroy took Jordan Dasche’s BB gun and shot a ticket machine, setting off an alarm.

Chased away by the alarm, the group relocated to Southaven Park, arriving there around 10:30-10:45am. Some of the teens at the train station had been drinking, according to Moran, and they continued to drink at the park.

Moran specifically remembered Conroy holding a Budweiser, but wasn’t sure if Conroy was drinking the beer, or possibly holding it for one of the girls. As they talked, they stood on a basketball court at the park and broke into smaller groups, he said.

Eventually, some of the teens—including Conroy—started talking about beating up Latinos, Moran said.

“They said that they wanted to go to Patchogue and find someone that they could beat up,” he testified. “They were going group to group letting everyone know.” When asked by assistant district attorney Megan O’Donnell who they planned to beat up, Moran relied, “A Mexican.”

Moran testified that he and other friends had told the group not to follow through with the plan. On cross-examination, Moran said that he could only specifically remember his own pleas to Nicholas Hausch, and not to Conroy or anyone else.

“Don’t do this, it’s not a smart idea,” Moran told Hausch, according to his testimony.

As with his questioning of Everhardt, defense attorney William Keahon again inquired about the diversity of Conroy’s friends during his cross-examination of Moran.

“Did Jeff have a lot of Latino friends?” Keahon asked. “Did he have a lot of African American friends?”

To both questions, Moran answered yes.

Tags : hate crimes, jeffrey conroy, marcelo lucero

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