La Plata, MD – The continuing trial of Caroline Marie Conway, 53 of Waldorf, for first-degree murder in the shooting of Robert Manges, 25 of Smithfield, VA, and the critical wounding of his pregnant wife May 20, 2015, is only three days into testimony, and it feels like it’s just beginning.
Judge Steven I. Platt has proven to be firm, fair and lenient in the first three days of the trial, allowing jurors to go home at 5 p.m. because some have small children. He suggested Wednesday, Dec. 7, however, that if arrangements could be made, it would help speed the trial along.
In the meantime, Charles County States Attorney Tony Covington and Assistant States Attorney Francis Granados have spent the first two-and-a-half days of testimony parading in both witnesses to the murder and investigating officers as they build their case against the defendant.
One of the most damaging witnesses proved to be a young 14-year-old La Plata High School student, who along with her mother, step-father and little sister, had just pulled into the parking lot of the Rock ‘N’ Roll McDonald’s at Mall Circle in Waldorf last May when they heard loud noises.
“My step-dad said it was gunshots,” the girl recalled.
From where she was sitting in the truck, the La Plata student said she saw events unfold.
“I looked to my right, and I saw a white male come out of the driver’s side of the silver Jeep,” she told Covington when he asked what happened next. “I saw an older lady come out of the back of the Jeep. The younger lady was screaming for help. The older woman shot the man on the ground, then she shot the other lady.
“I saw the older lady walking toward us,” she continued. “She walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle and walked toward a path leading through the woods.”
Covington asked her to describe what the woman was wearing and she replied, “A black hoody. She had black, white and gray hair and silver-rimmed glasses. She had a handgun that she was trying to put away in her pocket.” Her mother pulled the truck over to the St. Charles Mall parking lot and the family went to assist the gunshot victims. “The woman kept screaming for us to help her husband,” she said. “She told us it was her ex-husband’s mother that did it.” When defense attorney James Farmer asked the girl how close the older woman was to her, she said, “She was very, very close.”
The jury has heard testimony from officers who processed the scene, collected evidence and arrested the defendant. Two bullet fragments were recovered from the vehicles of Michael Henche and Joseph Rice, both of Waldorf, who were at the McDonald’s when the shooting occurred. Detective Christopher Shankster of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office was able to recover test firings from Richard Conway’s Smith & Wesson 40 caliber semi-automatic service weapon used in the shooting. That was no small trick, he admitted. It turned out that Richard Conway, a Prince George’s County police officer, had been issued the weapon in 2014.
“Smith and Wesson always test fire their weapons,” Shankster testified, noting that the rounds are recovered and placed in a small envelope inside the case of the new weapon when it is issued to police. In this particular case, he said, he knew if he could get those test fire bullets, he could use them to corroborate the weapon used in the shooting. The actual murder weapon has not been recovered, he said.
Through interviews with Prince George’s County police, he was able to determine that when Conway was issued his new weapon in 2014, the old one was placed in the new case and sold to a wholesaler. Shankster was able to trace the gun through two different weapons wholesalers until he found the new owner all the way down in Williamstown, Kentucky. He made contact with the owner and was able to recover the test firings from the case, still sealed in their envelope, with the serial number of Conway’s new weapon on the envelope.
With at least a week and maybe more left of proceedings, a comparison of the test firings he recovered from Kentucky to those found from the murder scene seems imminent as the trial prepares to enter its fourth day.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com
