Crime & Safety

Third Defendant Found Guilty in McCabe Murder Trial

Walter Shelley, 61, of Tewksbury will spend the rest of his life in prison without parole, according to the Lowell Sun.


The third and final defendant in a 44-year-old Tewksbury murder case was found guilty of first degree murder by a Middlesex Superior Court Jury on Friday, according to The Lowell Sun.

Walter Shelley, 61, of Tewksbury, was charged with first degree murder and intimidation of a witness in the 1969 murder of then 15-year-old Tewksbury resident John McCabe, according to the Sun.

Shelley will spend the rest of his life in prison without parole, according to the Sun. 

Prosecutors allege Shelley, Michael Ferreira and Edward Allen Brown, all Tewksbury teenagers at the time, picked up 15-year-old Tewksbury resident John McCabe after a school dance at the Tewksbury Knights of Columbus.

The three teens drove McCabe to a vacant field in Lowell, bound his hands and feet, taped his mouth and eyes shut and left him, according to the Sun.

The three returned to the field around an hour later to find McCabe dead, with the state medical examiner ruling the teen died from asphyxiation by strangulation, according to the Sun.

A Middlesex Superior Court jury cleared Ferreira of murder charges in January, and Brown acted as a state's witness after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Read the full story from the Lowell Sun.


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