Man convicted in park killing of elderly woman

DEDHAM, Mass. --A man was convicted Wednesday in the killing of a 75-year-old woman who was found dead after she and her husband briefly separated during a walk in a Walpole park.

Martin Guy, 44, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the Dec. 1, 1998, death of Irene Kennedy of Foxborough and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Prosecutor Robert Nelson said Kennedy was stabbed 32 times and strangled. Authorities said Guy left his DNA when he bit both of Kennedy's breasts.

District Attorney William Keating said this was the first first-degree murder conviction made based on evidence from Massachusetts' DNA registry that all convicted felons must submit to.

Guy, currently serving a life sentence on another murder conviction, was charged several years after the slaying.

Shortly after Kennedy's death, Edmund Burke of Walpole was arrested and spent 41 days in jail before DNA evidence showed Burke was not the killer. The charge against him eventually was dropped, and he sued the state for wrongful arrest.

Guy's attorney called Burke as a hostile defense witness during his trial.

"It is my hope that this will bring some measure of release for the Kennedy family," Keating said. "But it is also my fervent hope that this conviction will make clear to any who still doubt that Ed Burke did not murder Irene Kennedy."

Kennedy's killing and the slayings of two other people in Norfolk County in 1998 and 1999 prompted fears of a serial killer.

In August 1999, 82-year-old Richard Reyenger was found bludgeoned to death at a Westwood pond. His killing remains unsolved. Dr. Dirk Greineder, a prominent allergist, was convicted in 2001 in the Oct. 31, 1999, death of his wife during a walk in the woods near Morses Pond in Wellesley.