CONWAY — More than a decade after two men were slain execution-style in a Conway home, the trial of a former physician charged in their deaths is to begin next month.
Richard Conte, 63, is charged with two counts of capital murder in the shootings of businessman Carter Elliott, 49, and Timothy Wayne Robertson, 25.
The men, who were shot in the head, were found May19, 2002, in Elliott’s home in the Shady Valley neighborhood. The exact date of the crime is unclear. The bench warrant for Conte’s arrest indicates that the killings occurred May 18-19, 2002.
Jury selection is Jan. 10-11 in Faulkner County Circuit Court, where Conte was charged in August 2011. The trial is to begin Jan. 15.
“Our expectation is that it will [continue] through the remainder of the week,” Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland said Wednesday.
Hiland has waived the death penalty in the case. In Arkansas, capital murder is punishable by death or life in prison without parole.
“Preparing a 10-year-old murder case for trial certainly presents the state with some unique challenges that are absent in most other cases,” Hiland said in an e-mailed statement.
“However, we don’t proceed with prosecution in any criminal case because it’s easy or because we are guaranteed a positive outcome for any particular criminal prosecution.”
Rather, Hiland added, “We proceed because we have an abiding conviction that the Defendant is guilty of the crime with which he is charged. I wasn’t elected to make safe decisions that simply mark time until re-election; I was elected to make any decision that best protects the safety of the citizens who entrusted me with this office.”
Jack Lassiter, the attorney who represents Conte, did not return a call seeking comment.
Lassiter has previously said that no witness places Conte in Arkansas at the time of the crime.
Lassiter also has said a “credible eyewitness” has placed Conte at a cabin near Duck Creek, Utah, the weekend of the homicides. That witness died in 2008, however, Lassiter said.
Hiland charged Conte after making the unsolved case an issue in his successful campaign to unseat former Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden in 2010.
The charges came two days before Conte, a former emergency-room physician, was scheduled for release from a Nevada prison. He had served nine years of a 15-year sentence resulting from the kidnapping of his ex-wife, Lark Gathright-Elliott. She also was the ex-wife of Carter Elliott.
Conte, who uses a wheelchair because of multiple sclerosis, was released from the Faulkner County jail on his own recognizance in late October because of speedy-trial rules.He has been under house arrest at his mother’s Wisconsin home and is required to wear a GPS monitor. Conte is blind in one eye and has poor vision in the other.
Authorities in Nevada have said Conte waited for Gathright-Elliott at her Salt Lake City home, then drugged her and bound her in the back of his pickup and drove to his home in Clear Creek, Nev. He held her hostage until police rescued her June 21, 2002, authorities have said.
Conte and Gathright-Elliott were married in December 2001, but the marriage lasted only a few months.
Gathright-Elliott had married Elliott in 1974 in Alabama and later moved to Conway. They were married 18 years.
Elliott, a native of Helena,-West Helena was president of Detco Industries Inc., an industrial cleaning-products company in Conway.
At the time of the slayings, David Clark, a deputy prosecutor who was a friend of Elliott’s family and who now is a circuit judge, said Robertson had been staying with the Elliott family for several months.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/31/2012