Arraignment scheduled today for Peabody double-murder suspect
The man authorities say murdered a Peabody couple in cold blood, and escaped to South Carolina by carjacking a Middleton grandfather’s Honda, has willingly returned home to face the charges.
Wes Cameron Doughty, 39, of Danvers is expected to appear in Peabody District Court today to answer to two counts of firstdegree murder for the Feb. 18 slayings of Mark Greenlaw, 37, and his girlfriend Jennifer O’Connor, 40.
Doughty will also face charges for the alleged carjacking and kidnapping of Kenneth Metz, 64, Wednesday night in Middleton.
He was released from the custody of the Spartanburg, S.C., County Sheriff’s Department to Massachusetts State Police yesterday morning. Carrie Kimball-Monahan, spokeswoman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, said Doughty signed a waiver of rendition Friday.
Doughty is alleged to have driven Metz’s 2006 Honda Accord to Boiling Springs, S.C., where local law enforcement picked him up Friday for panhandling outside a McDonald’s restaurant. Metz later told reporters that before he was able to flee for his life during a stop in Boston, Doughty claimed he killed Greenlaw and O’Connor for giving his godfather heroin.
Peabody officials, meanwhile, have condemned the bungalow at 19 Farm Ave., where the bodies of Greenlaw and O’Connor were found in the basement.
According to the city’s emergency condemnation notice, the house had no heat and was full of trash and furniture and plywood. Garbage, rubbish and combustible materials were piled up in the basement.
Officials also noted the “presence of potentially infectious residue in home.”