Grisly details emerge in double homicide

Female victim was raped before home set on fire

One of the two men behind a brutal Peabody double-murder in February raped the female victim and both assailants tried to burn down the home where police found the victims’ bodies in a bloody scene, according to grand jury indictments.

Wes Doughty, 39, was indicted on two counts of murder and one count each of rape, attempted arson, carjacking, kidnapping, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, court documents filed Tuesday show.

Doughty is charged in the Feb. 17 slayings of Mark Greenlaw, 37, and Jennifer O’Connor, 40.

Police discovered a grisly scene in the garbage-stuffed cellar of a since condemned bungalow on Farm Avenue in Peabody, where the bodies of the victims were dumped.

Doughty raped O’Connor before killing her, according to a spokeswoman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, and took steps to set the Farm Avenue house on fire.

Murder charges against Doughty’s co-defendant, Michael Hebb, 45, were dismissed, but the grand jury did indict him on two counts of accessory after the fact and one count of attempted arson.

Greenlaw, a builder, was killed by a shotgun blast to the head, while O’Connor, a Stop & Shop clerk, was fatally stabbed in the neck and torso, according to their death certificates at Peabody City Hall.

Doughty fled after carjacking a Middleton man and was nabbed in South Carolina after a week on the run and a nationwide fugitive alert.

Kenneth Metz, the carjacking victim, said Doughty confessed to killing the couple during the terrifying three-hour ordeal.

Both Doughty and Hebb will be arraigned in superior court at a later date, according to Blodgett’s office.