Seven Long Island teens are accused in the fatal beating of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero, but one has been singled out as the killer. Nineteen-year-old Nicholas Hausch took the stand today testifying against Jeffrey Conroy, the only one of the boys accused of murder and manslaughter as a hate crime, according to the AP. "[Conroy] told me he stabbed him," Hausch said in court, remembering how his friend refused to dispose of the bloody weapon.
"We were telling him to throw it [away]," the key witness recalled. "[He] said he washed it off in a puddle." Last week Conroy's prison-style Swastika tattoo, inspired by the HBO show Oz , prompted a discussion of whether the 19-year-old was a white supremacist (his lawyer and father claimed he was not). Hausch pleaded guilty last year to gang assault, assault as a hate crime and conspiracy in connection with Lucero's beating and a number of other incidents, and could serve up to 25 years if convicted. As the evidence against him piles up, Conroy may face an even tougher sentence.
