N.H. pair indicted in I-93 slaying
Published on March 10th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - Two New Hampshire residents were indicted Tuesday by a Middlesex grand jury for their alleged roles in a fatal highway shooting in January.
Lynn Bader, 26, was shot and killed Jan. 27 after being chased down I-93 from New Hampshire by two apparent strangers in a possible act of road rage on I-93 in Stoneham.
Both had appeared in Woburn District Court the next day for probable cause and then went forward to the grand jury.
Jerone Jones and Gwynne Doyle, of Manchester, N.H., were arrested. Jones, 25, is charged with murder and illegal possession of a firearm. Doyle, 25, who was the driver, is charged with illegal possession of a firearm and accessory after the fact to murder.
Both have previously pleaded innocent. No date has been set for Superior Court arraignment after the indictment.
Bader, also of Manchester, suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Her car crashed into a guardrail in Stoneham.
At the time, police say Jones, of Manchester, N.H., killed Bader of Concord, N.H., who was found dead after her car crashed into a guardrail in Stoneham on Tuesday night. Jones, 24, pleaded innocent to charges including first-degree murder and was held without bail.
Bader's mother, Karen O'Reilly, said police told her the chase started near Manchester, where several people reported two cars racing down the highway.
In Woburn District Court on, Middlesex County prosecutor Thomas O'Reilly said paint from both cars was found scraped on the other and that the suspects threw pennies at Bader's car. Jones, a passenger in one car, then pointed a stolen gun across the driver and fired a single shot through the window and at Bader, said Thomas O'Reilly, who is no relation to the victim's mother.
Jones told police the gun accidentally went off when he was loading it, which he said he always did when he got close to Boston, Thomas O'Reilly said. The driver, Gwenne Doyle, said her window happened to be down when the gun fired because she was tossing out a cigarette.
Doyle, 25, also from Manchester, was charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ordered held on $10,000 cash bail at the time Karen O'Reilly of Concord, N.H., cried as she spoke of the "senseless" killing, and said her daughter's killer deserved to die.
"It's horrific what happened to her," she told The Associated Press. "It's beyond awful. ... I need to know why these people did this to my daughter. I need to know why people would just take out a gun, pull up beside somebody and shoot her."
"Lynn was just the most loving, wonderful person in the world," she said. Massachusetts State Police said they began receiving frantic calls from other motorists about the shooting at about 8 p.m. They arrived on the scene, about 10 miles north of Boston, to find two cars crashed into the center guardrail about 500 yards apart, Capt. Marian McGovern said.
Bader was found in the front seat of her car, already dead from a bullet wound to the head. Jones told police the gun was in the car, but police recovered it on Doyle after a paramedic treating her noticed a bulge in her pants, Thomas O'Reilly said. Karen O'Reilly said her daughter, who lived with her in Concord, did not know Jones or Doyle, and she was unsure why she was on Interstate 93. Emily Lagrassa, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex District Attorney's office, said it was still unclear what started the confrontation.
Jones's attorney, Stephen Neyman, said there was no evidence that Jones pulled the gun and pointed it, or had a reason to point it.
O'Reilly said her daughter grew up in Ronkonkoma, N.Y., on Long Island, the youngest of three children. The family had a boat on Lake Ronkonkoma, and Bader was a "water bug" spending as much time as she could near the water, O'Reilly said. That continued when she came to live with her mother in Concord, where the family has a pontoon boat on a nearby river.
Bader enjoyed just about any outdoor activity, from hiking to volleyball, and "all the music I didn't," O'Reilly said with a laugh. She also adored her two nieces, ages 1 and 3. Bader was a fun-loving, outgoing person, but what people remember most about her was kindness, her mother said.
"She had the biggest heart you could ever want to know," she said. "She could have all her own problems going on, but she'd worry about someone else's."
Bader, who was supposed to turn 27 on Sunday, worked briefly providing care for mentally ill patients, but was between jobs and thinking of moving to the Boston area to be near some friends, O'Reilly said.
On Wednesday, O'Reilly said she visited her daughter's bedroom between taking calls from stunned friends and family, looked through her daughter' c clothes and keepsakes and wondered how to handle an overwhelming grief.
"What do you do when your child is killed?" O'Reilly said. "I never in my life thought I'd be burying my own daughter.
"This is just so senseless," she said.
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