Killing Your Cousin
The Walker County DA needs to come clean about the killing of Hartsell Gray. Why were criminal charges in the case dismissed? His family wants to know why you can get away with KILLING YOUR COUSIN…
Killing Your Cousin
“A man has been shot. Oh my God,” Karen Conroy said.
August 7, 2023, 8:46 in the evening, a frantic woman calls 911. Her husband had just shot a guy dead.
Not an intruder. He was an invited guest, a family member.
“My husband is in my house and my cousin is on the patio,” Karen Conroy said.
We warn you again, these are bloody graphic pictures.
That’s the body of 70-year-old Hartsell Gray, look at his hands, you can see he is unarmed.
“Okay. We got a center mass gunshot wound with a twelve gauge shotgun.”
In February of last year a Walker County grand jury indicted Pat Conroy for murder.
But then a shocker, the conservative District Attorney Will Durham dismissed the case.
In a quick phone call, he notified Hart’s family.
Conroy would get off scot-free.
“Can we talk to you?” Andres Palacio said.
Why is Will Durham refusing to tell you why he did it?
“Come on. Can we talk to you?” Palacio said.
That’s an insult to Gray’s family, and that’s why they came to us for help.
“None of this makes sense. It just, it just irritates me to death,” Dana Shannon said.
“I feel like, you know like his life didn’t matter kind of thing. And it did matter,” Dana Shannon said.
A union pipefitter all his adult life. By all accounts, Hart was fun to be around.
“Hart was funny, he was sweet, if he liked you, he would give you the shirt off his back,” Dana Shannon said.
“He was just a good dude. I mean, everyone that knew him liked him,” Tim Shannon said.
But after a major heart attack, quadruple bypass, Hart Gray struggled to get around.
“He was down to like, I think he told me 30% of his heart function. And it never came back,” Dana Shannon said.
“He told, he said, Tim, I may live to be 70, but not much more. I said, Oh Hart. No, and he said no, I can feel it,” Tim Shannon said.
He spent a lot of time in his final years with his cousin Pat.
“When you get through looking at those deer getting ready to shoot one,” Hart Gray said.
They were drinking buddies.
He even talked about putting Pat in his will.
So how did this happen?
“My husband just came home, he was hurt by his cousin, he almost cut his finger off. My husband came in the house and he got the gun. And that’s because he tried to come in the house. And my husband shot him. Oh my God,” Karen Conroy said.
“When someone is killed, the victim and their family should be priority number one. So why is the Walker County DA refusing to answer questions? Order release records so that Hart Gray’s family can see the whole truth?” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
We learned the deputies didn’t have body cameras yet, but the sheriff claimed they had no video from their patrol cars at the scene either.
And we knew that wasn’t true.
“Last July we also asked for the list of the grand jurors’ names who indicted Pat Conroy to see what they thought about the DA dropping the charges, but they won’t give us the names,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“I don’t know what he set him off. He just went fucking crazy,” Pat Conroy said.
That’s Pat Conroy, wailing in the background.
Listen to him talk about the guy he says he loved, and just filled with lead.
“I loved that motherfucker. I loved him. He was good,” Pat Conroy said.
Like the Walker County D.A., Pat Conroy is hiding from the truth too.
“Sir can I talk to you about what happened with your cousin Hart?” Palacio said.
“No you can not and you need to leave. You’re trespassing and I’m calling the law,” Pat Conroy said.
Pat was taken to Conroe Hospital that night where he told investigators he had invited Hart to stay at his house because they’d been drinking some.
And on the way home from visiting friends and family, well, an argument began.
“He’s got this wild look in his eyes. I’m like, cuz what’s wrong? I’m tired of the bullshit, he keeps saying,” Pat Conroy said.
Pat says a physical fight broke out in his truck a few hundred feet from Pat’s house.
He says Hart slashed his finger before he jumped out of the truck and ran into his house.
“I’m calling my wife. I’m back up in the trees. I’m like, baby, open the back door. Let me in. Get the gun. Get the gun. He’s coming. He’s like, who’s coming? That’s Hart. He’s crazy. He’s gone,” Pat Conroy said.
There seems to be little debate that Hart got behind the wheel of the truck and drove towards the house, crashing into a parked vehicle, in fact.
That’s when Pat says he got his shotgun from his bedroom and ran towards the back door, shooting Hart as he was about 6 feet away.
“I’m just inside the door. And he’s outside the door,” Pat Conroy said.
“What’s he saying to you?” Deputy Matt Morris said.
“He didn’t say nothing,” Pat Conroy said.
“I was trying to calm him down you know don’t do that don’t do that,” Karen Conroy said.
“If anything did happen between them in the car, the only way I could see that happening is if Hart was trying to defend his self,” Dana Shannon said.
But Pat left some key details out that night.
He did not tell detectives that during the fight in the truck part of Hart’s ear was bitten off.
Detective Matt Morris stated the obvious.
“It is not possible to bite your own ear off”
The only blood found in the truck belonged to Hart, not Pat, although Pat clearly was cut with a knife.
“He wasn’t shot for stabbing my client and then trying to stab him again. That’s not why he was shot,” Brian Cantrell said.
He insisted Hart was shot because Pat was in fear of his life.
But listen to this.
“He did not say he’s trying to kill me,” Karen Conroy said.
We’ve read the reports, despite what Conroy’s wife said investigators used a false narrative for her statement, that Hart “was trying to kill him,” not that Hart had gone crazy. It’s different.
And Pat lawyered up after detectives confronted him about the whole missing parts of Hart’s ear.
“Sir can I talk to you about what happened with your cousin Hart?” Palacio said.
“No you can not and you need to leave. You’re trespassing and I’m calling the law,” Pat Conroy said.
The autopsy confirmed Hart was shot twice that night, once in the upper abdomen.
But there was a second shot, in the back.
“No you need to go look at the autopsy again,” Brian Cantrell said.
“No you need to I’ve looked at it,” Palacio said.
You can see it too.
“How could he have gotten shot twice? How is that self-defense? Once in the front once in the back, how is that self-defense?” Dana Shannon said.
“Good question. If Hart wasn’t armed, didn’t enter the house, an he wasn’t saying anything threatening, then did Pat Conroy really have any right to shoot him dead?,” Dolcefino told the camera.
After all Hart was staying there, his keys were inside, and Pat wasn’t even sure if the back door was open when he fired.
“I don’t even know if the door got open. Did I shoot him through the door? Did they say?” Pat Conroy said.
“Why didn’t he just shut the door and call the police if he really thought his life was in danger? Why would you get your gun, open the door and shoot somebody outside?” Dana Shannon said.
Now Hart and his family have been denied their day in court.
“I think that’s awful. I think that that’s justice not served. I do. If they had enough evidence to indict him, there was something there,” Dana Shannon said.
“Can we talk to you? Come on. Can we talk to you?” Palacio said.
“I find it difficult to understand why a prosecutor would drop a case like this after a grand jury is issued a true bill of indictment,” Geoffrey Corn said.
Geoffrey Corn is the Chair of Criminal Law at Texas Tech University School of Law, an expert in self-defense and stand your ground laws.
Corn says a lot of stuff negates a claim of self-defense.
“With a dead victim who is physically frail, who is not belligerent from the testimony or the statement from the defendant’s wife, who was not bearing a weapon, brandishing a weapon, verbally threatening the defendant, wasn’t charging him, and actually lived or was residing in that house, so was ostensibly just going into the house,” Geoffrey Corn said.
Add to that inconsistencies in Pat’s story, and no witnesses to what actually provoked the fight between these kinfolk in the first place.
“Maybe a jury would say, you know, he honestly thought his life was in danger, but under the circumstances it wasn’t reasonable, and they would compromise and convict him of manslaughter instead of murder,” Geoffrey Corn said.
“Here’s the other problem, listening to the recordings from that night, we know the Sheriff’s Department had friendly connections to the folks involved with the shooting,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Remember me we used to live down the road from each other.”
Turns out the captain and the defendant used to be neighbors.
“I know y’all are good people, okay? Okay, so everything’s gonna be figured out.”
And we learned a deputy at the scene was good friends with Pat’s daughter. You gotta love small towns.
And Pat’s buddy, a witness from earlier in the day of the shooting, he dates a woman connected to the investigator doing the taped interview.
“She’s a good woman wonderful woman,” Pat Conroy said.
“Yeah, that’s my godmother,” Deputy Matt Morris said.
“Are you serious?” Pat Conroy said.
“I think it’s a big old, it’s an old boys club or something, that’s what comes to my mind,” Tim Shannon said.
The Sheriff’s Department gathered the evidence for the indictment, but get them on the phone now and they’re all gung-ho on this self-defense thing.
“I’ve been doing this a minute. This is a pretty cut and dry deal as to what happened,” Tom Bean said.
“But Hart was beaten up and…” Palacio said.
“No ma’am, he wasn’t,” Tom Bean said.
“Did you see the autopsy? He had contusions on the side of his face and he had part of his ear ripped off,” Palacio said.
“The part of his ear ripped off, I do know about that. But I do not about contusions on the side of his face,” Tom Bean said.
“Okay, well, he did. I read the autopsy,” Palacio said.
“This is why we have juries. Right?” Geoffrey Corn said.
A jury that could hear other stuff Pat Conroy said that night, after he killed his own cousin.
Conroy seemed more worried about his gun than his cousin.
“Don’t take my gun though because I got some duck hunting here to you know,” Pat Conroy said.
“Yeah, season’s coming up here soon,” Deputy Matt Morris said.
“And and look, I’ll be got I’ll be damned this is gonna ruin it,” Pat Conroy said.
“Looking at those deer getting ready to shoot one,” Hart Gray said.
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