Connor, accused of causing death of grandson, to go to trial in February

LACONIA — The woman who stands accused of causing the death of her grandson, as well as abusing three other children entrusted to her care, could spend more than a year in pre-trial confinement following a delay in the start of her court proceedings and a Supreme Court decision against her favor.

Sherry Connor faces a total of 13 charges, including manslaughter and negligent homicide, for allegedly causing the death of her 5-year-old grandson Dennis “Boo” Vaughan Jr., who was found unresponsive in Connor’s then-home on Blueberry Lane on Dec. 24, 2019. She also faces three charges of witness tampering, for allegedly coaching the surviving children about how to answer investigators’ questions, and seven charges of domestic violence, for abuse the children allegedly experienced at her hand.

Connor’s trial, previously scheduled for August, has now been pushed back to February, with jury selection on Tuesday, Feb. 10 and the trial to transpire over the subsequent two weeks.

Mark Sisti, an attorney who recently joined Connor’s defense, said he intends to bring the case to trial. He suggested there were yet avenues for him to seek pre-trial release of his client, despite the recent Supreme Court decision.

"That particular opinion resulted from the bail hearing, but it was not an evidentiary bail hearing," Sisti said, meaning no witnesses were called to testify at the hearing. "We may relitigate that, we were not [Connor's] lawyers at that time. We will take a fresh look and may be asking for bail in the future."

A 5-year gap

Vaughan’s death, which occurred on Christmas Eve, shocked and outraged the city, but was followed by a lack of apparent prosecution, even after the state Attorney General's Office declared his death to be a homicide based on autopsy results which showed severe trauma to the child’s head and neck. At the time, Gordon J. MacDonald was the Granite State's attorney general. He was succeeded in 2021 by John Formella, who now heads the office.

It wasn’t until August 2024 that Connor, who called paramedics to her home when Vaughan failed to wake up, was arrested. Keith Cormier, Belknap County attorney, said during court proceedings last year that the case had been the jurisdiction of the attorney general to prosecute, as that office handles all homicides in the state, but the office never brought such a charge. Instead, the office handed the case to Belknap County in June, Cormier explained, and his office worked to bring charges as expediently as possible.

When Connor was arrested, the prosecution asked Superior Court Judge Mark Attorri to order the defendant held in county jail until trial, arguing the evidence of abuse, gathered through forensic examinations, as well as interviews with surviving children and adults who spent time in the home, and combined with allegations of witness tampering, painted a portrait of a person unsafe to be allowed to walk free.

If that’s the case, argued the defense at the time, then why did the state wait for five years to bring charges? Defense attorneys also noted Connor had never been previously charged with such crimes, and hadn’t run afoul of the law in the intervening years.

Unable to convince Attorri, Connor’s defense team appealed to the state Supreme Court, which affirmed Attorri’s decision.

In an order issued on April 14, the Supreme Court noted Attorri reached a reasonable conclusion that the available evidence was clear and convincing that Connor presented a danger to the public, as well as to the case.

The Supreme Court order states: “Here, the defendant was indicted by a grand jury on numerous charges alleging severe abuse of four children in her care — including one count of reckless manslaughter, one count of negligent homicide, several counts of first- or second- degree assault, and several counts of witness tampering.” The order noted the evidence against Connor included accounts of many acts of extreme abuse directed at four young children, and carried out over several years.

“Given the severity and the ‘unusual cruelty’ of the defendant’s alleged abuse, and given the increased risk of further witness tampering by the defendant pending her trial, we conclude, based on our review of the record, that the trial court’s finding of dangerousness is supported by the evidence.”

The order was written by Clerk Timothy Gudas, with concurrence by Justices James Bassett, Patrick Donovan, Melissa Countway and MacDonald, who now serves on the state's highest court.