Kristin Sculley, charged in fatal stabbing of Massapequa man, acted in self-defense, her lawyer says

The lawyer for a woman charged with fatally stabbing a Massapequa man in his bedroom during a two-day drug bender said Wednesday at her arraignment in Nassau County Court that his client acted in self-defense after she was sexually assaulted.

Kristin Sculley, 22, pleaded not guilty during a morning hearing to second-degree murder in the death of Robert Carragher, 28, who was stabbed once in the neck inside his Beaumont Avenue home about 1:30 on June 1.

Nassau County Assistant District Attorney Ania Pulaski said that Sculley and Carragher had gone to the same high school and been spending a lot of time together doing drugs. That relationship, the prosecutor said, had become romantic.

On the night of the killing, after spending several hours in Carragher’s bedroom, Sculley left the bedroom and got a knife from her purse.

“While the victim was asleep or falling asleep, she stabbed him in the neck violently," Pulaski said.

Police said that Carragher stumbled upstairs in the house screaming for help and collapsed. His parents tried to stanch the flow of blood from his severed artery, but Carragher died at the scene.

Pulaski said that Sculley was found by police hiding in the laundry room covered in blood with the knife.

The attack was not as random as the prosecutor suggested, defense attorney Dennis Lemke told the court.

Carragher was Sculley’s drug dealer, the lawyer said. He said that Carragher had testified in a criminal case several months before his death regarding his role as a drug dealer.

Scully, Lemke said, struggled with drug addiction and had been through rehabilitation in the past before relapsing.

Over the two days, Sculley had done cocaine and methamphetamine with Carragher at his house, the lawyer said. On the morning of the stabbing, Lemke said that Carragher gave Scully a vape pen to smoke that rendered her paralyzed.

“She was given some type of drug that she felt very loopy and was passing out," the lawyer said. “She woke up, he was on top of her, trying to abuse her sexually and that’s when she grabbed the knife that was there and stabbed one time."

“This wasn’t rage, this isn’t anger," he added.

Lemke said that the laundry room is only 15 feet away from the scene of the crime.

The attorney said that his client gave Nassau County detectives the same information and they never took her to the hospital to be examined for signs of rape.

“It was only until she went to the jail that they did so," Lemke said. “We’re waiting on the results of that."

The prosecutor, in arguing against bail for Sculley, noted that she has driven herself to the Massapequa home and could have left.

“The defendant had every opportunity to leave the house," she said.

State Supreme Court Justice Robert Bogle denied the bail application and remanded Sculley back to jail.

She returns to court on July 24.