Police seek public's help to catch killer of Brockton cab driver

By Globe Staff

A Brockton cab driver was slain by a single gunshot to the head, Plymouth County prosecutors said today as they continued to search for the person who killed 56-year-old Edward Conley early Saturday in the South Shore city.

A spokeswoman for Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said today that an autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office had concluded Conley was killed by one shot to his head. Assistant District Attorney Bridget Norton Middleton said investigators need to hear from anyone in the public who might have information about the first slaying of a cabbie in Brockton since at least 1997.

Brockton police detectives can be reached at 508-941-0234. No arrests have yet been made and a motive is unknown, she said.

Conley, who lived in Bridgewater and was the divorced father of two children, was a driver for Cowen's Taxi Service on Warren Street. He had worked for the company on and off for the last year, colleagues said this weekend.

Police responding to emergency calls about a car crash on Galen Street just before 1 a.m. found Conley sitting in the cab. He was pronounced dead at Brockton Hospital.

Conley’s family said he fell on hard times after his 3-month-old son died 15 years ago from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

"He was a very good father," said his former wife, Denise Conley, by phone at her home in Bridgewater last weekend.

"He was a hard worker, college educated, just down on his luck trying out different jobs to support his family. He was very caring and wanted to make people happy," she said.

Conley, she said, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and had been driving the cab for about a year.

Conley had been teaching his 14-year-old son to play golf and was preparing him to play baseball at school. He also had a 20-year-old daughter.

The killing was Brockton’s third this year.

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