Wife Tells of Murder of Her Lover
By Dana Reddington Times Herald Staff

Not long before the murder, Thomas R. Meconnahey figured he had caught
his wife and her lover. Her car was in the parking lot of a Spring House motel while she was inside, spending a few hours alone with the other man, Meconnahey's wife said yesterday in Montgomery County Court.

Meconnahey spotted the car, rigged it so it wouldn't start, then left.
When Kathleen Meconnahey and her boyfriend realized their problem with
the car, they pushed It across the street.

"I just didn't think that it would look good, sitting in a hotel parking lot,"
she recalled during the first day of Thomas Meconnahey's murder trial.
She called her husband, who knew just what to do to get it running. And
she denied having been in the motel with Christopher Gambino.

But a few weeks later, on July 7, 1992, Meconnahey saw them for himself, sleeping in the bed he and his wife had shared in their Ambler home.
Prosecutors maintain he took a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and fired it once into Gambino's head. Meconnahey later dumped the body into an underground crawl space in his home and poured 600 pounds of cement on top of it.

The body wasn't found until nearly a month later, after Meconnahey's
brother-in-law - who helped him buy the concrete tipped off police. After spending some 12 hours chiseling away at the concrete, detectives found the corpse wrapped in trash bags.

Meconnahey, 34, is being charged with first-degree murder and related
crimes in connection with the death of Gambino, 29, of Plymouth Valley.
If the jury convicts Meconnahey of first-degree murder - an intentional
killing - he will spend the rest of his life in prison. He has told police that the shooting was accidental. He said he thought about killing Gambino when finding the man with his wife but the gun went off while he poked him with
it to wake him up.

Meconnahey in December pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and agreed
to serve 131;2 to 27 years. But a county judge refused to accept the plea, saying a jury should determine the degree of murder. The panel of six men
and six women yesterday heard from one prosecution witness - Kathleen Meconnahey.

But she helped bolster the defense claim of an accidental shooting.

Defense counsel Brian McVan asked her if Thomas Meconnahey told
her after the killing that he didn't mean to do it.

''Yes, he has said that," she replied.

She told of a troubled marriage to Meconnahey that began in September 1991 and was all but over a short time later. He had moved out of the Forest Avenue house a few days before the killing.

Kathleen Meconnahey said she began dating Gambino, whom she knew from their school days, in January 1992. Gambino even visited the couple's Ambler home while her husband was there, she said. But she always told him they merely were friends.

According to her testimony, the couple had agreed to talk about their problems over dinner the day before the murder. Instead, Kathleen Meconnahey went to a friend's house with their 3·year-old daughter and Gambino. She said she drank four screwdrivers there and took prescription depressants.

Then her husband arrived. He and Gambino argued, then Meconnahey left. After calling her at the friend's home, Thomas Meconnahey returned, punched her then grabbed their daughter and left, she testified. Kathleen Meconnahey said she took a baseball bat and went to their Ambler home, which they also shared with her teen-age daughter from a previous marriage. No one was there. Gambino slept on the couch that night for her protection, she said.
The next night, they slept in the waterbed in the Meconnahey's bedroom. After making love, she said, they went to sleep around 2 a.m. Kathleen Meconnahey said she awoke to a "popping" sound, and looked over at Gambino.

"I saw blood gurgling out of his mouth," she said. "I saw Tom standing over
the bed.

"I sat up, I asked him if he was gonna kill me too. He said 11:0."
Meconnahey said she went to the living room where she noticed the time -
5:30 a.m. - then crouched in a corner. Her husband then took her to a friend's house, and brought her back to Ambler later that night.

She said she did not call police right after the murder because she was frightened. When she did volunteer to speak with them, she told them she knew nothing of the killing.

Under questioning by McVan, Meconnahey admitted she telephoned Gambino's family. and friends after the murder, asking if they had seen him.
"I did that because I was afraid for the safety of my children," she said.
She said her husband told her Gambino's family might seek revenge if they learned of the circumstances of the killing.