Convicted hate crime killer Jeffrey Conroy reveals his "softer" side in jailhouse interview

In interviews with Mr. Conroy, his father, his friends, his lacrosse coaches and his lawyer, one portrait of him emerges: that of a friendly, athletic teenager willing to stick up for others, of someone who counted several Hispanics among his closest friends, including the girl he had been dating off and on for years, Pamela Suarez, who is Bolivian.

Then there is the young man that prosecutors, Latino advocates and even some of the jurors see: a gullible, aggressive teenager with a swastika tattoo on his thigh who stabbed Mr. Lucero in the chest that night out of anger, and then lied in court when he blamed someone else for the crime.

On the manslaughter charge, Mr. Conroy faces a minimum of eight years and a maximum of 25 years when he is sentenced by Justice Robert W. Doyle on May 26. His lawyer, William Keahon, says Mr. Conroy plans to appeal.

Mr. Conroy, in the one-hour interview on Monday, spoke of his love and concern for his family: After the guilty verdict was announced in the courtroom, Mr. Conroy recalled, he turned and saw two of his sisters in tears, and told them not to worry, that everything would be all right.

He spoke of the future he hoped to have with Ms. Suarez, a freshman at Stony Brook University: When she visited him on Saturday, they talked about one day getting married. (“We’re going to have three kids,” he said, smiling.) He spoke of the narrow jail cell where he spends 22 hours a day: “I can stretch both my arms and touch both walls.” And he spoke of praying in his cell, for his family and for Mr. Lucero’s family.

He says he feels sadness and sympathy for the Luceros, and spoke particularly of Mr. Lucero’s younger brother, Joselo Lucero, a presence in the courtroom throughout the trial. “I would just look at him and then I would look away,” Mr. Conroy said. “I feel bad for him. I got a brother, too. I couldn’t imagine him dying.”

Mr. Conroy had signed a five-page written confession to the police in which he admitted stabbing Mr. Lucero near the train station in Patchogue on Nov. 8, 2008, and bloodstains on the blade of the knife that the police found on him minutes after the stabbing matched Mr. Lucero’s DNA.

He recounted confronting two white men outside a convenience store in October 2007 during his junior year in high school.

A Hispanic man had left a bicycle outside the store, and one of the white men had sat on the bike and released the kickstand as if he was about to take it away. The men were laughing. Mr. Conroy, a standout on his school’s wrestling team, said he warned them not to steal the bike, or that they would have a problem with him. He said he did so because he felt bad for the Hispanic man, whom he believed to be an immigrant day laborer.

“I guess he didn’t have a car or anything,” he said.

Mr. Conroy said he had his best friend give him a tattoo of a swastika on his thigh a few months before the stabbing “as a joke,” and because his friend had dared him to do it.

The day before the stabbing, Mr. Conroy got into a fight with another friend, because he was spreading rumors that Mr. Conroy had a sexually transmitted disease.

Throughout the trial, Mr. Conroy emerged as a brazen, impulsive and, as his lawyer admitted to the jury, at times a foolish young man.

Mr. Conroy said he had his best friend give him a tattoo of a swastika on his thigh a few months before the stabbing “as a joke,” and because his friend had dared him to do it.

The day before the stabbing, Mr. Conroy got into a fight with another friend, because he was spreading rumors that Mr. Conroy had a sexually transmitted disease.

At the police precinct station house, a detective asked Mr. Conroy why he would fight one of his friends, and Mr. Conroy replied, “Same reason I’m here now,” because I’m a jerk, though Mr. Conroy used a more vulgar phrase, the detective testified.