Raras

Co-workers of Emilia D. Raras -- the woman charged with hiring a hit man to kill her daughter-in-law -- testified yesterday that they knew of the custody battle between her son and Sara J. Williamson Raras, and of the elder Raras' friendly association with the man accused of killing the woman. The witnesses, who worked with Raras, 63, and Ardale D. Tickles at a Baltimore County nursing home testified that Raras and Tickles were seen talking on several occasions in the employee lounge and at the nursing station before Sara Raras, 35, was killed at her home on Meadowfield Court in Elkridge.

A key witness in the case against a Baltimore County woman accused of hiring a hit man to kill her daughter-in-law testified yesterday that a friend told her he had been paid to carry out the plot. Tanisha Hodge, 26, testified under a grant of immunity from Howard County prosecutors in the trial of Emilia D. Raras, 63. She is expected to testify in the trial of the friend, Ardale D. Tickles, 20. Raras is accused of hiring Tickles for $3,000 to kill her daughter-in-law, Sara J. Williamson Raras of Elkridge.

Emilia Raras buried her face in her hands and sobbed after a Howard County jury found her guilty in a 1998 murder-for-hire scheme that resulted in the brutal stabbing death of her Elkridge daughter-in-law. Raras of Parkville is scheduled to be sentenced April 20 and could get life in prison. A jury of eight women and four men deliberated nearly 18 hours before finding her guilty shortly after midnight yesterday of first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first-degree murder, but not guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

The trial of a 63-year-old Baltimore County woman on murder-for-hire charges opened yesterday with prosecutors and defense attorneys shaping up a weeklong battle to prove who is responsible for the brutal 1998 slaying of an Elkridge woman. Howard County prosecutors accuse defendant Emilia D. Raras of a seething vengeance that they say led her to hire a co-worker to kill her daughter-in-law. "This is a case about how cold and hard a human heart can be," said Deputy State's Attorney I. Matthew Campbell.

A panel of three Howard County Circuit Court judges has rejected a Baltimore County woman's request for a reduction in the life-without-parole sentence she received for her role in the 1998 death of her Elkridge daughter-in-law. In a brief written opinion issued Monday, Judges Raymond J. Kane Jr., Diane O. Leasure and Lenore R. Gelfman said the arguments offered by Emilia D. Raras and her lawyers - that all levels of the judicial process involved in her case "got it wrong" - "are not within the scope of our review."

A 64-year-old Baltimore County grandmother was sentenced yesterday to life in prison without parole for her role in a murder-for-hire scheme that ended in the death of her daughter-in-law in late 1998. At yesterday's hearing in Howard County Circuit Court, Emilia D. Raras spoke publicly for the first time, saying she never wanted to kill her daughter-in-law, Sara J. Williamson Raras. "I would like to say to the honorable court that I had no intention at all to kill Sara," Raras said between sobs.

Attorneys representing a Parkville woman accused of hiring a hit man to kill her daughter-in-law argued unsuccessfully yesterday that she should be freed from jail and detained at home.During a bail review hearing, Howard County District Court Judge Louis Becker continued the no-bail status of Emilia Raras, 63, who will remain at the Howard County Detention Center.Becker also asked officials to determine what effects incarceration could have on Raras' medical conditions. Her lawyers, Carol James and Clarke Ahlers, said Raras, who has been at the detention center since Wednesday, suffers from heart disease and diabetes.

Maryland's intermediate appellate court has upheld the murder conviction of a Parkville woman in a murder-for-hire scheme that resulted in the death of her daughter-in-law in the younger woman's Elkridge home. In an opinion released yesterday, the Court of Special Appeals rejected defense arguments that a pretrial statement Emilia Raras made to police should have been suppressed and that the trial judge, Howard County Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, should have better answered a jury question about what constitutes first-degree murder.

A Howard County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterdaythat prosecutors can use a statement that a 63-year-old woman gave to police officers who charged her in the death last year of her Elkridge daughter-in-law.Defense attorneys for Emilia Raras of Parkville argued that Judge Dennis M. Sweeney should toss out the statement for various reasons, including what they said was the questionable interrogation of another suspect and Raras' demands to have a lawyer.But in a 25-page ruling released yesterday, Sweeney wrote that Raras "freely and voluntarily" gave her statement to Howard County police in August.

A Baltimore man charged in the 1998 death of an Elkridge woman describes in grisly detail in a secretly tape-recorded conversation how he killed a woman in Howard County that year. That conversation with a police informant exposed a plot allegedly launched by the woman's mother-in-law, a 63-year-old Parkville woman, and led to two arrests in a case that had been stalled for months. Prosecutors played the tape yesterday during a court hearing and are hoping to use it during the trial this month of the mother-in-law, Emilia D. Raras, who has been charged with first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and conspiracy to commit murder.