A killer free on parole for one shop clerk’s slaying was convicted today of another after a Suffolk Superior Court jury found him guilty of all charges in the 2009 shooting death of 39-year-old Surendra Dangol at a Jamaica Plain convenience store, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
Jurors convicted EDWARD CORLISS (D.O.B. 2/7/46) of first-degree murder under the theories of deliberate premeditation and felony murder – homicide committed during the commission of a felony. Jurors additionally convicted him of armed robbery while masked and unlawful possession of a firearm for the Dec. 26, 2009, incident that claimed the Somerville man’s life.

“Surendra Dangol did everything we ask and recommend of a robbery victim,” Conley said. “He didn’t resist. He gave up everything he could. He kept his hands in the air and presented no threat. And this defendant shot him in the chest, killing a peaceful man from half a world away whose only goal was to build a better life for his family.”

Dangol immigrated to America from Nepal, where his family resided with the intention of joining him someday. His wife was at work and his daughter was at school when the verdict was returned: they are expected to be present at 2:00 Thursday afternoon, when Corliss faces a mandatory term of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“I only hope they can take some small comfort in the knowledge that Edward Corliss will now spend the rest of his life in prison, a place he never should have left in the first place,” Conley said. “The terrible, terrible tragedy is that it took another senseless murder to achieve that end.”
Corliss had previously been convicted of murdering another store clerk during another armed robbery in Salisbury in 1971. He was released on parole by a Parole Board that has since been disbanded and reconstituted.

During about two and a half weeks of trial, First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan introduced the testimony of almost 40 witnesses and about 300 physical exhibits proving that Corliss lurked outside the Tedeschi’s Food Shop at 779 Centre St. on the day after Christmas, waiting until there were no customers. At about 3:00, wearing a hat, wig, and scarf as a disguise, he entered and robbed Dangol at the point of a .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun.

Store surveillance imagery played at the trial showed Dangol complying with Corliss’ demands, placing all of his cash register’s money into a backpack Corliss provided. The video then shows Dangol stepping back with his hands above his head and Corliss shooting him once in the chest, causing injuries that claimed his life at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Surveillance video from outside the store showed Corliss leaving the scene in a white vehicle believed by experts to have been a Plymouth Acclaim manufactured between 1989 and 1995. Boston Police obtained a list of every such vehicle registered in the greater Boston area and tracked each one down. One of them, it turned out, was registered to Corliss’ wife.

Investigators soon learned that Corliss’ wife drove him to and from the scene. The next day, she drove Corliss to Revere Beach, where he threw the murder weapon into the ocean. Boston Police homicide detectives later recovered the weapon half-buried in the sand at low tide.

After Corliss was arrested and charged with Dangol’s murder, investigators learned he had undertaken a plot to have his wife and other witnesses murdered, offering a fellow inmate proceeds from a future armored car heist if he would assassinate them. Conley’s office secured additional indictments charging Corliss with four counts of witness intimidation for that plot, but a Suffolk Superior Court judge later ruled that the evidence did not support the charges as spelled out under Massachusetts law. Corliss’ wife later died of natural causes.

Assistant District Attorney Janis Noble second-seated Haggan. Catherine Rodriguez was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate assigned to the case. Corliss was represented by attorney John Hayes.