Killer faces victim’s family and life in jail

The tearful wife of Surendra Dangol didn’t have many words for the man who killed her husband.
 
“I am happy that I got justice. I cannot say anything else,” Kalpana Dangol said through an interpreter during Thursday’s sentencing hearing for Edward Corliss.

Corliss was convicted of fatally shooting Dangol, a 39-year-old Nepali immigrant, as he robbed a Tedeschi store in Jamaica Plain on Dec. 26, 2009.

Corliss was on parole for an earlier murder conviction when he killed Dangol.

For the 2009 crime, he was convicted of first-degree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.

Dangol’s brother, Birendra, also spoke at the hearing.

“We were devastated by the incident that happened to my brother, but I’m glad we got justice,” he said. “I am very happy I came from Nepal and got justice here in the United States.”

It took prosecutors more time to recount Corliss’ criminal history than it did for Dangol’s wife and brother to give their statements.

The 65-year-old career criminal was first convicted of a crime as a teen in 1962. Since then he’s spent decades in jail for crimes including breaking and entering and drunken driving.

He was convicted of killing another store clerk in Salisbury in 1971 and was paroled in 2006 for that crime.

At one point he escaped from a prison work crew for nearly two months and was in possession of a gun when he was recaptured.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said that Corliss was “not the kind of man who should have been paroled.”

“The other tragedy is the life that Edward Corliss lived,” Conley said. “Given the kind of life he led, we need to do a better job of understanding career criminals.”