Kristin Sculley pleaded not guilty after prosecutors said Robert Carragher was stabbed while sleeping.

MINEOLA, N.Y. — A 22-year-old Massapequa woman has been indicted on a murder charge after prosecutors said she stabbed a 28-year-old man in the neck while he slept inside his family’s Long Island home.

Kristin Sculley pleaded not guilty June 24 to second-degree murder in the death of Robert Carragher, whose family and friends called him Bobby. The indictment moved the case from an early police account into a formal prosecution, with Nassau County prosecutors alleging a deliberate attack and Sculley’s defense lawyer saying she acted in self-defense. Sculley was ordered held without bail and is due back in court July 24.

Police said the case began late Sunday, May 31, when Sculley and Carragher met before going to the Beaumont Avenue home in Massapequa where Carragher lived with his parents. Investigators said the two had known each other for years and spent several hours in his basement bedroom, watching television. Shortly after 1:30 a.m. June 1, police said, Carragher was stabbed once in the neck. Nassau County Police Detective Lt. George Darienzo said Carragher was lying in bed when he was wounded. “He climbed the stairs to seek the assistance of his mother, screaming,” Darienzo said. His parents tried to stop the bleeding in the kitchen, but Carragher became unresponsive before police medics could save him.

Officers from the Nassau County Police Department’s Seventh Precinct responded to a 911 call for an aided person at the house. They found Carragher on the kitchen floor with a severe neck wound, police said. A police medic pronounced him dead at the scene. Investigators later found Sculley in the basement laundry room near Carragher’s bedroom, according to police and prosecutors. Police said she had a pocketknife with her, and authorities have described a pocketknife or switchblade as the suspected weapon. Officials have not publicly released a final autopsy report, a detailed toxicology report or a full forensic timeline. Darienzo said investigators were looking at possible drug use but said early in the investigation that no drugs were found in the home.

The first public account from police focused on the speed of the attack and the family’s final moments with Carragher. Darienzo said Carragher’s mother and father came to his aid after hearing him scream and tried to control the bleeding. “No family should ever have to bear witness to their son being killed in that manner,” Darienzo said. Carragher was described by friends as warm and funny, and several identified him publicly as Bobby. The home sits in a residential part of Massapequa, a South Shore community in Nassau County where the case drew attention because the killing happened inside a family house, not in a public fight or street encounter. Police said Sculley also lived in Massapequa.

The indictment filed by Nassau County prosecutors accuses Sculley of murder in the second degree, an A-I felony under New York law. Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly’s office said Sculley was arraigned before Judge Robert Bogle and remanded after entering her not guilty plea. If convicted, she faces up to 25 years to life in prison. Prosecutors said Carragher was sleeping when Sculley pulled a knife from her purse and stabbed him. The defense has disputed that account. Defense attorney Dennis Lemke told the court that Sculley said Carragher drugged her and tried to sexually assault her before she stabbed him once. Prosecutors rejected that claim and said the evidence supports murder.

The June 24 hearing showed the case had already become sharply contested. Lemke said Sculley had struggled with drug addiction and had recently relapsed. He said she gave police a statement early in the case saying she had been assaulted and drugged. He also questioned whether investigators moved quickly enough to have her examined for a possible sexual assault. Prosecutors said Sculley and Carragher had been using drugs together, argued, and that she stabbed him while he slept before hiding in the laundry room. Family members from both sides were in court, and the courtroom turned emotional when the self-defense claim was raised. One person shouted “liar,” according to accounts from the hearing.

The timeline now turns to evidence. Prosecutors are expected to rely on police reports, witness statements from Carragher’s parents, forensic testing on the knife, blood evidence from the basement and kitchen, and any statements Sculley made to detectives. The defense is expected to press its claim that Sculley feared an assault and acted to protect herself. It is not yet clear what surveillance video, phone records, text messages or toxicology results may become part of the case. Police have not said what sparked the alleged argument or whether investigators found evidence of a struggle in the bedroom. Those questions are likely to shape the next court date.

For Carragher’s family, the case remains tied to the house where he died. Police said his parents were the first people to reach him after he made it upstairs from the basement, bleeding and screaming. Friends who spoke publicly after the killing said he was known for making people laugh. Thomas Maloney, identified as a friend, said, “Anybody who knew Bobby, he was the funniest person alive.” Sculley’s relatives left court without comment after earlier proceedings. The families are now separated by the same local community and by competing accounts of what happened in a basement bedroom in the early morning hours.

The July 24 hearing will be the case’s next public step, with Sculley held without bail and prosecutors expected to continue pressing the murder charge in Nassau County court.

Author note: Last updated July 6, 2026.