A jury in Essex County on Friday convicted Montclair attorney James Ray of murder in the fatal shooting of Angela Bledsoe, his long-time girlfriend who who authorities say was about to move out of the house and take the couple’s young child with her.
The jury deliberated for roughly three hours before it delivered its verdict, rejecting Ray’s contention that he had no choice but to fire in self-defense when Bledsoe, 44, pointed a gun at him in the living room of their Upper Montclair home on the morning of Oct. 22, 2018.
Ray stared at the desk and appeared to show no emotion as the jury foreman pronounced the attorney “guilty” on all three counts of murder, unlawful possession of a handgun and possession of a handgun for an unlawful purpose. He faces a maximum term of life in prison when he is sentenced on June 22.
Superior Court Judge Verna G. Leath polled the jury to ensure the verdict was unanimous, then thanked the jurors for their service during the two-month trial before she dismissed them.
Ray, who fled the home after the shooting and headed to Cuba, never denied shooting Bledsoe four times. He didn’t testify, but wrote in his journal that he was had laid three handguns on the coffee table in the living room when Bledsoe picked one up and pointed him.
Coming out of the bathroom, he fired four times, hitting Bledsoe with three bullets.
“He had no choice but to shoot or be shot,” defense attorney Brook M. Barnett told the jury during closing arguments.
The couple’s six-year-old daughter was in school at the time of the shooting, so there were no witnesses.
Still, the prosecution presented a mountain of evidence – phone texts, computer downloads, recorded phone conversations with relatives, and Ray’s own narrative of the shooting and escape contained in his journal and letter to his brother – to convince the jury that Ray meant to kill Bledsoe, who’d had an affair with an old college classmate in Florida and was planning to move out out of the house with the couple’s daughter.
As evidence of the plot, the state introduced the pre-nuptial agreement that Ray wrote out ten days before the shooting which contained a clause that Bledsoe would have to pay him $300,000 if he caught her cheating on him. By that time, the prosecution said, Ray had already learned of the affair after he read text messages on Bledsoe’s phone, the prosecution said.
On the morning she died, Bledsoe had an 11:30 appointment with a realtor to look at house. When Montclair police discovered her body in the kitchen 12 hours later, they found the kitchen clock had fallen off the wall and into the sink. The clock had stopped at 11:14 a.m.
“She never made it,” Assistant Prosecutor Michele Miller told the jury during closing arguments. Shot three times, Bledsoe slumped onto the kitchen floor. When Montclair police discovered the body some 12 hours later, there was a .9mm pistol in a pool of blood close to the body.
By that time, Ray was on his way to Cuba, after packing a suitcase for his daughter and dropping the girl off with his brother, Robert, at a steakhouse in Piscataway.
Robert Ray testified that he opened the daughter’s suitcase around 11:30 that night and found the note written by Ray. Inside the suitcase were two checks that Ray had made out to him to cover expenses while he was away, one for $11,500 and the other for $9,500.
“Does that sound like a man who plans on coming back?” Miller asked the jury.
Ray went to Newark Liberty International Airport, then made his way to Texas. He later crossed the border into Mexico where the hopped a flight to Cuba, arriving in Havana on Oct. 28, 2018, six days after the killing.
By then, an international warrant was out for his arrest, and Ray was detained at the airport in Havana. Nine days later, Cuban authorities handed Ray over to agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and he was brought back to the United States.
He has been locked up ever since.
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Richard Cowen may be reached at rcowen@njadvancemedia.com.