Dana “Mikey” Craney, the 22-year-old Wilton man charged in connection with the murder of his grandmother on Saturday, is the son of a former Lewiston man who was convicted of murder in 1993.
Dana A. Craney, 52, is currently serving a sentence in Maine State Prison, according to the Maine Department of Corrections. His earliest possible release date is July 25, 2029.
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Timothy Feeley, a spokesman for the Office of the Maine Attorney General, said in an email Monday that the attorney general’s office believes the two Craneys are related and that they are father and son.
According to court records, Dana A. Craney and a friend, Willard Eastman, were arrested in May 1993 for the murder of furniture auctioneer Leon Michaud, whose body had been discovered by two woodsmen in a culvert of a rural road in Auburn on Dec. 20, 1990.
Michaud had been shot six times. He had been reported as missing by family members who became worried when he did not keep an appointment in Lewiston.
Craney told police that he had killed Michaud and robbed him of about $2,000 because his rent was due and he had no Christmas presents for his children, according to the court records. Both Dana A. Craney and Eastman were convicted of murder and robbery in 1994. Their appeals were rejected by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1995, and an appeal to federal court was denied in 2009.
Walter Hanstein, the Farmington attorney who represented the younger Craney in court Monday, said he was unsure about the relationship between his client and Dana A. Craney.
“I just met him for the first time today,” Hanstein said, “so I’m really not able to expand beyond what I said today in court, which is that Dana had absolutely no prior criminal record whatsoever, no motor vehicle record or anything.”
Rachel Ohm — 612-2368
Twitter: @rachel_ohm
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