A Chicago woman was sentenced to 70 years Friday after being convicted of murder earlier this month in her ex-girlfriend’s death.
Lydia Conley, 39, said she was innocent and would appeal.
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Lake Superior Judge Pro Tempore Jamise Perkins gave her 60 years for murder and another 10 years on a firearms enhancement.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jessica Arnold alleged Conley was enraged when Delilah Martinez, 40, started dating another man, according to a criminal affidavit.
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Her defense lawyer John Cantrell said during sentencing that at least four other people could have been potential suspects in the case, but he could not gather that evidence.
“This was a case where somebody was wrongfully convicted,” he said.
Police were called Oct. 27, 2019, to the 1100 block of 115th Street in Whiting where they found Martinez shot lying in the grass, a charging affidavit alleged. She was unresponsive.
A Whiting police officer told investigators he heard three “pops” a minute or two before a report came over dispatch. They also found a bullet hole in her car, parked on the street.
Martinez was pronounced dead the next day by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. She was likely shot at close range in the left side of her head and right wrist, with additional apparent graze wounds on the right side of her head and back, charges state.
She and Conley had dated for about a year, moving into Martinez’s house in June 2019. When they broke up a week or two before Martinez’s death, Conley had left her daughter at Martinez’s house, so she could finish the school year at Clark High School.
Conley suspected Martinez was seeing someone else, charges allege.
The day before Martinez was found shot, Conley allegedly cut her off in her car, charges allege. Martinez, who was with her new boyfriend, overheard their conversation on speaker phone.
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“Man, I’m going to kill you,” Conley allegedly said, according to court documents.
“You willing to die for that (expletive),” the man said Conley asked him.
A co-worker later told police Martinez was shaken by the incident.
“If anything happens to me, just know it was Lydia,” Martinez told her, according to court documents.
Cell phone records placed Conley in the Hammond-Whiting Robertsdale section about 18 minutes after the shooting, before heading back to Chicago, according to the affidavit.
