A North Attleboro man who took in a despondent friend was killed in a murderous rampage, and two notorious murder cases with links to the area ended in a Dedham court this past year.

Police say Michael Liss, 25, was fatally stabbed in the chest Sept. 27 during a fight in his North Attleboro home with Cory Hood, 28, an old friend who police reports indicated was despondent. Police allege the two men were using cocaine earlier in the evening.

Hood, a Level III sex offender, then allegedly turned on Liss' girlfriend, Terra Marvitz, 20, who witnessed the stabbing and then tried to telephone for help, police said.

Marvitz fought for her life and fled, bloodied and wounded from stab wounds, to a neighbor's doorstep about 2:15 a.m. She had suffered a fractured skull, multiple stab wounds and a punctured lung, and was released after treatment at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

Hood allegedly fled the house in Liss' pickup truck and was arrested several hours later in Norton. Court officers had to help him stand at his arraignment in Attleboro District Court later that day where innocent pleas were entered on his behalf. He is being held in jail without bail and has since been indicted on murder and attempted murder charges.

He was scheduled to be arraigned in New Bedford Superior Court Jan. 10. A trial could take place in about a year.

In another murder case that made national news, three Norton men were given prison sentences this year in the slaying of an 84-year-old great aunt of one of them in a plan to share in her estate.

After a sensational trial in March in which friends of the men say they openly boasted of a plan to kill the woman and make it appear accidental, Thomas Lally, 25, was convicted of first-degree murder and is now serving life in prison without parole.

During the trial, the jury heard police wire tap conversation in which Jason Weir, who was 16 at the time of the December 2001 murder, talked about how Lally killed Marina Calabro, the great-aunt of his friend Anthony Calabro.

In gripping detail, Weir told the jurors how Lally whacked the woman in the neck with a frying pan, before hitting her with a tea kettle and finally suffocating her with a pillow in her Quincy apartment.

All through this, according to testimony, Anthony Calabro, 23, sat outside in Lally's pickup truck acting as the lookout. Lally and Weir placed the elderly woman on the stairs to make it appear she had died in an accident, according to testimony.

The coverup worked for 10 months, until Weir told a friend, James Morel, who then went to police and agreed to wear a wire.

Lally, a beefy man with short-cropped hair at the time of his arrest, appeared at his trial as a slender, bespectacled man resembling a prep school class president. He testified Weir was the real killer.

After Lally was convicted, Anthony Calabro pleaded guilty in June to second-degree murder and tearfully apologized to his family for all the pain he caused. He will be eligible for parole in less than 15 years. Weir's case ended earlier this month when he pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact in a plea-agreement criticized by family members and the former prosecutor in the case.

He was originally charged with murder, but agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and testify against his former friends in exchange for a 10-year prison term.

However, his lawyer later challenged the agreement, saying the trial testimony produced no evidence that Weir had advance knowledge the murder was going to take place.

Weir, now 21, was sentenced to seven years, but because he has been held in jail four years awaiting trial, he will be out in about three years.

In another court case with startling twists and turns, a state inmate with one murder under his belt was convicted in September in the Dec. 1, 1998, slaying of Irene Kennedy, 75, of Foxboro.

Martin G. Guy, 44, was linked to the murder by DNA left on Kennedy's body in Walpole's Bird Park, where she was bludgeoned, bitten and stabbed.

Guy was serving life for the 1999 stabbing death of a man who lived with him in a Norwood rooming house. Prosecutors matched his DNA to the Kennedy murder in 2003. It had been held in a state data base because of his previous murder conviction.

Earlier this month, a previous suspect in the Kennedy murder, Edmund Burke of Walpole, won a federal lawsuit against a state trooper for wrongful arrest.

Burke, whose brother is married to one of Kennedy's daughters, contended authorities knew his DNA didn't match evidence in the case at the time they arrested him.

Burke spend 41 days in jail before being released and cleared of the heinous murder.

DAVID LINTON can be reached at 508-236-0338 or at dlinton@thesunchronicle.com.