Ex-Carson ER doctor faces murder charges

Felony charges were filed Friday against former Carson City emergency room physician Richard Conte in connection with the 2002 slayings of Carter Elliott, 48, and Timothy Robertson, 25, of Conway, Ark.

Conte has served about nine years of a 15-year sentence in a Nevada prison for administering a drug in the commission of a felony and kidnapping his ex-wife, Lark Gathright-Elliott, who's also the ex-wife of slaying victim Carter Elliott.

Conte - who had been scheduled to be released Sunday - will be held on a warrant charging him with two counts of capital murder.

"Charges have been filed against Richard Conte, and that information will be faxed to a correctional facility in Nevada. The hold will be placed on Mr. Conte while we await extradition," said Arkansas prosecutor Cody Hiland.

Conte was never tried in the slayings of Elliott and Robertson, though police had long considered him a suspect.

"We've felt all along that there was enough evidence to warrant charges," said Conway Police Chief A.J. Gary. "It is up to the prosecutor to make the final decision. We can't speak for the prosecutor at the time as to why charges weren't filed back in 2002."

Conte was a Carson-Tahoe Hospital emergency room doctor when he was arrested in 2002 after kidnapping Gathright-Elliott from her Salt Lake City home. The couple had married in December 2001, but Gathright-Elliott filed for divorce 90 days later.

After the abduction, he then drove her, handcuffed in the back of a van, to his home on Clear Creek Road in Carson City, where he held her chained to a bed for at least two days.

At the time of Carson's sentencing in the kidnapping case in 2003, the Associated Press reported that Conte had entered a plea agreement in which he agreed to forfeit more than 100 weapons and other items, including handguns, rifles, knives, Taster guns, grenades and a grenade launcher.

At a parole hearing in 2008, Conte's appeared in court via closed-circuit television in a wheelchair, suffering from multiple sclerosis.

After he is extradited from Nevada to Arkansas, Conte will be tried on two counts of capital murder in Faulkner County court. It is not yet known when the trial will take place.

• Courtney Spradlin is a reporter with The Log Cabin in Conway, Ark. i