[chris]

The Rev. Edward Hinds, 61, was stabbed to death in his St. Patrick Church rectory in Chatham Borough after reaching 911 during the attack, but no officers were sent when parish custodian Jose Feliciano answered a callback and said there was no emergency, according to trial testimony and court records.

Hinds was found dead on the morning of Oct. 23, 2009, after he did not appear for morning Mass. Feliciano, 64, the church's longtime custodian, was charged with murder that weekend after investigators recovered the priest's cell phone, bloody clothing and bloody rags near his home in Easton, Pennsylvania, police said.

Cell phone records from Verizon Wireless introduced at trial showed Hinds's phone reached 911 at 5:26:04 p.m. on Oct. 22 through a cell tower in Florham Park. A New Jersey State Police 911 call center called back 51 seconds later on the same tower and reached voicemail. A second callback at 5:27:43 p.m. connected through a tower in Chatham.

Witnesses who knew Hinds identified his voice on the call he placed, though they said the words were unintelligible. On the second callback, the operator asked, "Yes. This is the State Police. You called 9-1-1. Do you have an emergency?" A man replied, "No, we don't. Thank you." Three people who worked at the parish identified that voice as Feliciano's and said they could hear the priest in the background. Prosecutors told jurors Hinds was saying that everything was not all right, and that the operator evidently did not hear him.

Police said the first call was disconnected before the dispatcher could obtain an exact address, and that no police services were dispatched. The State Police said 911 calls from cell phones were routed to a state call center and then forwarded to the department covering the town where the call originated, and that the handling of the call was under investigation. Chatham police referred questions to the Morris County Prosecutor's Office.

The medical examiner for Morris, Sussex and Warren counties, Dr. Ronald Suarez, testified that Hinds had 44 stab wounds, six of them immediately life threatening, and that a wound to the neck fractured part of his windpipe. Feliciano admitted the stabbing but asked jurors to find passion/provocation manslaughter, testifying that Hinds fired him five months before his planned retirement and had coerced him into sexual contact for four years by threatening to disclose three 1988 charges in Philadelphia involving a minor that he never answered in court. Prosecutors said the account was fabricated and that Hinds had moved to dismiss him after a parish review of child protection records turned up a gap in his background check.

The jury convicted Feliciano on Dec. 22, 2011, of murder, felony murder, two counts of first-degree robbery, two weapons counts and hindering apprehension, after a trial that spanned 28 days. Prosecutors brought the robbery and felony murder counts because he took the priest's cell phone during the attack. Superior Court Judge Thomas Manahan sentenced him on April 20, 2012, to life in prison without parole on the murder count, a concurrent 20 years for robbery and a consecutive five years for hindering apprehension.