Stratford man with prior domestic violence arrest charged with girlfriend's murder after calling 911 on himself

Neighbors told News 12 fighting was a common occurrence for the couple, including in front of other people.

Marissa Alter

Oct 21, 2025, 10:11 AM

Updated 1 hr ago

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A Stratford man is now charged with murder for the deadly stabbing of his long-time girlfriend after he called 911 to report himself, according to Stratford police.
"Around 7 last night, the dispatch center received a call from Mr. Mulvey stating that he had stabbed his girlfriend and that he wanted to kill himself," stated Capt. Jerry Pinto, adding that it came five months after officers responded to a different domestic violence incident there.
When police arrived at 86 Griffen St., which is part of a Stratford Housing Authority complex, they said they found 67-year-old Stanley Mulvey, lying on top of his unresponsive girlfriend with a bloody kitchen knife nearby. Megan McShane, 62, lived there with Mulvey and was pronounced dead on scene, according to police. They said Mulvey put up a bit of a struggle when officers tried to arrest him but later repeatedly confessed.
"He made several admissions to us throughout the night. Most of those are recorded so we have those as evidence," Pinto said. "They had been in an argument. I'm not going to get into the details of what they were arguing about.
Neighbors told News 12 fighting was a common occurrence for the couple, including in front of other people.
"I told him, I said, 'I noticed that you guys fight more when you're drinking.' And he would always say, 'We're cutting back on our drinking,' stuff like that, but it wasn't happening," Gary Maloney said.
Maloney said he witnessed Mulvey physically assault McShane more than once.
"He slapped her. Just trying to be a good person, I said, 'You can't do that.' I wasn't confrontational, and then he said, 'Come on out here and I'll slap you, too.' That's a threat," recalled Maloney, who said he contacted police during that incident in May.
Pinto said officers responded and arrested Mulvey on domestic violence charges, but News 12 couldn't find any online record of the case or a protective order.
"From what I understand, she did not want to cooperate with the state's attorney's office, and they were forced to retract the protective order," Pinto explained.
Police said Mulvey is a convicted felon, but it's unclear what the case was or when it occurred. News 12 covered his arrest in October 2010 after he was charged with assaulting two Norwalk officers who'd responded to a disturbance between Mulvey and an ex in the parking lot of a storage facility. In 2012, a jury found him not guilty of the most serious charges at trial but convicted him of misdemeanors, leading to a two-year prison sentence. Court records show his most recent conviction was for breach of peace in 2019 and resulted in 18 months of probation.
"When they decided to let him in here, they put everybody in this complex in a position of getting hurt," Maloney said, adding that he went to the town housing authority with his concerns that Mulvey was a danger.
Maloney told News 12 he provided multiple incident reports against Mulvey, but nothing was ever done.
"I wasn't surprised at all because I told housing somebody was going to get hurt," Maloney stated. "Megan was a flower child, you know? She wanted to be everybody's friend. She was a good soul."
Mulvey is charged with murder and interfering with an officer and is being held on $1 million bond. He was supposed to be arraigned Tuesday but went to the hospital for a mental health evaluation, according to police. He'll now go before a judge Wednesday where more about his history is expected to be revealed.
News 12 reached out to the Stratford Housing Authority about Maloney's claims but did not hear back yet.