BOSTON, December 14, 2017— As her killer was sentenced to life in prison today, Lena Bruce’s friends and loved ones recalled the young woman as a “diamond” whose bright future was stolen 25 years ago.
JAMES WITKOWSKI (D.O.B. 11/27/72) faced sentencing today after a Suffolk Superior Court jury on Monday found him guilty of first-degree murder in Bruce’s 1992 homicide. Judge Mitchell Kaplan imposed the mandatory term for the offense of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
21-year-old Lena Bruce was sexually assaulted and killed in her home in 1992. Her killer was sentenced to life in prison today.
Before Kaplan imposed Witkowski’s sentence, however, he heard victim impact statements from those who knew and loved her.
“We have lost our parents and a brother during the wait for justice for our sister,” Bruce’s sisters wrote in a statement that was read to the court by Derrick Greene, one of Lena’s close friends, lamenting the decades-long wait for answers while the case went unsolved and mourned a promising life cut short.
“We will never see what more she would have accomplished in her life,” Greene read. “We will never see her wedding day or her children who, without a doubt, would have been geniuses just like their mother.”
Family members spoke of her continuing legacy – not just through the scholarship that bears her name through the Xi Tau Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, of which she was a member, but in the hearts of those who looked up to her as they grew up in Philadelphia many years ago.
“I remember Lena because she was nice to me,” Trina Walker wrote of the young woman who would move to Boston, attend Tufts, and become the only African-American woman in her class to graduate from the school’s engineering program. “Waving at us kids playing jacks on the steps. Turning down Cambridge Street with her slow, poised steps. I used to think she modeled or danced at school.”
“Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed,” Bruce’s former roommate who found her dead said of the conviction 25 years after she found Bruce’s body in their apartment. “I am so very thankful for every individual in the criminal justice system who worked tirelessly on this case since July 12, 1992, the day Lena was taken from me, her family, her friends, and all who knew her.”
First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan and Assistant District Attorney Cailin Campbell of the DA’s Appellate Division presented evidence and testimony to prove that Bruce, a 21-year-old graduate of Tufts University School of Engineering, had been bound, sexually assaulted, and asphyxiated inside her South End apartment by an intruder. DNA evidence collected at the time was later entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, but did not immediately match a known offender.
In 2014, Witkowski was charged with a criminal offense in Brockton, violating his probation on an earlier conviction for assault and battery and resulting in an 18-month house of correction sentence. Because of a 1995 felony conviction, he was ordered to provide a DNA sample. Within months of Witkowski’s unique genetic profile being entered into the CODIS database, it was matched to the DNA sample left by Bruce’s killer.
A renewed investigation by Suffolk prosecutors and the Boston Police Cold Case Squad led to Witkowski’s indictment in 2015.
“Of all the places Lena Bruce could have chosen to put down roots and thrive, she chose Boston,” Conley said. “We never gave up hope that we could one day give her family the answers they longed for, and today that job is done. Their wait is over. Some small measure of the justice they deserved has finally been delivered.”
Kara Hayes was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Witkowski was represented by attorney Daniel Solomon.
–30–
All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
