25 YEARS LATER, TEENAGER’S SLAYING IS DESCRIBED FOR JURY

“It’s been 25 years since Yolanda Hernandes took her last breath,” a Suffolk County prosecutor told a Superior Court jury today, describing in graphic detail the 18-year-old murder victim’s final moments in a vacant Roxbury lot in the winter of 1984.

“It’s been 25 years since this defendant attacked Yolanda Hernandes,” First Assistant District Attorney Josh Wall said of SULTAN OMAR CHEZULU (D.O.B. 10/2/48), charged with first-degree murder for her Dec. 28, 1984 homicide. “It’s been 25 years since this defendant pulled Yolanda Hernandes into an abandoned lot in Roxbury. It’s been 25 years since this defendant raped her.”

Wall, who serves as chief of Superior Court prosecutions for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, told the panel of 16 jurors that Chezulu – who changed his name from ROBERT LOUIS SCOTT – didn’t stop there.

Chezulu “beat her face almost beyond recognition,” Wall said. He fractured her skull and “squeezed the last breath out of that girl [when he] tied a sock around her neck, pulling it tightly enough to kill her.”

The case “went from under investigation to unsolved to a cold case,” he said.

Chezulu was identified after members of her family approached Boston Police to see if there was some new step that could be taken to identify Hernandes’ killer. In fact, Wall said, there was – certain scientific testing unavailable at the time of the murder was now within investigators’ capabilities.

“DNA doesn’t change,” Wall said. “It wasn’t available in 1984, but it is available today. It’s that DNA, that unchanging, reliable, scientific evidence, that will be so valuable to you.”

Hernandes’ killer left traces at the scene that, years later, would clear the case, Wall said.

“A rapist who ejaculates may have committed the perfect crime in 1984,” Wall said, “but now, with DNA, it’s far from the perfect crime. That’s how he’s caught.”

Wall is trying the case with defense attorney Bernard Grossberg before Judge Peter Lauriat in courtroom 906 of Suffolk Superior Court. Testimony is expected to last about a week.