BOSTON, Dec. 11, 2017—More than twenty-five years after Lena Bruce was sexually assaulted and murdered in her South End apartment, a Suffolk Superior Court jury convicted the man whose unique genetic profile matched the one in evidence recovered from the crime scene, District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

After about three days of deliberations, jurors convicted JAMES WITKOWSKI (D.O.B. 11/27/72) of first-degree murder under the theory of felony murder. He faces a mandatory life term at a sentencing hearing later this week. Jurors did not consider a sexual assault charge because the statute of limitations in place at the time of the offense had expired.

21-year-old Lena Bruce was sexually assaulted and killed in her home in 1992. Her killer was convicted of first-degree murder today.

During five days of testimony, First Assistant District Attorney Patrick Haggan and Assistant District Attorney Cailin Campbell of the DA’s Appellate Division introduced evidence and testimony proving that Bruce – 21 years old, originally from Philadelphia, and a recent graduate of the Tufts University School of Engineering – was bound with a telephone cord, sexually assaulted, and asphyxiated by Witkowski on or about July 11, 1992.

Investigators determined that Bruce had been killed by an intruder who gained access to the apartment through an open window that led directly to a fire escape accessible from the alley behind the building. The crime scene was processed, leading to the recovery of two pieces of biological evidence from Bruce’s body. Criminalists found sperm cells that were still intact, suggesting that they had been left a relatively short period of time prior to her death; they also found skin cells beneath her fingernails. These items were stored under laboratory conditions.

In 1998, the evidence showed, the Boston Police Crime Lab tested both samples and found that they shared the same DNA profile, meaning that they came from a single source. That DNA profile was uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database of DNA profiles from unsolved crimes and known offenders. There was no match.

In 2014, Witkowski was charged with a criminal offense in Brockton, violating his probation on an earlier conviction for assault and battery and triggering an 18-month house of correction sentence. Because of prior convictions for possession of a Class B substance with intent to distribute and uttering, he was ordered to provide a DNA sample. His DNA profile was also uploaded to CODIS, leading to a “hit,” or match to the evidence in Bruce’s homicide, a few months later.

After a renewed investigation by Suffolk prosecutors and the Boston Police Cold Case Squad, Witkowski was indicted for first-degree murder in September 2015. By that time, however, both of Bruce’s parents had passed away.

“All of us hope that Lena’s loved ones can take some comfort in knowing that justice has finally been done in her name,” Conley said. “But it pains us to know that her parents went to their graves without knowing who had taken the light from their lives. That could have been avoided. Between 2003, when Massachusetts passed a law requiring felons to submit a DNA sample, and 2014, when this defendant actually submitted his, he had been arrested seven times.  Unfortunately, there was no legal mechanism in place to ensure his compliance with the law until he was incarcerated. DNA evidence can be a powerful tool to identify the guilty and exonerate the innocent, but the database is only as effective as the samples that comprise it. Expanding that database will mean solving and preventing more crimes of violence, especially sexual violence.”

Bruce’s case is one of a dozen Boston homicides solved in part through DNA testing during the past 10 years in which modern testing brought closure to a once-cold case.

In 2010, a DNA profile extracted from evidence in the 1972 rape and murder of Ellen Rutchick, 23, in her Beacon Street residence matched that of MICHAEL SUMPTER (D.O.B. 9/26/47), whose DNA was taken after his conviction for an unrelated and non-fatal sexual assault. In 2012, evidence from the 1973 sexual assault and homicide of 24-year-old Mary Lee McClain in her Mount Vernon Street apartment was also entered into CODIS and also hit on Sumpter’s profile.

Sumpter died of cancer in 2001.

In 2011, similar testing led investigators to suspect RICHARD STROTHER (D.O.B. 1/29/48) in the 1979 homicide of Daryal Hargett, 29, in the South End and the 1980 homicide of Cheryl Upshaw, 29, in Roxbury. Both women were sexually assaulted and strangled by ligatures inside their homes, which were about two miles from one another, and nearby to the scene of a third similar murder – that of Lois Hood, 31, who was also sexually assaulted and strangled with a ligature in her Roxbury home in 1980. Strother was arrested and tried for Hood’s murder but was acquitted of that crime.

Strother died in 1998. His DNA was not stored in CODIS; rather, he had given a saliva sample for testing in connection with Hood’s murder and a partial DNA profile remained for testing against the evidence in the Hargett and Upshaw homicides, leading to a match.

But prosecutors have also had success in prosecuting living offenders for crimes committed decades ago after successful DNA testing.

One such case was that of SULTAN OMAR CHEZULU (D.O.B. 10/2/48), a.k.a. ROBERT LOUIS SCOTT, convicted in 2010 of first-degree murder for the 1984 sexual assault and beating death of 18-year-old Elsie “Yolanda” Hernandes in a vacant Roxbury lot. Chezulu was convicted of a felony in 2004 and ordered to submit a DNA sample; a few years later, Hernandez’ family asked that investigators review the evidence in an effort to identify her killer. The crime scene evidence was submitted to CODIS and hit on Chezulu’s profile.

In 2012, serial rapist CHARLES H. BROOK, Jr. (D.O.B. 10/3/44) pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the 1989 rape and strangulation of 87-year-old Zahia Salem in her South End apartment. Brook was linked through a DNA match to cigarette butts at the scene of Salem’s murder and skin tissue found beneath her fingernails at autopsy.

Also in 2012, EUGENE SUTTON (D.O.B. 5/16/65) pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the 1989 fatal stabbing of Richard Gleason, 38, in a Dorchester apartment then frequented by drug users. Though Sutton had been a person of interest to the first generation of investigators, it wasn’t until DNA testing linked him to the crime through a bloodstain on the victim’s jacket that the evidence supported criminal charges.

In 2013, a Suffolk Superior Court jury found MICHAEL COKER (D.O.B. 7/3/62) guilty of second-degree murder for the 1988 strangulation of Janet Phinney, 20, in a wooded area near her West Roxbury home. Coker was Phinney’s ex-boyfriend and, though he was a longtime suspect in her homicide, investigators had insufficient evidence to charge him until DNA technology was used to link him to biological evidence recovered from her remains.

Kara Hayes is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate on the Lena Bruce case. Witkowski was represented by attorney Daniel Solomon. Judge Mitchell Kaplan will sentence him to a mandatory life term on Dec. 14 at 2:00 pm in courtroom 907.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.