BOSTON, July 12, 2013—Recent DNA tests identifying a potential suspect in the 1964 homicide of Mary Sullivan are the latest, but not the only, example of modern investigative techniques used to clear old and even historic unsolved murders, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said today.
“Advances in DNA testing have allowed us to extract genetic profiles from samples that even a few years ago would have been too small, too old, or too degraded to be useful,” Conley said. “The testing available to police and prosecutors in the 21st century has allowed us to identify assailants in unsolved cold cases and many times win convictions in court.”
Conley, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis this week announced that DNA testing on material from the scene of Sullivan’s murder almost 50 years ago have included ALBERT DeSALVO (D.O.B. 9/3/31) as a potential contributor of biological evidence recovered from her body and excluded 99.9% of the male population. Conley, Coakley, and Davis obtained a search warrant authorizing the exhumation of DeSalvo’s remains to perform confirmatory testing.
Sullivan’s case is one of many older violent crimes in which modern testing brought victims’ families closure.
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. Under Massachusetts law, anyone convicted of a felony must provide a DNA sample, which is entered into a state database and the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, which matches samples from unknown suspects to millions of known offenders. 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.
And earlier this year, 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.
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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
