SJC rejects Boston killer’s appeal for a new trial in rape, murder of Tufts grad
A one in 4.8 quadrillion DNA match sent James Witkowski to jail for life and the state’s highest court has ruled that’s where he’ll remain.
“This is justice for Lena, her family and her friends,” said Dan Conley, the district attorney when the Boston cold case was cracked by a DNA database hit. “This entire investigation is an example of just how hard police and prosecutors work.”
Tufts University engineering graduate Lena Bruce, 21, was raped and murdered in her South End apartment in July 1992 by Witkowski, a homeless man who panhandled in the neighborhood.
The state Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling, issued Friday, finds that because Witkowski committed aggravated rape and murder, it is “felony-murder” and he is never getting out of jail.
The state’s inmate finder lists Witkowski as being imprisoned at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum-security jail in Lancaster.
Witkowski, convicted in 2017 after walking around free for two decades after murdering Lena Bruce, was seeking a new trail — or a reduced sentence — based on a series of grotesque arguments.
His legal team argued he tied the victim up, as he claimed to have done for others, with a telephone cord and that he raped her after she was suffocated. The SJC didn’t buy it.
Because the victim was tied up with the cord and her phone destroyed, that qualified as aggravated rape, a felony. Once the murder occurred, the “felony-murder” sentence of life without parole for the “continuous event” kicked in.
Conley, now in private practice at the city’s Mintz firm, said cold cases are some of the toughest to deal with. Loved ones, police, prosecutors and friends all live with relentless doubt.
“You want to bring closure, and in this case we were able to,” Conley told the Herald this weekend. “Lena’s family and friends never let us forget. She had so much promise.”
In 1992, the cops said, Witkowski frequented a homeless shelter and a stoop near the young victim’s first-floor Massachusetts Avenue apartment.
In 2014, he violated probation for a prior assault and battery conviction and was sentenced to the South Bay House of Correction. Because he had been convicted of a felony in 1995, State Police collected a mandatory DNA swab.
As the Herald reported back then, Witkowski dared police to looked deeper. So they did.
During his precharge questioning for Bruce’s slaying, Witkowski suggested that they “double-check everything.” They did.
An empty wallet was checked, condom packets and a bottle of baby oil also near the scene were tested. Police processed everything for prints and came up empty — nothing but smears and smudges.
Tucked inside the wallet, never tested for prints, was a tiny tab of paper with a Tennessee phone number the police were never able to trace. Witkowski’s fingerprint was still intact on it nearly a quarter-century after the crime.
The SJC noted DNA evidence from the sexual assault and under the victim’s fingernails also were a match.
It all points to Witkowski, now in his 50s.
“We affirm the conviction and discern no reason to exercise our authority to reduce the verdict or to order a new trial,” the SJC stated, adding the jury did it’s job, as did the judge, and “there was no substantial likelihood of a miscarriage of justice.”
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3vDRmKh
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