Boston cold case: Man charged with murder in woman’s 1999 fatal stabbing

A Boston man was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Caryn Bonner on Tuesday, more than 25 years after the 34-year-old was found stabbed to death in her Dorchester apartment.

After remaining an unsolved case for decades, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office connected 54-year-old convicted murderer Cornell Bell to Bonner’s killing through DNA evidence, the district attorney’s office said in a Wednesday press release.

Bell pleaded not guilty to the murder charge during his arraignment in Suffolk County Superior Court on Tuesday.

“We never consider a homicide case unsolvable, no matter how much time has elapsed,” Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in the release.

Bonner’s sister found her body in the kitchen of Bonner’s apartment at 467 Columbia Road on May 19, 1999, the district attorney’s office said. At the time, Bonner’s sister hadn’t heard from her in several days and was checking up on her.

For a time, Bell was on the run from police. He was added to Massachusetts State Police’s Most Wanted List after being charged with the murder of his estranged girlfriend, Michele Clarke.

Clarke was killed in Weymouth on Aug. 19, 2017. After harassing Clarke at work, Bell went to her home and waited for her to return, according to State Police. A fatal confrontation ensued when she got home. Bell then fled in her truck, which was recovered in Florida days later.

A Norfolk County jury found Bell guilty of murdering Clarke in July 2022, the district attorney’s office said. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and is currently serving out his sentence.

After Bell was convicted, his DNA profile was entered into the FBI’s national DNA database, the district attorney’s office said. As a result, investigators discovered that his profile matched DNA recovered from a cigarette butt found in Bonner’s apartment.

Following the breakthrough in the case, investigators revisited other evidence in Bonner’s killing, the district attorney’s office said. They then linked one of Bell’s fingerprints to a latent fingerprint found in blood in Bonner’s apartment using crime scene photos.

The district attorney’s office did not speak to a potential motive in Bonner’s killing.

In the wake of Bonner’s death, her mother described her to The Boston Herald as a happy, kind-hearted person with many friends, whose favorite activity was watching sports on TV. Bonner’s neighbors told the newspaper she was known for running errands for older adults in her apartment building.

Bell is due back in court on Feb. 19.