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.
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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.
Caryn Bonner was found stabbed to death in her Dorchester apartment on May 19, 1999.Boston Police Department
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.
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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.
President Trump holds up an executive order to limit mail-in voting as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick looks on in the White House’s Oval Office in March.
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President Trump’s executive order to limit voting by mail has hit a legal hurdle.
On Thursday, a Boston-based judge blocked parts of the order that, at least so far, has not directly affected mail-in voting for this year’s midterm primary elections.
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The legal fight, however, is likely to continue. The order pushes the boundaries of Trump’s authority under the Constitution, which gives state legislatures and Congress — not the U.S. president — the power to set the rules for federal elections.
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the new ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, as a separate appeal of an earlier ruling by another federal judge moves forward in a similar set of lawsuits based in Washington, D.C.
Among other directives, Trump’s order from March calls for the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Service to create lists of adult U.S. citizens or eligible voters in each state. It also calls for USPS, which is independent of a president’s administration, to deliver mail-in ballots only to people on those lists.
In response, USPS has proposed using information from state election officials to create voter lists. Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers Wednesday that under the proposal, the Postal Service would not deliver the mail ballots of any states that refuse to turn over their absentee voter lists to the federal government.
For the D.C.-based cases, the judge found in late May that it was too early for an emergency ruling that would block directives that the Trump administration has yet to carry out. Democrats are appealing that judge’s ruling to the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia.
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Editor’s note: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR.
The boy was stabilized and flown to a Boston hospital, police said.
By Carson Lyle
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A 13-year-old boy was flown to a Boston hospital after he was found unresponsive in a swimming pool at a home in Beverly on Wednesday afternoon, police said.
Police and firefighters were called to a home on Parramatta Road after bystanders pulled the boy from the pool, the Beverly Police Department wrote in a press release.
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Bystanders administered CPR until first responders arrived, according to police. First responders continued CPR and other “life saving measures,” police said.
An ambulance took the boy to Beverly Hospital where he was stabilized. He was then taken by medical helicopter to a Boston hospital, police said.
The incident is currently being investigated by Beverly police, the department said.
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