Southie killer denied new trial
SJC says calling it a ‘horror story’ didn’t taint jury
Edwin Alemany’s Southie murder spree in the summer of 2013 was an American “horror story,” the state’s top court ruled Monday.
The killer kidnapper was denied a new trial by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in a 39-page ruling.
He will remain in the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, where he is serving life without parole.
Alemany argued elements of his insanity defense and the prosecutor’s attempt to “inflame the jury’s emotions” doomed him. The SJC said the trial judge did his job by urging jurors to focus on the facts.
“Describing the alleged crimes as part of a ‘horror story’ did not rise past the level of excusable hyperbole,” the SJC wrote.
Over 20 hours on July 23, 2013, Alemany terrorized three young women in South Boston.
He was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Amy Lord, 24, as she left her apartment. He beat her, forced her into her Jeep at knifepoint and ordered her to make a series of ATM withdrawals totaling $960 before stabbing her to death in Stony Brook Reservation in Hyde Park.
“The defendant took off Lord’s clothes, beat her, stabbed her more than forty times, strangled her, and left her naked body” behind on “an isolated path,” the SJC recounted.
“(He) left the area in Lord’s car, and over the next forty minutes he purchased gasoline in Roslindale … drove back to South Boston, and set fire to Lord’s car,” the SJC added. “The defendant then began to spend Lord’s money, paying cell phone bills; buying a new cell phone, lottery tickets … alcohol.”
That same July day he attacked a 22-year-old woman as she walked along Old Colony Avenue about 18 hours after he killed Lord. He also jumped a third woman as she entered her Gates Street home, stabbing her repeatedly before fleeing.
Alemany cut himself on the knife used in that attack and was arrested at Tufts Medical Center, where he — and the victim who identified him to police — sought treatment.
“I won. He didn’t win,” that young woman said at the sentencing.
Alemany attempted to cover up his crimes by saying he won the Lottery and he partied with a friend after slaying Lord, only to attack another woman. He was “a walking time bomb” well known to police, the Herald wrote that summer.
It all started at 4:23 a.m. that day when Alemany attacked his first victim, who fought him off. Amy Lord was his next target.
“Amy was the girl everybody wanted to be and the one I was lucky enough to call my big sister,” Amy Lord’s sister, Kimberly, said during her time on the stand at sentencing. “We will never be the same without Amy. Losing her has left us forever altered.”
Saying Lord will be “forever twentyfour years old” at the trial is true. Verdict stands, the SJC added.
As for his insanity defense, the SJC ruled the DA’s office proved Alemany’s “loss of capacity resulted solely from the voluntary consumption of alcohol or drugs.” That, the court added, means “the defendant may be held criminally responsible.”