Convicted sex offender charged with ’88 murder
A convicted sex offender is being held without bail after pleading not guilty to the murder of a woman 33 years ago in South Boston in a cold case cracked using a DNA database.
Richard Vega, 60, who has several aliases, was arraigned Tuesday in connection to the killing of Judy Chamberlain, 21, in 1988 inside the former Fargo Building in what is now the Seaport District, said Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins.
“Our family has waited 33 years for someone to be arrested for the brutal death of our sister Judy,’’ the victim’s brother, who was not identified, said in a statement. “We thank all of those involved in his capture. Our sister can now lay in peace and our family has closure. We love and miss you, Judy.”
A maintenance worker found Chamberlain’s body on July 28, 1988, in the basement of 451 D St., Verner said. A ligature mark on her neck suggested that she had been strangled from behind, Assistant District Attorney John Verner said.
Biological evidence collected from the victim’s body indicated that she had been sexually assaulted by her killer, Verner said. A DNA sample collected during the initial investigation was submitted to the FBI’s Combined DNA Indexing System, which compares samples
from unknown assailants with the DNA profiles of known offenders.
Suffolk County prosecutors and detectives assigned to the Boston Police Department’s Homicide Unit identified Vega as a suspect in 2011, when the indexing system’s database matched the suspected killer’s DNA to the DNA profile. Vega, a convicted sex offender, was civilly committed under Massachusetts’ sexually dangerous person law in connection with the 1987 rape of a 72-year-old woman, Verner said.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for those crimes.
As his release from prison neared, prosecutors petitioned to have Vega civil
ly committed. A jury found him sexually dangerous in 2008, and he remains civilly committed.
Despite the 2011 DNA match, prosecutors at the time didn’t believe that they had enough evidence to meet their burden of proving Vega’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The investigation continued, but the case remained open.
“I would like to thank the Boston Police Department for finally finding the guy who took my sister’s life,” Judy’s sister said in a statement. “He took our sister, my mother’s daughter.”
Rollins had the DA’s office take a fresh look at unsolved cases through an initiative she called Project
for Unsolved Suffolk Homicides, or PUSH. As part of that effort, the investigation into Chamberlain’s murder was renewed and additional evidence was presented to a Suffolk County grand jury. That grand jury returned an indictment on Aug. 30, 2021, charging Vega with her murder.
“Ms. Chamberlain’s life mattered. And (we) will seek a lifetime of accountability for her brutal murder and callous disposal,” Rollins said. “Her family and loved ones never stopped loving and missing her, and we never stopped searching for answers. We are so grateful for the excellent police and investigative work that got us to this moment.”