7 years later, still no justice for Jeremiah
Case still haunts community, homicide probe continues
A sky-blue cross adorned with a shiny blue garland and yellow flowers peeks out from the side of Interstate 190 in Sterling, tucked away into a small gully surrounded by trees.
A Spiderman toy and a small string of brightly colored bulbs hang from the upper part of the cross, with more toys on the ground below next to little daffodils that have just begun to bloom. “JEREMIAH,” the cross reads in all capital letters, with a light affixed to the top and more staked into the ground to illuminate it in the dark.
The roadside memorial, still lovingly maintained by area residents, marks where Jeremiah Oliver was found exactly seven years ago today.
The 5-year-old Fitchburg boy was last seen alive by relatives in September 2013, but he was not reported missing until that December. It would be a full four months before his little body would be found in a suitcase on the side of that highway.
Jeremiah’s mother, Elsa Oliver, and her then-boyfriend, Alberto Sierra, were convicted in Worcester Superior Court in 2017 on charges related to abuse and endangerment of Oliver’s other two children, but there has been no conviction for Jeremiah’s death. Both Oliver and Sierra had received charges related to
Jeremiah — including kidnapping, assault and battery and permitting injury to a child — but they were dropped to avoid double jeopardy while the homicide investigation continues.
Paul Jarvey, a spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early, said Wednesday the case remains under investigation and declined to comment further.
The child’s autopsy listed the cause of death as “homicidal violence of undetermined etiology.”
“We thought, at the end of the day, there would be some repercussions for what they did to that child,” Judy Reardon said. “And seven years later, we’re all still screaming ‘justice for Jeremiah.'”
‘Every detective, every person that’s worked on that case, has not given up on it.’
– Fitchburg Police Chief Ernest Martineau, who was involved in the probe into Jeremiah Oliver’s disappearance
‘That little boy deserved more than what happened to him, and what is happening to him still.’
Searches and vigils
Reardon, along with Tami Arguelles, Mike Alvarado and Dina Hammad, were among many Fitchburg residents who came together to conduct searches and vigils for Jeremiah, and later fundraised for his headstone and a memorial bench at Coggshall Park.
Reardon said the community rallied for “a baby that nobody protected, not even his own mom.”
Jeremiah touched them all in their own way, many as parents who could not fathom allowing something like this to happen to their own children. For Alvarado, it was also the hope that he could help Jeremiah’s relatives find the closure that evaded his own family for so long after his sister went missing years earlier.
“We were searching at night, 12 o’clock midnight, we went early morning,” Alvarado said. “We went deep down, knee-deep in the snow, we went in the Nashua River. We went all over Fitchburg.”
They prayed Jeremiah was somewhere safe, that he was at his grandmother’s home in Florida, as Oliver had told the state Department of Children and Families.
“We just wanted to have a little bit of hope that somebody had him hidden somewhere,” Hammad said, but a gut feeling told Commissioner Olga Roche them otherwise. resigned in light of the
Learning that he had deaths of Jeremiah and been dumped on the side two other children. The of a highway “like a piece agency underwent an overof trash” was devastating, haul in an attempt to corArguelles said. rect the untenable casel
The Oliver family had an oads and other issues that open case with DCF for led to Jeremiah slipping more than two years at the through the cracks, but time, following a 2011 recame under scrutiny again port alleging neglect of the following the 2015 death of three children. According Bella Bond, and most reto a report from the state cently, David Almond, durOffice of the Child Advoing the coronavirus pancate, the family’s initial sodemic. cial worker had kept up Jennifer Lane, president with monthly visits and of Community VOICES, a service referrals. But after local child protection and the family moved to Fitchvictim advocacy organizaburg and their case was tion, said Jeremiah’s case transferred in January exposed many gaps in the 2013 to the North Central system that can only be Area Office — which had filled by making protection some of the highest caselof children the main priorthe oad state per ity.“— worker their new ratios social in The greatest justice worker failed to make regthat can be served at this ular visits and properly inpoint in time, is that no vestigate subsequent reother child suffer the same ports of abuse and neglect fate as Jeremiah,” Lane that spring. said. “Sadly, with the pandemic, the decrease in home visits by DCF and school closures, we will likely see more cases if these patterns continue.”
Fitchburg Police Chief
– Tami Arguelles, one of the many Fitchburg residents who participated in the searches when Jeremiah Oliver went missing
DCF overhaul
Three employees were fired and another was disciplined for mishandling the case, and then-DCF
Ernest Martineau is still haunted by Jeremiah’s case. He ran the department’s detective bureau at the time, and had a frontrow seat to the investigation and how the case deeply affected the entire community. In his 34 years in law enforcement, it’s one of the cases that hit him the hardest, and “will never be erased from my memory,” he said.
Though there hasn’t been any public movement in the case for years, Martineau said he has “the utmost confidence” that local and State Police investigators will continue to work to bring those responsible for Jeremiah’s death to justice.
“Every detective, every person that’s worked on that case, has not given up on it,” Martineau said.
On the charges related to Oliver’s other children, Sierra was sentenced to six to seven years in prison and three years probation. Oliver was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail.
Both received credit for time served prior to their convictions.
According to the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee, Oliver was released Jan. 10, 2020. Sierra was released from the North Central Correctional Institute in Gardner March 25, 2020, according to the state Department of Correction.
Reached on Facebook, Oliver declined to speak with a reporter, saying she’d “had enough trauma,” and then blocked the
reporter. Sierra could not be reached directly or through the attorney that represented him in the matter, Alan Black.
Reardon and Arguelles
said they’ve lost all faith in the system that failed Jeremiah and his siblings, who were sent to live with Oliver’s family in Florida.
“That little boy deserved more than what happened to him, and what is happening to him still,” Arguelles said.
Jeremiah doesn’t get to have birthdays, Christmas or play in the playground — while Oliver and Sierra now walk free, Arguelles and Reardon said.
Rosa Oliver, Jeremiah’s aunt, said the family still hopes to find justice for him, and asked those who have information to come forward. She questioned how they could not have any regrets about what happened to this little boy.
“How are you going to hold all this information and not tell nobody?” she said.
“It’s going to haunt you in the long-run that you did not say anything and let him have justice,” Oliver said.