New Bedford Highway Killer

The New Bedford Highway Killer is an unidentified serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least nine women and the disappearances of two additional women in New Bedford, Massachusetts, between March 1988 and April 1989. The killer is also suspected to have assaulted numerous other women. All the killer's victims were known sex workers or had struggles with addiction. While the victims were taken from New Bedford, they were all found in different surrounding towns, including Dartmouth, Freetown, and Westport, Massachusetts, along Route 140. The main detective that pursued the case was John Dextradeur.[1]

New Bedford Highway Killer
Details
Victims9–11
Span of crimes
March 1988–April 1989
CountryUnited States
State(s)New Bedford, Massachusetts
Date apprehended
Unapprehended

Victims[2]
  1. Robbin Rhodes, 28, last seen in New Bedford, March/April 1988. Body found March 28, 1989, along Route 140.
  2. Rochelle Clifford Dopierala, 28, last seen in New Bedford, late April 1988. Body found December 10, 1988, along Reed Road, two miles from Interstate 195.
  3. Debroh Lynn McConnell, 25, last seen in New Bedford, May 1988. Body found December 1, 1988, off Route 140.
  4. Debra Medeiros, 30, last seen in New Bedford, May 27, 1988. Body found July 3, 1988, on Route 140.
  5. Christine Monteiro, 19, last seen in New Bedford, late May 1988
  6. Marilyn Roberts, 34, last seen in New Bedford, June 1988
  7. Nancy Paiva, 36, last seen in New Bedford, July 7, 1988. Body found July 30, 1988, alongside Interstate 195.
  8. Debra DeMello, 35, last seen in New Bedford, July 11, 1988. Body found November 8, 1988, alongside Interstate 195.
  9. Mary Rose Santos, 26, last seen in New Bedford, July 16, 1988. Body found March 31, 1989, along Route 88.
  10. Sandra Botelho, 24, last seen in New Bedford, August 11, 1988. Body found April 24, 1989, along Interstate 195.
  11. Dawn Mendes, 25, last seen in New Bedford, September 4, 1988. Body found November 29, 1988, alongside Interstate 195.

Suspects

Anthony DeGrazia

In May 1989, Anthony DeGrazia was identified by a locally known New Bedford sex worker by means of a picture provided by a young, inexperienced detective, Loraine Forrest. The sex worker, who described the assailant as having a "flat nose," never named DeGrazia as a positive suspect, but stated that he looked like the man who assaulted her. Anthony DeGrazia was later accused of 17 rapes and assaults on several sex workers. Based on allegations, DeGrazia was questioned, arrested, and charged with the 17 rapes and assaults, while also being investigated as a suspect in the nine murders along area highways.

After 15 months of incarceration and 18 court appearances, DeGrazia was released on bail in January 1990. He was then briefly rearrested for allegedly uttering threats to the DA Ronald Pina for wrongful prosecution and imprisonment. DeGrazia again posted bond, but was then later found dead at his girlfriend's house, under a picnic table. His death was ruled a suicide. Authorities investigated his possible connection to the New Bedford murders.

Kenneth C. Ponte

In August 1990, a grand jury indicted New Bedford attorney Kenneth Ponte, 40, in the murder of Rochelle Clifford Dopierala, who had been beaten to death. Ponte had a checkered past, including drug use and a prior incident involving Dopierala. Bristol County District Attorney Ronald Pina suggested that Ponte had murdered Dopierala because she was allegedly planning to expose his drug activities.

Dopierala's mother stated that her daughter had once given her telephone number to Ponte in the event she needed to be reached. Ponte admitted to having represented Dopierala in April 1988, shortly before she disappeared, when she accused another man of raping her.

Ponte moved to Port Richey, Florida, in September 1988. He was arraigned on a single count of murder on August 17, 1990. Ponte entered a plea of "absolutely not guilty" and posted a $50,000 bond. On July 29, 1991, the district attorney dropped murder charges against Ponte, citing lack of evidence. The following year, remaining drug and assault charges were dropped and the New Bedford case went cold.

Ponte resurfaced in the news in May 2009 in two separate incidents. Police dug up the driveway and patio of Ponte's former New Bedford home with a backhoe, but were unable to find evidence linking Ponte to any crime.[3] On the morning of May 15, Ponte was arrested for shoplifting and was found with four cans of sardines and a block of cheese stolen from a PriceRite store in New Bedford. On January 27, 2010, Ponte was found dead in his New Bedford home. The Bristol County District Attorney's office has discounted foul play as a cause of death.[4]

Daniel Tavares Jr.

While in prison for the murder of his mother, Daniel Thomas Tavares Junior sent a threatening letter to one of the prison staff indirectly claiming responsibility for the Highway Killings. He lived in New Bedford, and had knowledge of where another murdered woman, Gayle Botelho, had been buried, within a mile from his home. He was convicted of two recent killings, those of Brian and Bev Muack.[5][6] Additionally, he was convicted in 2015 of the murder of Gayle Botelho, who went missing in 1988, later found to have been under a tree in his backyard.[7]

Lisbon Ripper
Main article: Lisbon Ripper

Between 1992 and 1993, three sex workers were slain and disemboweled with an instrument that was not a knife in Lisbon, Portugal, by an unknown serial killer that was dubbed the Lisbon Ripper, while two further sex workers were shot dead on the opposite shore of the Tagus river in the same time period.[8] In March 1993, two detectives of the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria traveled to New Bedford to gather information on the Highway killings, while two agents of the FBI traveled to Lisbon,[9] following a hypothesis that the string of crimes on both sides of the Atlantic could have been committed by the same individual. New Bedford has a sizable Portuguese community and many of the Highway victims were of Portuguese ancestry.[10] The Lisbon murders were also linked to four similar killings that took place in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and the Czech Republic (all countries bordering Germany) between 1993 and 1997, the theory being that the Lisbon Ripper had then become a long-haul truck driver.[11]

In 2011, a 21-year-old man named Joel applied to participate in the Portuguese edition of the reality show Secret Story, where participants try to guess each other's secrets while concealing their own. The secret he applied with was that his father, José Pedro Guedes, was the Lisbon Ripper. Guedes, 46, was arrested and confessed to the three slayings, but could not be prosecuted because murder has a prescription period of 15 years in Portugal and the last murder's had ended in 2008. Guedes could still be prosecuted for the 2000 murder of a prostitute in Aveiro, Portugal and similar murders in Germany (or neighboring countries) where Guedes resided in the 1990s.[12] It is unknown however, if Guedes ever resided in the United States. Guedes was tried for the Aveiro murder in 2013, found not proven due to lack of evidence, and released. The sentence noted that several details given by Guedes about the Aveiro and Lisbon murders were inaccurate.[13]

gollark: You just don't *get* apioforms.
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gollark: Tux1, consume 9291028488292 pentachorons.
gollark: Maybe they were exposed to other cognitohazards making them *act* as if they don't know them.
gollark: It's like they don't know the technical names of all bee species somehow? Which is obviously impossible.

See also

References
  1. Boyle, Maureen (2017). Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer. New Hampshire: University Press of New England.
  2. Smith, Carlton (1994). Killing Season: the Unsolved Case of New England's Deadliest Serial Killer. New York: Penguin Group. pp. xv–xvi. ISBN 0451405463.
  3. Henry, Ray (May 4, 2007). "Authorities re-open investigation into unsolved highway killings". Boston.com. Associated Press.
  4. Fraga, Brian. "Former suspect in unsolved highway killings case found dead in New Bedford home". South Coast Today. Local Media Group, Inc. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
  5. Holtzman, Michael (December 3, 2007). "New information opens old wounds". The Herald News. Archived from the original on January 25, 2013.
  6. Shen, Molly (January 24, 2008). "Serial killings probe looking at Tavares". katu.com. KATU TV.
  7. O'Connor, Kevin P. (November 18, 2015). "Prosecutor: Daniel Tavares killed Gayle Botelho over cocaine debt". The Herald News, Fall River, MA. Retrieved March 31, 2019.
  8. Publico: Lisbon Ripper case prescribes (Portuguese)
  9. Correiho de Manhá: Ripper will not pay for the first murder (Portuguese)
  10. https://web.archive.org/web/20091027121657/http://geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/coldcases/newbedford.html
  11. https://web.archive.org/web/20091027121656/http://geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/coldcases/lisbon.html
  12. Publico: Alleged Lisbon Ripper denounced by son who wanted to get in The House of Secrets (Portuguese)
  13. http://crimeejustica.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/aveiro-jose-guedes-alegado-estripador.html
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