A Massachusetts woman who was bludgeoned to death in her own home 20 years ago was apparently killed by her half-brother after detectives used DNA on the heavy conch shell used as the murder weapon to link him to the brutal slaying and crack the cold case.
David Reed, 53, allegedly beat Rose Marie Moniz, 41, to death with a cast-iron kettle, a fireplace poker and the shell in March 2001. His DNA was in a database after he attacked another woman - this time with a tire iron - and stole her purse in 2003.
Police finally pieced together the clues this year when detectives were able to get DNA from the conch shell by envisioning how the attacker might have held it.
Based on the abrasions on Moniz's face, they determined that she was probably struck by the shell's spiny point, and that the attacker probably held the shell with his fingers inside its opening for leverage.
The DNA evidence led them to Reed, a career criminal who has fled multiple states to avoid prosecution.
He was finally found asleep at the Providence Rescue Mission in Rhode Island, where he was arrested on September 10 and indicted on murder charges Thursday, the Bristol County District Attorney's Office announced.
David Reed, 53 (left), allegedly beat Rose Marie Moniz, 41 (right), to death with a cast-iron kettle, a fireplace poker and the shell in March of 2001
This year, detectives were able to get DNA from the conch shell (pictured) by envisioning how the attacker might have held it. Based on the abrasions on Moniz's face, they determined that she was probably struck by the shell's spiny point, and that the attack probably held the shell with his fingers inside its opening for leverage
Moniz's surviving relatives said they had no idea that their own family member was the culprit behind their beloved sister's slaying.
'I didn't think it was him,' said Moniz's brother, Paul Cunha. 'He was a pallbearer (at her funeral)... [he acted] very quiet, unusually quiet. And then pretty much after that, he disappeared.'
Hours after Moniz's murder, her father called police when he came to her Acushnet home to bring her to a doctor's appointment, and found her on the floor in a pool of her own blood.
Moniz's skull was fractured multiple times, and she was bleeding from both ears and her nose when her father discovered her. Her nose and left cheek bone had been broken, and her body was riddled with 'gaping lacerations,' according to the District Attorney's office.
Picturing the state that the woman's father found her in fueled detectives to keep plugging away at the cold case.
'There's her poor father coming in and seeing a body in that condition. That's his last memory of his daughter,' District Attorney Tom Quinn told WCVB.
Both of Moniz's parents died without knowing who had killed their daughter.
'My mother and father aged overnight, you could see it,' Cunha said. 'It was really tough.'
