The Salem Strangler

Perustin pyöräilyvää teitä valmistavan ornotin vuonna 2013. Mielestäni parasta Shopify saan se, että voimme harjoittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknistä osaamista, voimme hallinnoida yrityksen taustajarjestelmien ja frontendia sekä myydä verkossa, vaivatta, jos Shopify olisi pyöräilyvaruste, se olisi mielestäni itse polkupyörä. Sillä asiat hoidetaan ja meidän liiketoimintamme hoituu Shopify'sa. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu, Shopify piste.com sivustolla. [Musiikkia] Meidän liiketoimintamme on todella kokeilu, joka on jälkeen. Meidän jälkeen 80-luvun, kun meidän liiketoimintamme on todella kokeilu. Meidän liiketoimintamme hoituu. Meidän liiketoimintamme hoitu. 1986. Tervetellisellinen kohdalla on kohdalla. Sitten on kohdalla on kohdalla. Sitten on kohdalla. Sitten on kohdalla. Sitten on kohdalla. Sitten on kohdalla. Sitten on kohdalla. When we came into the woods approximately 50 feet, we could see the body of a white female lying on the ground. On her back, at the slight angle on the hill, the body was in this general area right here. It's like it was yesterday, honestly. I can still vividly picture it in my mind, standing here and looking at her body. Based on what we could see on the identification, Claire was 20 years old. She had Madison Salem, Massachusetts. They see that she's barefoot. She's still clothed. She's wearing shorts, white sweatshirt, but also a black tank top. The shirts have been pulled up. Her breasts were exposed. It was obvious to us when we looked at her that the tank top that she had on was used to strangle her. This shirt is similar to the shirt that Claire had been wearing. Ultimately, person kind of created an extra loop, almost like a figure eight, and brought it over her head and around her neck and pulled in order to strangle her. This is what's known as ligature strangulation. That's five to seven minutes of constant contact, constant pressure on somebody's neck. It's an intimate form of murder. My name is Dr. Joni Johnston. I am a clinical and forensic psychologist, and I study this case very closely. Strangulation is not a common way of murdering somebody. It isn't a gun, it isn't a knife, so it often has some specific meaning to the perpetrator. There was a knock at the door, and it was the chief of police and a detective, and they asked me to step out out of the room to which I did. I went to the back, stoop outside, and I heard my mother scream, and at that time, that time I ran in, and said, "What's wrong?" And they said, "Clear's dead." I took one look at my parents face. I knew it was true. I couldn't believe it. The first time I ever heard my father cry. Bob Gravel, Claire's dad, is now 90 years old, and he still lights up talking about his youngest daughter. Do you have a story you want to share about, Claire? One thing we went up to my sister's house. Somebody says, "Where's Claire?" She went for a walk in the woods, and all of a sudden she told her, "I want to find me here, I'm lost, I'm lost." We grew up in North Hannah, the Massachusetts, in the Mary Mac Valley. Jimmy was closer in age with Claire. Jimmy was really close to her. Where did you fall in the number? I was five out of six, I'm the second youngest. So, three boys and three girls? Three boys and three girls. Just like the Brady Bunch, just like the Brady Bunch. Correct, yes. The house was small, my brother shared one bedroom. My sister's and I, we all shared a bedroom. We had time showers, we had scheduled showers. We fought it time still, because I mean the six kids. We beat the tar on each other. My mom would pull him the driveway. It would be like, "I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me." Okay. Claire loved having a large family. That's what she wanted. She had told some of her college friends she wanted six to ten children, and I was like, "Wow, there's your Irish cowboy right there." So, we had a 25th wedding anniversary party for my mom and dad. The red mom? Hi, boys! We need to stick normally in there. I remember Claire being there. She had a professional quality camera. She took all kinds of pictures and everything. Claire was bubbly. She got along with everybody. But she could get her Irish out. If anybody ever picked on her younger brother, it was dead man walking. She could be a little bodyguard, you know. She wasn't tall, you know, but she was the best. Then she went off to college and we bonded even more because I was her ride to and from college. And, you know, we would do a lot of talking about life and school. When Claire started at Salem State, she went in as a political science major. She talked about going to law school. I, you know, thought, "Well, of course, because you'll have to argue." So, you know, that makes sense. I wanted her to make something big for herself because I knew she could make something big for herself. When I sat down with Claire's brother, Jim, it was clear from the start how much he admired and looked up to his older sister. She was the pretty one. She was the smart one. She was the athletic one. She was the outgoing one. And she had everything that you would want in a person. We were trying to determine why somebody would do this to Claire. We ruled out other things such as robbery. I don't know if somebody was going to rob somebody, they wouldn't strangle them. And her checkbook was still in that pocketbook. You know, there was a very small amount of money there. So, we could rule that out pretty quickly. They look at sexual assault. The medical examiner later determined that there was no sexual assault. We wanted to backtrack and tried to see if we could figure out what her activities were before somebody killed her. We learned Claire did frequent major legacies fairly often. That was the college bar. It was very close to the campus. And that's where all the kids hung out to tell them to stay. As police start putting the case together, they learned that Claire Gravel was at major McLeish's on the evening of Saturday, June 28 into the early morning hours of Sunday, June 29th. Just over 24 hours before the body was found. Ultimately, we talked to the bounces there, the bar tender, and some of her friends there. And what we found was that several people witnessed something unusual. There was a man in the bar that night that stood out to them. I had never seen her before that night. He looked like he was out of place here. He didn't fit with the attire, didn't fit with anybody else there. Kackies, polo shirt with a collar on a couple buttons there. Everybody in here dressed in jeans and cut-offs and shorts. All of them saw this person interacting with Claire. And so that definitely picked our interest. Claire was just with her friends that night. Everybody kept looking over at her and hanging around next to her. He was like right there. There are all kinds of questions swirling about this mystery man. But it turns out Claire didn't leave the bar with him that night. She left with somebody else. He is the last person that sees Claire alive. That's somebody that we want to talk to. I found out about Claire Gravel's murder through the newspapers, the local newspapers. Say on State College, student murdered. Co-ed murdered, women strangled. Those were the headlines. People were afraid. People were very afraid, very scared. Nobody had any answers. Was there any thought of who would have done this? There were so many names that came to my mind that it just I wasn't sure which direction to go in. I remember hearing after the autopsy how she died. And it was like okay, but who? I was just totally focused on the who. As far as whether Claire had any enemies, if she did, there wasn't any apparent to us. Strangulation is a very personal way of killing somebody. Investigators are going to look at just about everybody who was in Claire Gravel's life. She dated a guy named Michael James. Were you suspicious at the time of him? I had convinced myself that it was him. But then a lot of people said no, he really, really loved his sister. He wouldn't do something like this. That was sort of an on and off relationship. So that's something else obviously we would look at. Was it a healthy relationship? Was it not a healthy relationship? Years later, Claire's former boyfriend would sit down for an interview with the local station, W-H-D-H, in Massachusetts. It wasn't like we were madly in love when we met close. I knew her, I had gone out with her. And I was the last, my name was the last one, link with her. So that's how I came about to be associated with it. Ultimately, investigators were able to rule Michael James out and he was cleared. So investigators are talking to everybody they can. They're talking to her friends, they're talking to people at the bar. And they learn that Claire was at Major McLeish's on Saturday, June 28th. She was dropped off at her apartment around 130 on Sunday morning, June 29th. The person that gave her this ride, his name is Jim Kaffalas. Jim Kaffalas was a regular patron at Major McLeish, as Claire knew him. Jim Kaffalas is in a queen's surpass. They weren't super close, but she seemed comfortable enough to accept a ride home. When we looked into it, what we gathered was that he's the last person that sees Claire alive. That's a huge thing for investigators. [BLANK_AUDIO] suspicion was on Jimmy Cavallis, all eyes were on him. We were able to get information from him. Jim just said that when he was at the bar, Claire approached him and asked him if he could give her a ride. And he basically told her, yes, but I'm not leaving right now. But when I am leaving, I'll give you a ride. He says they left the bar somewhere between 1 and 130 and he remembers dropping her off around 1.30 a.m. We obviously had to make sure we followed up on it and made sure that what he was telling us was true. He said he pulled into a bank parking lot, which is just next to where Claire was living. He pulled up here to my right just along this wall and Claire got out of the car and once she got out of the car, he saw her walking up the sidewalk here. He saw Claire just about to step on to these stairs right here. He left and he assumed that she got inside the apartment safely. She was right there. The building is now the good dark red color at the time. It was like a bright yellow with white trim. Claire's poppin was upstairs on the left. The fact that she never made it inside, of course, that was our big question, what happened between this location and that door away? Investigators want to interview tenants in Claire's building and nobody heard anything. They didn't hear a door slam, they didn't hear a fight, they didn't hear a scream. And of course, that's then redirecting the spotlight again onto the last person who saw her. "When I started working back in 1986, I was an investigative journalist and the Claire Gravel's story caught my attention. I got very connected to this case, I just couldn't give up. So I went to Claire's apartment a number of times. It was very chilling to be there." Claire Gravel was last seen walking up to these steps of her apartment at Fort Lorraine Avenue directly across from Salem State College. So I talked to witnesses, many witnesses, and some of them were defensive of Jimmy protecting Jimmy Kaffalas. Others were like, "I think it was him." Jim Kaffalas actually worked at Salem State College as a police officer in security. So he was working late at that night. When he left Claire, he basically just circled around the intersection and headed right down to Salem State College. Another thing was concerning to them. He was supposed to be at work at 11 o'clock that evening. And he ended up clocking in around 140. This is a big deal. He's the last person to see her last known person anyway. And he shows up almost three hours late for work that could be considered very suspicious. Obviously, when we start to hear things like somebody was late for work, that's something we want to look into. We also eventually learned that he had called ahead of time and told the coworker he was going to be late. And then ultimately, we learned that that coworker then saw him at 140 in the morning. At this point in time, Jim Kaffalas is really in a great area. They can't rule him in, and they can't rule him out. The police asked me questions about Jimmy Kaffalas. And honestly, Jimmy Kaffalas's name kept popping up as always. You know, Jimmy, Jimmy and Jimmy, Jimmy didn't do this, he didn't do it. In the meantime, detectives are following up on all kinds of leads. And back at Claire's apartment, they find something intriguing. We obtained Claire's diary. It was just a notebook, if you will, a flip notebook. And there's a big clue, a name she was mentioning, a person who was interested in her. Today, I want to tell you about an exciting new deal from our friends at CozyEarth. Take a moment and close your eyes, and think back to the best night of sleep you ever had. Did it feel like you'd never sleep that well again? Well, good news. You can give yourself an amazing night of sleep every night by upgrading your bedding to CozyEarth. CozyEarth offers luxury bedding at an incredible price. Their ultra soft, temperature-regulating sheets, coverlets, and duvet covers are the perfect companion for a night of uninterrupted relaxation. Their sheets come in all different colors and stripes, so there's something for everyone, whether you're doing a big fall refresh of your master bedroom, or updating a guestroom in time for the holidays. 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I was invited to a shopping show, as they were invited to a shopping show, as they were invited to a shopping show. Those first 48 hours, July 1st and 2nd were just like a whirlwind and a blur. I remember David Easterbody. I took my parents to the undertaker, to the church, to the florist, to do all those things you need to do and how to get ready for a funeral. To this day, when I smelled fresh flowers, like my stomach turned a little bit, because it takes me right back to that funeral home. Tell me about that day saying goodbye to your sister. That was tough. The wake leading up to the funeral, walked in the funeral home and it saw her laying there, is when I really lost it. All of a sudden, it got real. It's not a headline. It's not something you saw on the news. And now it's real. That's actually her. And now you have to deal with it. Liz Pass is going down the middle of the aisle and our family going behind it and thinking that your sister's in this basket, that you're never going to see her again in. That we are here for Cleansfield Road. I remember the cops telling us that they were going to have some people. I'm upset that you knew it because sometimes the person shows up. My interview, Mary Gravel, is just this heartbroken mom, that never was the same. Do you know what it was like in her funeral knowing everybody who came from that area, expressing their condolences and shaking your hand? And in your mind, you're saying, is this the one? It's a terrible feeling. Jimmy Gravel told me that the day after Claire was murdered, Mary was never the same. She always wondered, who was it, who wouldn't why, is this the one? That's the question police are also trying to answer and they're looking at every part of Claire's life, including something they found back at her apartment. Claire had a diary. She wrote everything down in a diary. It wasn't a typical fancy diary, it was just a notebook, if you will. And Claire would just note, on a variety of days, not necessarily every day, but just things that she felt that she wanted to write down. The diary, I think, took on some significance for investigators, because even though she didn't write it in every day, she obviously wrote things that were significant to her. One thing that popped up in her diary was Jerry Verret. It was a Salem police officer. And she did mention Jerry Verret in a couple of entries, a month or so before her death. Claire had mentioned in the diary about Jerry, wanted to buy her dinner, he wanted to take her on a date, and she really did not want to go. Jerry Verret was an older man, he was around 40 years old, married, and clearly not somebody that Claire was interested in. Much like Claire's friend Jim Caffalas, Jerry Verret also hangs out at Major McLeash's. Whenever friends had mentioned about him talking to them over the loudspeaker, so I would assume that would be the police crew's loudspeaker when he'd go by when they're in the bar. In best case, would be interested in Jerry Verret, because this is somebody who seems to kind of have some unreciprocated love or affection. And we know that that can certainly be emotive. And so once we heard that, when you obtained his work records, we learned that he was working basically the whole time on the 28th, the 29th, the 30th, he worked so many hours during that time, there was no way that he could possibly have been able to accomplish that. So Jerry Verret did have an alibi. So that turns out to be another dead-end. But police are about to get their biggest lead yet. When the road workers of the saviors were at the scene with us, what they said was that in addition to finding the body, they noticed a pickup truck back into a path of 200 feet up the road from where Claire's body was found. They were asked, "Can you tell us more about the truck?" What color it was, what you said to see anybody in it. They said it was a white male probably mid-30s in the vehicle with a mustache. So we wanted to determine who that person was that was in that pickup truck. So remember Roger the bouncer. Police are interviewing him and they learned that this mystery man was seen leaving the bar alone and also went to a white pickup truck. I'm standing right about here and he walked past me this way and then went across the street heading towards a small white pickup truck parked right there. I'm assuming that's where the vehicle that he got into. But I had to turn around and go back in and do my jobs and that was the last I saw. The search for this so-called mystery man goes on. But then somebody connected to the white truck, the one at the crime scene, comes forward and he's got an interesting story to tell. And he told police, "I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing." There are surveyors that ultimately found the body. They had been by here this area earlier in the morning. And so they had noted that they saw a vehicle parked just up the road a little bit. They described it as a pickup truck. They did see somebody in the truck. They said it was a white male and the person they thought was sleeping in the truck. Later, the Beverly Police were approached by one of their officers to tell them that it was his truck. That officer is a man named James Stapleton. You can see him here in this photo, which would prove critical to the case. He works for the Beverly Police Department, which is only a 10-minute drive from Salem, Massachusetts. James Stapleton is listening to roll call and he hears about this truck that they're looking for. And imagine he's seeing they're listening to that and instantly knows he's that man. As a result, my detective Lieutenant and a captain from Beverly Police did an interview with James Stapleton to determine more information about what he was doing not on Route 128. And Mr. Stapleton ultimately said that, "Get out of fight with his current wife at the time." And so he did not want to go home. He made a statement saying, "I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing." Of course, that's something that's intriguing and we want to find out what is that. He says he gets an an argument with his wife. He goes out drinking. He's drinking and driving and essentially pulls over on the side of the road to sleep it off. That doing something he shouldn't be doing is referring to his drinking and driving. Stapleton tells investigators that he slept in his truck until around 9 the next morning. He says he woke up, saw those road surveyors and then drove off. Surely after the news broke, I went to where the crime scene was. I wanted to withstand a break where it happened. During my standup, I was standing right where James Stapleton was parked. This is the dirt road off of Route 128 in Beverly near the Wynnum Town line, where state DPW workers found the body of Claire Gravel strangled on Monday, June 30, 1986, less than 36 hours after she was last seen in Salem. It was a tough place to find, and that made me think it has to be somebody that knows exactly where that road is. When James Stapleton was talking to the other detectives, he had mentioned to them there was a gate there and he bumped the gate. He thought some paint chips might be on his car. They asked him if he would go for a ride with them, back to that location. He did travel back with them to where he had parked. Then they took a look around and he noticed an orange soda can. He pointed that out to the detectives saying, "See that soda can? That's mine." He's doing this because James Stapleton was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he knows it. So the next thing police have to do that are investigating the case is they get to take a hard look at James Stapleton. And they got to look into exactly where he was the night that Claire went missing. As I began investigating James Stapleton, they realized that he had actually been at his sister's wedding. Saturday night, the night that Claire had been at McLeish's and ultimately disappeared. He was able to actually provide photographs that corroborated his story. Later, as we continued to investigation, we learned that Claire was likely placed in that location or she died in that location early Sunday morning. James Stapleton was there on Monday morning, June 30th. This, like, at least 24 hours between the time she dies in those woods right there until he actually is seen parked in that location 200 feet away. He said he never knew that there was a body there and if he had been aware, he would have made sure he did something about it. There are a lot of people who may know something, maybe just a small fact. The other route that I tried to take was to keep the case in people's minds by getting out there and having the press either write another article on the case or have some news segment. We've talked to so many people, numerous people, we questioned regarding their whereabouts, their association with Claire. However, we have yet to talk to somebody who gives us enough evidence and actually leads us to Claire's killer. As time goes on, there's a lot of concern. This is becoming a cold case. And once you've exhausted the immediate leads that you have, you have to start broadening your suspect will. Maybe it's not somebody she knows. Maybe it's somebody who passed through the area. There was an active serial killer murdering women, strangling them and dumping them on the side of the road. You had to remain a woman after a woman after a woman found along two highways. The New Bedford murderous was a big story in 1988. Maybe it's a serial killer. I kept this case close to my heart and I just had that determination. I wanted to find who did this because I had those conversations with Claire's mom and I could hear that pain in her voice when she spoke about her and what a great person she was. Why did she lose her life? Could she have done something that terrible? Did she deserve this? Questions that have been asked over and over by Mary and Bob Gravel. Why was their 20-year-old daughter Claire murdered in late June of 1986? So I just felt like there has to be some way that we can solve this case. But heartbreakingly, for Claire's family, years would go by. No arrests. They were losing hope. After a number of years, I just convinced myself I was never going to have an answer. And part of that was I wanted it desperately for my parents. I just thought that was it, you know. We were never going to know. I did have this box that I kept with a variety of little scraps of paper notes and things, like a small photo of Claire. A picture of her with her, I believe it was her nephew. A picture of her, you know, patting a horse. Those things that kind of kept it in my mind as this is a person that had family and had friends. It's not just this is another case. It's somebody that, you know, was loved by everybody and loved everybody. And so it kept it alive for me. It's time goes on as becoming increasingly clear that the suspects they had initially have been, if not ruled out, they certainly haven't been ruled in. And so I think because of that, there's a lot of concern. We considered everything. Maybe it's a complete stranger. Maybe it's a suspect. serial killer. So, in between 1988 and 1989, the skeletal remains of a young woman have been found along a southeastern Massachusetts highway. There was an active serial killer that was dubbed the new bed for serial killer, who was murdering women and dumping them on the side of the road, but approximately 70 miles away from where Clare Gravel was discovered. I want to look at how Clare's body looked at the scene, how that ligature was used to kill her, and we're trying to determine is this somebody that has some kind of paraphernalia or some unique desires and motives that would drive them to do something like this. A paraphernalia is an unusual or deviant sexual interest, and that would include things such as being sexually aroused by strangulation. So the new bed for highway murders were women that were strangled in a similar fashion that Clare was. You had the remains of a woman after a woman after a woman found along the two highways. Noticing these similarities, which makes it worth investigating, they're also noticing very significant differences. The victimology is really important. In the new bedfurt highway serial killer, the victims tend to be either involved in sex work or in drug or alcohol use. That's very different from Clare. They were ultimately never able to connect the two, and as a matter of fact, nine murders of these women has never been solved to this day. As the years go by in the investigation of Clare Gravel's murder, forensic technology is advancing at an almost magical rate, and one of the things they started doing is what's commonly known as touch DNA, and murder cases across America and really the world began getting solved because of this new technology. In 2004, I learned more about touch DNA, a little bit different from getting DNA from blood or seminal fluid or hairs. This is more looking for somebody's DNA who might have had contact with an object, with an item. I knew that when I looked at that ligature, that the way the tank top was twisted and pulled over Clare's neck, somebody had to really hold that tight and really use force with the hand in order to make that ligature, and so I submitted it for processing. It takes almost three years as the technology catches up to the case, in 2007, they're able to isolate a complete male genetic profile. When I heard that they had the profile, I was just, I was blown away, it was a huge moment for me. We're going to do this, we're going to get this person. Someday, it might not be tomorrow, it might be the next month, not next year, but we're going to figure out who did this. So we took that profile then and figured out, okay, now what do we need to do? So there's still one person who has spent all of these years living under a cloud of suspicion and that's Clare's friend, Jim Kufalis, and they're about to test Jim Kufalis's DNA because remember, he was the last person to see her alive that night. I had asked one of the other detectives if he would go and follow James Kufalis, and ultimately he contacted me and said, I just saw him drop his coffee cup in a trash barrel. I said, all right, take the coffee cup, which he did, and we submitted that to be tested against the profile that was located on the tank top, and ultimately they told us that it did not match that DNA that was on the cup that James Kufalis had, did not match the DNA on the tank top. So after 20 years, Clare's friend Jim Kufalis is cleared of involvement in Clare's murder. So Jim Kufalis is no longer under a cloud of suspicion, but he has said this case still haunts him, especially the idea that he drove Clare home, but never made sure that she made it safely into her building. It's also go to the trouble of tracking down James Stapleton, that officer who slept in his truck the night before Clare's body was found. They test his DNA, and it doesn't match the profile on Clare's tank top either. James Stapleton was ultimately cleared in this case. The home run for every investigator is a codis hit, and that is the national database that essentially documents every known convicted felon in all 50 states. They submit this to codis and they get nothing. It was disappointing, but I thought this is a good step for us, because now it's in that database. I retired in 2009, and it was hard to let it go, if you will. I mean, like I said, I kept a report on it because I didn't want to let it go. It's been more than 20 years since Clare's murder when Detective Gill retires. So now the case lands in the hands of a brand new set of detectives, and they're essentially starting at square one. And then later, in a town not far away, there's an attack that it is eerily similar to Clare Gravel's murder. I live in Hamilton, which is a beautiful suburb of Boston, Norfolk, Boston near Salem. People move there because as a grade school system, it's a family town. In my job, I often find myself sitting down with people who are recalling the worst day of their lives. And this time I sat down with a woman named Rosemary Diskin. She told me about that night back in 2007. If it had been 20 years after Clare Gravel's murder, and Rosemary knew nothing about it, she was a mom separated from her husband, who was at home with her 12-year-old son, Jason. I was a real estate broker, so I worked a lot of hours, and I had a son who was 12 years old. So most of my life was my son and my job. So take me back to June 6, 2007. What do you remember about that day? It was a Wednesday, and it was like a normal day. It was a nice sunny day, and I worked during the day, and took my son to baseball, and he wasn't feeling well, so I brought him home, and he informed me they had to do a project for school. He had to make an Mexican dish, so I was going to make a flan for him. It's in the evening, around 9.30, 9.40. She is cooking on the stove. There's a knock at the door, and she thinks it's her husband, and he had been over earlier. She thought maybe he had come back for something. I walked over to the door, and there was someone standing there with her head bowed down. It is a man that she knows, John Kerry. They're not friends, but she knows him. Was he a golfing buddy of your husbands? Not really a golfing buddy, they knew each other because they go to the same golf clubs. I knew him because he was one of my friends, ex-husband, and he used to live one street over, and his daughter played with my son, Jason. I remember when we looked like he was drunk. I opened up the slider, and he came in the house, and I didn't invite him in, he just came right in. I'm like, you know, what are you doing here? You said your husband invited me for a drink. I'm like, my husband invited you for a drink? That just sound right. Let me give him a call. So I reached over to get the phone, and he grabbed it out of my hand, threw it on the ground, and pulled out, didn't know what it was, put a tire on my neck, and tried to strangle me. He pushed me back against the wall, and I did say, why me, what's going on? And he just said, I don't know. And that was the only conversation we had, and he just kept pulling and pulling. I think it's so confusing at this point, because here's a man who has come into a woman's house that he knows, they should identify, and attacks her randomly, and as opposed to him, you know, grabbing her breasts or trying to take her clothes off, he is strangling her. He's got this around your neck. Are you thinking you're about to die? Oh, I definitely was cutting through my neck. I thought it was going to die. I really thought it was going to die. There's a struggle. She ends up knocking over this heavy chair. Her 12 year old son hears this, and he comes down to see her husband on the floor, and John Kerry. pulling something around her neck. He'd saw John was hurting me, so I said, "Get a knife and stab him." He got a knife, he went behind him and he stabbed him in his back, but the knife broke. And then when he did that, John Carrey let go of the news around my neck and went after him. My son went right out the slider and screaming, "Murder, murder." And the neighbors all heard him. I came too. I got up. I was going back and he sock-a-punched me right in the face, so I gave me a black eye. And I just stood to this day and remember that the hand hitting me and the blood dripping down. Then he turned around and went after my son. What's going through your mind? Just that I didn't want him to get my son, but my son went across the street through the yards down to his friend. Rosemary makes it to her friend's house. She tells him what's happened. She's a sterical. He picks up the phone and he calls on my wine. Hamilton, Massachusetts is a pretty quiet town and from 911 operators, some of their shifts can be pretty boring. All of a sudden, about 9 o'clock on this evening, the call board lights up all describing the same incident of this man who came into the house and attempted to strangle Rosemary. I think it's happened very, very slow, fast and straight, not worse than a way out of the state. The police responded immediately. That was my first feeling that, oh my god, I'm not dead, I got away and my son was okay. My son, Jason, thought I was dead. He thought that I had been killed and the ambulance came when I went to the neighbor's house and then they got Jason and brought him to me. Ah, this had to be terrifying. I've never had any violence in my life before. I mean, I was in Hamilton, you know, expect to have a neighbor that would do something like that. Rosemary and Jason are taken to a hospital and police know exactly who her attacker is. So they go to find John Kerry and the story he tells them is pretty stunning. So, I'm a king you got and that's well known, that's the way I am. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness. No stickiness. No residue. Just plump. You eat hydrated skin, that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. I'm Shannon Maldonado, the artist and artist of artisans who have been working for us for a long time. I've been working on Shopify since the start of the test, so I've been working on it for 11 years. I've been working on it for a long time, so I've been working on it for a long time, so I've been working on it for 11 years, so I've been working on it for 11 years, so I've been working on it. After neighbors call 911, police are on the scene pretty quickly, Rosemary suffered some pretty severe injuries to her head and her neck. Tell me about this. This is where the time is around your neck. This is where I had my hands underneath trying to stop them from strangling me, so this is basically what happened to my neck, it was cutting in, all the way around my neck. Then what happened your eye is really red here. I think this is where he punched me in the face. Luckily my son came and saved my life. So this is Jason. He looks pretty serious in these pictures. Yeah, he does. You see a change in him afterwards? Yeah, there was definitely a change. He went through a very traumatic situation. Next day, John Kerry shows up at a police department. With a very, very different tale to tell. I went over there and wrote that I had me, you know, even on the scene, but I wanted to prove, prove, yeah. John Kerry tells them that there was a situation that happened the night before and it was consensual. So we started the kind of going ahead. We don't, she has to, we don't hug. It's strictly sex, you know. It's better than me going find a hooker and she knows it on the street, so that's what we do. And she was things over the chair in the kitchen. So I'm a kinky guy. And that's well known. I like bondage. I like that. That's the way I am. John Kerry comes in with this. Hey, fellas, you know how this is? This was crazy kinky sex night. As you watch that video, you can see this guy is reliving the act as he's telling it to the police. There was something on the table that I grabbed and I put it around the neck. And I was pulling her back with pulling back the reins. Like, you know what I'm up? I just wanted to take the fact that she just was going to the bedroom. I should know. I didn't want to lose what I had gone. I just wanted to get over with, be out of there, which is where I do. Let me get to the other angle. John Kerry is describing this terrible misunderstanding where he's gone in to have consensual sex with this woman as he's strangling her. He looks up and he sees this young man, this 12-year-old boy, looking at him. He knows what I am. I just tried to block myself, cut the table, and then I ran out the door for flight and glass doors like that. I ran out the door. Now, you know, I don't know what Rose is saying, but that I was very embarrassing to both of us, obviously. John Kerry claimed it was consensual sex because he knew there was overwhelming events he had been there. There were eyewitnesses. There was corroborating physical evidence. I mean, it was an incredibly well-documented attack. Usually, we only have a situation like this, storage is somewhat similar, and they vary slightly, or kind of embarrassed, or whatever. On this one, they vary greatly. She has a huge injury on her neck, and this is far more consistent with somebody who's trying to kill someone than somebody who's engaged in sexual play. So, what they're trying to do is they're trying to pin him down on details, and they're essentially either trying to confirm or refute his story. So, how long have you been seeing this since December? It's only four or four times. One of you over there went down with someone there to know if you were actually either in school, or maybe with his dad for the first time. I mean, I didn't know he was there. And then they were going to lower the boom and let them know they don't believe him. How can you not, with this type of injuries, take care of more care of everything you know what I mean? So, police arrest John Kerry, and they charge him with attempted murder. So, he's charged with this as a crime? It definitely was a crime for what you do to me. And if Jason hadn't been there that night? I don't think I'd be alive. John Kerry is ultimately tried and convicted of attempted murder and home invasion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. So, then you hear the guilty verdict. What was that like? I was happy. Good is gone. Hope he never gets out. This ordeal may be over, but this case is about to breathe new life into a decade's old investigation. He was not on anybody's radar. That moment was incredible. It really was. Currently, I work as the Deputy Chief of Police at Maromat College, where I've been now for 16 years. And I've loved every minute of it. We ensure the safety of over 4,000 students here. Obviously, for the last 40 years, I've thought about Claire in her case. It's never left my mind. She was a young college student. She never got to experience all these wonderful things that ultimately you want kids to experience at college. She never got to do that. Decades have now passed in Claire's Marra case. The codeus doesn't sleep. And we have an unknown DNA profile from the black tank top. And the computer and codeus is constantly looking for matches. And every state in America submits DNA from their convicted felons. Detectives are always hoping. that's somewhere along the way, the killer, his DNA is going to pop up in the system. So in 2012, there is a huge break in Clare Gravel's murder case. I heard from the disc attorney's office that they actually had a match from the quotas database. The DNA on the tank top matched the DNA of somebody who was serving time in prison. It really was. It makes me emotional, actually, to talk about it. When the disc attorney's office told me the name John Kerry, I said I never heard that name before. Nobody ever provided that name to us through our entire investigation and no information or evidence ever led at that time to John Kerry, I didn't know anything about him. As far as they knew he had absolutely no connection with Clare Gravel. So the very first thing police do is they look at the offense for which the guys been jailed and what do they find in John Kerry? He's serving 20 years for the strangulation and attempted murder of another woman. Rose Mary Diskin. So once the disc attorney's office knew that they had this match to John Kerry, it created a whole new investigation basically. One of the things they want to know, of course, was he around in 1986 and they find that he was. He was 26 years old. He was living in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is not very far from where Clare was found. Gloucester is actually north of Beverly where Clare's body was found and the way to get to Gloucester is on Route 128 and passing right through Beverly. He had gone to Salem State prior to Clare back in the late 70s so he was familiar with the area. He graduated from high school in 1977 and Gloucester, Massachusetts. These are high school yearbook photos of John Kerry and you see in one he's golfing. He goes on to become an avid golfer. In 1989 he actually started his own getterf maintenance company. Police now want to know more about John Kerry. They track down his friends, they learn about relationships, they even speak to his ex-wife. My name is Charlene Kerry, I was married to John Kerry. First time I ever saw John Kerry was in the seventh grade. I remember walking down a hallway and seeing him and just my eyes lit up and my heart was a flutter. John Kerry was very charismatic. He was a really good looking kid. It was just this real attraction. I kind of just waited and hoped that someday I'd be able to go out with him and that finally happened in I think it was ninth grade. That young love leads to marriage. The two make it official in 1995. We were married for seven years then we had a child. In the early days there came a time where he just basically said can I try this? There's a way to like make your orgasms more erotic and I just want to you know pretend I'm strangling you or whatever. It just helps me get off. I kind of really didn't understand it but because I was totally in love with him I went ahead and did this I think play acting type thing where he would either take my nylons or he would grab the belt on my robe. I was afraid of anybody putting anything around my neck so I wouldn't let him just you know strangle me unless I had some control and I was very strong so I always make sure I was on my stomach and I would put my hand under. I remember at one point I was crying. I was like screaming and crying and then he did stop. I thought it was weird but like I knew other people that got into fatal masochism or whatever you want to call it like so I figured out I was with somebody that liked that type of stuff so now I have to deal with it. I'm married to him. I love him. In my mind I didn't think he was doing it for any other purpose except for him to heighten his orgasm. As investigators are looking at this they're really sorting to see this puzzle pieces kind of come together. They're looking at clear gravels murder. There was no sexual assault. Now they're learning from Charlene about somebody who's interested in strangulation and then they have Rosemary Diskins experience when it comes to John Kerry. His sex is strangulation. That's what turns him on. Is it the fact that he's controlling another person's breathing? Is it the dominance? Is it the fear? I mean there's lots of possibilities there but it's always very specifically about strangulation. In 2002 after seven years of marriage John and Charlene split up and eventually divorce. When he left he said to me Charlene one of these days you're going to look back and wish you had left me sooner. He said there's a side of me that you know nothing about. Never for a million years thought there was a dark side and there is a dark side. There's a really dark side. So investigators in the clear gravel case now want to talk to John Kerry. John Kerry, how are you? I'll admit you. You think you're going to identify a girl for me? The detectives showed him a picture of Claire. A girl? Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, do we hydrated skin? That still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mabling. I'm going to talk to you guys in the next two to three months. I'm going to talk to you about Shopify because we're going to be able to do something about the technology. I'm also going to talk to you about the front end and the front end. I'm going to talk to you about the front end and the front end and the front end. You know, this is the take recorder, can we record this piece of it? Okay. I think you are John Kerry. Detectives from Essex County went to Concord State Prison to see John Kerry who was doing 20 years for the attempted murder and home invasion of Rosemary. He had no idea why he was being interviewed. At this point, he's been in prison for five years. I mean, he's ready to mention which to speak to is what I don't know what we're talking about. So, I mean, I'll speak until sure I can begin to a point where, oh yeah, yeah, we're not going to do these no trips. We're not trying to trip, yeah, we're going to. They spend a considerable amount of time just kind of establishing one for within. You know, I hear you're a good golfer. I used to be. Maybe we'll get to golf, you know? No, no. No, listen for them. He has no idea that he is a suspect because they tell him that there's been a strangulation case and they like his help. I was hoping to get some insight from you on the strangulation thing. Yeah. People do that for intersectional nature. And people do that for fun, I guess. Yeah. I mean, is that something that was something you were into? That's my past, yeah. You were into that your whole life? No, not my whole life. He's very quick to say, I don't do that anymore. Back in '86, what did you live in '86? Gloucester. Gloucester area. So the case I'm working on was in that area. Okay. And I'm hoping that maybe you maybe do some people who are into that sort of thing back then. Yeah, I can't help you with that. Yeah. Because I wasn't into it back then. Yeah, yeah. John Kerry did everything to distance himself from anything like that in 1986. At one point, they show him a picture of Claire Gravel. If I showed you a picture, you think you can identify a girl for me? A girl? Yeah, I made it. Back in '86. And then the second time they showed him this picture of Claire, he looked at it and he goes, "I need some glasses to look at it." Oh my god, you're Gloucester? Yeah. They were, I think, at once, once 75? Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I do. It's not that short. He thinks it's a little short. It was almost his way of trying to be cooperative and friendly, but putting on a front. It was like a guy. That's an old picture. Yeah, no. Claire Gravel, that's her name. Claire Gravel. Frank Gloucester, she was found, well, she doesn't tell me the text from that thing and over. Yeah. Doesn't look like a dollar. I don't know, is it the north end over here? If you're trying to get him talking, and then their plan all along, is they're gonna hit him with the idea that, I mean, your DNA is on the tank top on this poor, dead young woman. How do you explain it? - At least I asked her, she was found strangled to death. And I'm asking maybe you can shed some light on. Why? - Are you accusing me? - That's fine. - Well, I'm gonna ask you. - What, we're gonna tell you. 'Cause we did find, I'm the thing that strangled her. - Yeah. - The thing around her neck, your DNA was found. - On this, yeah, I'm that black thing around her neck. - The photo was almost a polaroid taken from one of the crime scene photos, so it depicted her face and the ligature around her neck. - I mean, you know what that black thing is? - That's a treasured off. - And he took it, looked at it quickly, and then pushed it very quickly away, as far away from him as he could get it. - Well, I don't know. And from that point in the conversation, it was like he would refer to Claire's picture, really not as a human being, but as that. - I mean, maybe I could have run into her at some point, but I can tell you that that's not my, my, okay. - '86? - Yeah. - That that's a lot of years. - I think you remember, girl, if she, you were playing around with her. - If I was showing that, yeah, I wouldn't, she'd absolutely-- - That's what I would have been. - She'd know? - No, I'm telling you, you know, who knows? Like, I could have been dancing with that girl. I could have, yeah, no, no. - No, that's the one where you, I don't know. - John Kerry is looking for a way to explain the evidence against him. And this sounds very familiar to investigators, because this is exactly what he did in 2007 with Rosemary Jitskin. He realized what he needed to explain away. - U of D and A is a role in the murder way. And that's a huge problem for you. - Yeah, you know, and you're claiming you have no knowledge for it, you may have danced with her? - I don't know, I mean, again, I mean my, I was with a lot of women. I mean, a lot of women. - I understand, I know, it's not, I know what someone was saying. - I'm not really happy about my past. - Yeah, no, no, no. No, I'm not, I understand that. I am not, you're not what-- - You don't have to do it. I am not pleading to this thing. - He denies, denies, denies it. And one of the things he says is, "That's not my work." - This is not my work. I think where I did that night with Rose, I've done this stuff in the past. No, absolutely not. - That is an odd thing to say. And that's the kind of thing you would expect somebody as a track record of perhaps strangling women would say. - And they say, "Did you ever Google clear gravel?" And he doesn't deny it. - Yeah, we go play over eggs or something. - I've probably got a list of strangulation, victims and so forth, and then I Google them, I'm sure. Do you have a memory of doing it today? I don't really have a memory, 'cause I did so many. - It's mind-boggling. Like, why would anybody be remotely interested than that? - And he reaches a point, the interview, where he realizes he's guys know a lot more than they originally let on, and then he shuts the interview down. - That's enough. I'm not answering any more questions. - Okay. - All right, you're done. - We're done. - Not only did we have his DNA on the murder weapon, but also everything that he's saying just helps us to even more in this case. I felt confident that he's the right guy. This is the guy that killed Claire. - Well, tonight a break in a murder on the North Shore that went unsolved for more than 35 years. The Essex District Attorney announced that detectives identified a suspect. More than three decades after Claire Gravel's death, John Kerry is finally charged with first degree murder. - Earlier this morning in Essex County, Grand Jury, and daddy, John Kerry, 63, for the murder and connection with the strangulation death of Claire Gravel. - They said, "We got him." I'm like, "Got him?" And they said, "Yeah." They're arresting somebody for killing Claire. And I remember I started to cry, because I just was stuck. My mother passed away in March of 2015. - It's sad that my mom wasn't here to see it, but I just remember being ecstatic and we're halfway home on next, you know, third basis of the trial. - Or as in session, you may be seated the morning or on our. - When the trial started, John Kerry has a new story. - So he writes this letter with some kind of alibi. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Leading up to the trial, it was nerve racking. 'Cause it had been 40 years, I never had that kind of emotion going into a trial before. - What was that like for you in court and to see him? John Kerry, did you make eye contact? - I didn't, I didn't want to, but for the family to see this day that we didn't think was gonna happen, it was very fulfilling. - Local Massachusetts Station, WHGH was there in the court room for opening statements. - John Kerry murdered Claire Gravel on June 29, 1986, motivated by his sexual arousal to the act of strangulation. - The first thing that I told the jury was that there was nothing cold about this case in 1986 at all. The police simply ignored potential suspects. - This investigation was absolutely corrupted by bias and that evidence is going to show that Mr. Kerry is not guilty. - Prosecutors call Roger Blay, that bouncer from Major McLeash's, who remember seeing Claire with that mystery man the night she disappeared. This is audio from his testimony. - Well, he wasn't a regular, which was one reason he stood out and he wasn't, yeah, he looked like he was going out for a night to have a good time and dressed up. - When I saw him in court and I made eye contact with him, it all came rushing back to me. And yeah, with him, it was the guy I saw 40 years ago. Sorry. - I'm not surprised that now 40 years later witness is saying Mr. Kerry, I recognize him as the person who was in the bar. That's exactly the mischief of putting on a case that is fueled by cognitive bias. No one ever identified Mr. Kerry as having been in the bar before this trial occurred. - So remember, John Kerry originally said he'd never seen Claire Gravel before. Now he's coming to trial with a brand new story, detailed in a letter that he wrote from prison to his old golf coach that used to coach him in the 1980s. - So this letter is a letter that John Kerry wrote in June of 2021. So this was after the interview he had done with the detectives. It says, "I met Claire after one of our Salem State outings in June of 1984, I believe." We got into a scuffle at the end of the night when Claire's friends caught her and I together in a bathroom of which she followed me into. - He's looking for somebody to corroborate his brand new story that he didn't originally tell the detectives that he did know Claire Gravel. - John begins to think the investigators are telling me that my DNA is on this murder weapon. I think any reasonable person in that circumstance might think to themselves, "Could I have met this person? "Could I have danced with her in the bar?" - The golf coach testified that he didn't keep any records from that event, who was there, and didn't remember anything from the early 1980s. - So even though John Kerry is now putting himself at the bar that night, his defense team insists that he's not the murderer. In fact, they point their finger at James Stapleton. - Remember James Stapleton is that officer who says he was sleeping in his truck the night before Claire's body was found. - Their argument is that James Stapleton was never thoroughly investigated and that he could be the killer of Claire Gravel. - Mr. Stapleton, I'm just going to direct your attention to June 28th and 1986, okay? Do you remember where you were? - I was at a wedding. - Whose wedding was it? - My sister. - So the prosecution introduces pictures of him being at the wedding. - So in these photos, each side is arguing something completely different. The prosecution is arguing that this proves that he was someplace else and he's got an airtight alibi. - There were witnesses who testified that they saw a man in the bar who was wearing an outfit that looks quite close to what the outfit we know Mr. Stapleton was wearing at his sister's wedding. - You know if they looked in your truck at any time, I don't recall if they looked. - They never took a photograph of the truck. They never inspected the interior of the truck. They never did any of those things. - Did you kill Claire Gravel? - No, ma'am. - James Stapleton cooperated. He took police to the scene. He explains what he was doing there. Essentially, who cares if they took pictures of the truck? James Stapleton's DNA is not on the black tank top. John Carey's DNA was. - But the defense questions that DNA evidence pointing out. out that it's touch DNA, which they argue can be left behind in all kinds of ways. Good John's DNA have landed on the tank top because he was in the bar and interacted with Ms. Gravel, perhaps. We just don't know. So even if the jury struggles with the idea that maybe there's some other way that John carries DNA could have went upon her tank top, the judge also lets in other information regarding his criminal history. You're called to testify. What was that like for you? Well, I wanted to testify because I wanted them to know exactly what he did to me. And what was he doing with the respect to the news that was around right now? What was he doing with it? He's pulling it tighter and tighter. I think that's exactly what he did to her. Were you believing that this seemed like a pattern, that this could be the same man? I knew it was the same man. I mean, why would he come to my house and try to kill me? I had nothing to do with him before, so obviously he strangled that girl too. But during their closing argument, the prosecution attempts to answer questions that they anticipate that jury might have. I can't answer to you exactly how fair he came to be with John Kerry. But based on the evidence, I often guess. They basically say she voluntarily got in Kerry's car. They're driving north together, that she may have stopped to go to the bathroom. Maybe Claire had a beer from somewhere. Maybe there was some in the car. The evening was a very different time. She needed to stop and use the bathroom, and she takes up belongings and she locks all of it. She places them down on grass. They speculated that that's what Kerry thought. This is my opportunity to go and strangle her. Well, the problem is there's no evidence to support any of that. There's absolutely no evidence that Ms. Gravel ever was in a car with John Kerry. There's no evidence that Ms. Gravel stopped anywhere to use the bathroom. But what actually happened, the only two people to know for sure, are Claire and John Kerry. When the case went to the jury, I was shaking that never happened before. All it takes is one hour to reasonable doubt and this could get shot down really quick. The jury, they got the case on a Monday afternoon, a range of emotions are going through your head because it's, you're hoping for the best. You're all holding hands, and holding our breath, and then we heard the word "gilty," and it was like this gasp. When I heard those words, I actually cried, which I've never done in court before. Would you feel at that moment? Happiness for my mom, happiness for dad, and happiness for all of us, just like we got the answers finally 40 years later. I've been breathed in 40 years, now I can breathe. It took decades, but today the siblings of Claire Gravel finally had the chance to confront their sister's killer. You and your siblings all spoke at the sentencing hearing. It was important for our family to let him know how 40 years of agony felt. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children because of your cruel act. They have to bury their little girl. Today I stand here for Claire. I stand here for the life she should have had and the moments she should have been a part of. I pray now that Claire, my mom and dad and my siblings feel a sense of peace which I have spent 39 years, nine months, and nine days searching for. It is here by order by the court that you be punished. The judge sentenced his carry to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 39 and a half years, it was unsolved, and here we have 40 years later with it's all due to the one of the unsolved families out there and we no longer are. For all the unsolved, this keep hope and we here and see you. I do visit Claire's grave. I most recently went after the trial had ended because she's been such a part of my whole law enforcement career and I just wanted to know like, you know, you've been with me during all of my career and law enforcement. So this is actually the first time that we've all been here together as one group in a long time. I've been Claire very side by side and I would like to think that they're hugging right now. My father is 90 years old and I think my father lived to be the age that he is now because I think my father made a promise to my mother and said, I'm not going until I find out what happened to my little girl. My mom died March 8, 2015 when the doctors declared her dead, a ray of sunshine came in that hospital room. What do you think that meant? Claire was like, finally, mommy with me. Jim tells me he was comforted by that ray of sun, David, found it a bit healing. He says that Claire's case is a reminder that no matter how long it takes, there's always hope for justice. And this story certainly proves that we should also note tonight that John Kerry is appealing his first degree murder conviction. That is our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm David Newer. And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. Good night. [Music] [Music] [Music]