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An inmate already imprisoned for a separate conviction was indicted Tuesday for the June 1986 murder of Massachusetts college student Claire Gravel, marking a break in the 36-year-long cold case.
John Carey, a 63-year-old inmate currently serving time at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord for an unrelated 2008 conviction, was indicted by an Essex County grand jury on Tuesday for the murder of Gravel, a 20-year-old Salem State College student strangled to death after a night out.
On Saturday, June 29, 1986, Gravel went to Major Magleashes’ Pub on Washington Street in Salem, Massachusetts, with members of her softball team, according to Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, who announced the indictment decades later. She was last seen alive between 1:30 and 1:45 a.m. Sunday being dropped off at her apartment on Loring Avenue in Salem.
Three workmen discovered her body in the woods on the northbound side of Route 128 in Beverly on the afternoon of June 30. The medical examiner determined that she had been strangled to death.
Claire Gravel, a 20-year-old Salem State College, was murdered in June 1986, but an indictment in her killing didn’t come until 36 years later.
(Essex District Attorney’s Office)
“For 36 years, Claire Gravel’s family and friends have had nothing but questions about her death,” DA Blodgett said in a statement. “Today, we are able to give them some of the answers.”
Over the years, investigators have interviewed dozens of witnesses and persons-of-interest and followed through on every lead and tip they received, the district attorney’s office said.
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“In 2012, a new lead developed based on surviving physical evidence undergoing modern forensic testing,” according to the press release. “Since then, the efforts of Assistant District Attorneys and State Police Detectives assigned to the Essex DA’s Office specializing in cold cases, as well as the initial investigation by Beverly, Salem and State Police at the time of the murder, have led to this indictment.”
