Writer says Essex DA renews investigation of unsolved killings

Essex County prosecutors have told a Needham author that they have reopened investigations into three unsolved killings of young women whose bodies were found north of Boston in the 1970s, the writer said yesterday.

A spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett confirmed to the Globe that prosecutors are reviewing the case files but declined to provide details.

Timothy M. Burke, a former Suffolk County prosecutor and author of "The Paradiso Files: Boston's Unknown Serial Killer," said John T. Dawley, the first assistant district attorney in Essex, called about three weeks ago to say that the office has renewed the investigations on the basis of his book.

Burke's book alleges that Leonard "The Quahog" Paradiso, a convicted murderer and sex offender who had worked as a Revere shellfish peddler, was responsible for those slayings and several others in the Boston area. Paradiso died at the Lemuel Shattuck Correctional Hospital in Jamaica Plain on Feb. 27, just weeks after publication of the book, while serving a life sentence.

Dawley "didn't provide a whole lot of information other than to say they had reopened the murder cases, which were 34 years old, and asked if I had any other additional information they could use," said Burke, who now practices law in Needham.

Burke said Dawley told him that authorities were reexamining the slayings of Melodie Stankiewicz, 26, of Cambridge, whose body was found June 29, 1975, in a pond in Salem, N.H.; Holly Davidson, 22, of Needham, whose body was found March 2, 1975, off a highway in Methuen; and Kathy Williams, 17, of Hingham, whose body was found Dec. 27, 1974, off Route 495 in Andover.

Stankiewicz had been stabbed repeatedly, while the other two victims were strangled, according to Boston police reports at the time. Detectives identified all three as prostitutes who had worked in the Combat Zone red-light district.

Burke said it was not clear whether prosecutors planned to investigate any other killings that he believes Paradiso may have committed, including the slaying of Joan Webster, a 25-year-old Harvard University graduate student.

Paradiso was publicly identified in the 1980s as the prime suspect in the killing of Webster, who vanished on Thanksgiving weekend in 1981 after stepping off a plane at Logan International Airport. Her remains were discovered in 1990 in Hamilton in a wooded area near a small lake.

Paradiso was convicted of second-degree murder in 1982 for the strangulation and rape three years earlier of Marie Iannuzzi, of East Boston, whose body had been dumped in a Saugus marsh just behind a lobster pound that bought fish from Paradiso. He was sentenced to life in prison, with consecutive sentences for the attempted rapes of two other young women.

Stephen O'Connell, a spokesman for Blodgett, confirmed that prosecutors were reexamining the cases of Stankiewicz, Davidson, and Williams. "We're reviewing several files based on attorney Burke's representations to us," he said. "That's all I'm going to say."

If investigators determine that Paradiso committed the killings, Burke said, it might comfort the victims' families, even though he got away with the crimes.

"It at least provides some measure of resolution for those family members who still have no idea who was responsible for the deaths of their loved ones," he said.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.