Long-delayed murder case goes to trial

Fiance's cousin accused in death

Soon after 20-year-old Mabel Melo was fatally stabbed 59 times in her Roslindale apartment, her fiance's relatives began to suspect one of their cousins.

Sometime around Christmas 2002, they lured 25-year-old Norgin Baez to a garage, interrogated him, and told him to go to the police, according to prosecutors.

At a Jamaica Plain police station, he confessed to killing Melo, who was engaged to his cousin and the mother of the cousin's 1-year-old son, Assistant District Attorney Gretchen Lundgren told jurors gathered yesterday in a Suffolk Superior courtroom for Baez's trial.

It was a homicide that shattered two close immigrant families from the Dominican Republic and took nearly six years to get to trial because of several factors, including DNA testing, a change in prosecutors, motions by the defense to suppress Baez's confession, and several examinations to determine whether Baez was competent to stand trial.

The case was also caught up in a statewide backlog of felony cases, the result of poor management in the court system that was not fully addressed until 2004, when new deadlines were put in place that ordered serious cases like murder go to trial within 360 days of arraignment.

"I hope there is justice," Melo's 58-year-old mother, Marcia, said in Spanish outside the courtroom. "It has been too long. We just want this to be over."

Baez's lawyer, Daniel Solomon, told the jury that there was no physical evidence connecting Baez to the crime scene and said that the case hangs on the words of the accused, whom he described as having below-average intelligence.

"The only piece of evidence you're going to find in this case is his confession," he said during his opening statement. "That confession was coerced. It was contaminated, and it was false."

Sometime around midnight Dec. 22, 2002, Baez and at least one other person went to Melo's home on Archdale Road, Lundgren said. They dragged her through the apartment, stabbed her in the neck, face, chest, and abdomen, and left her body in the kitchen, said Lundgren, who did not describe a motive.

The assailants then stripped her from the waist down, yanking her underwear to just below her hips. Her landlady, who lived upstairs, found her the next day at about 11 a.m.

Police also saw cuts on Melo's arms, which Lundgren said were inflicted when Melo tried to defend herself. "No matter how hard she fought, she was no match for the extreme cruelty visited upon her by her attackers," she said.

In his confession, Lundgren said, Baez's description of the crime and the crime scene was so accurate that investigators concluded that they had "found one of Mabel's attackers."

Jake Wark, spokesman for District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, said it is not clear how many other assailants there might have been. Their identities are unknown, he said. Police initially accused Baez of raping Melo, but prosecutors dropped the charge, according to Wark. He declined to say why. Solomon said prosecutors had no evidence Melo was raped.

A couple of days after Melo's death, Solomon said, three relatives of her fiance, Francisco Peguero, told Baez they were going to take him to shovel snow so he could make some money. Instead, Solomon said, they took him to the garage, where they sat him in a chair, stripped off his shirt, smacked him, and threatened to kill him and his mother if he didn't confess to the crime. The interrogators, Solomon said, included Peguero's uncle and brother.

Solomon said that Baez has below-average intelligence. He cannot pass the test to get his driver's license, Solomon said, and is the type of "complacent fellow" who will say and do anything to please people.

Baez, a short man with thinning dark hair and clear, plastic glasses, appeared stoic throughout yesterday's proceeding. He remained calm when photos of Melo's body, mutilated, half-naked, and covered in blood, were shown on a large screen. His face stayed expressionless when Marcia Melo wept on the stand as she described learning of her daughter's death.

But at the end of the day, he turned to face his half-brother and two other relatives, who had been sitting in the courtroom. He smiled slightly at them and gave a thumbs-up. Marcia Melo walked out, without looking at Baez's relatives.

The families do not talk anymore, said Francisco Peguero, who testified yesterday and sat with Marcia Melo. His son, Albert, is now 7 and knows Melo only through the pictures his father shows him.

"I tell him she died," Peguero said. "I don't say how, but I say she's dead and she's in heaven."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.