Two men charged with murder in case of missing immigrant

They were arrested at their homes Friday night and police have been conducting five search warrants at their residences and other places, Keating said.

"Those searches continue as we speak," Keating said.

Two law-enforcement sources close to the investigation say police are investigating whether drugs or the sale of drugs was the motive for the killing.

Keating said a special twist in this case is that police do not have possession of Ramirez's body, but they have compiled witness testimony and evidence against the suspects. Keating refused to say whether police have recovered the murder weapon, how they believe Ramirez was killed, or whether authorities believe Bradley's concrete company is involved.

"We have strong evidence that Mr. Ramirez is dead. We have strong evidence that Mr. Ramirez was murdered," Keating said in an interview this afternoon. "This was not something that was random."

Keating acknowledged that he personally knows Bradley because his son played football at Xaverian.

Ramirez, who was described as a talented construction worker for WCI Corp. in Boston with a strong work ethic, was last seen March 20 after he picked up a friend from Logan International Airport. Friends and co-workers became suspicious when he didn't show up for work and failed to contact them, Keating said.

Ramirez lived with a roommate in Framingham and had been in this country for eight years. Police are conferring with immigration officials to see if he was in this country legally.

"This started as a missing person's case reported by a friend of Mr. Ramirez, who had been in daily contact," Keating said. "He was a conscientious dependable worker for many years. When he went missing, there was great alarm from people who he was in constant contact with. Suddenly he was not seen. He suddenly disappeared."

The investigation began with Framingham police, who thought the case suspicious and called in help from the State Police at the Middlesex District Attorney's office. When the case started to point to events that occurred in Norfolk County, the case was then transferred, Keating said.

A couple sitting on the back porch of Bradley's home -- at the end of a family-friendly cul-de-sac -- earlier today asked a reporter to leave the premises.

"No comment, please," said a man.

Bradley lives with the mother of his child.

Moccia is divorced and has at least one child. He was fired in 1987 from the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office as a guard trainee when police found cocaine, needles, scales and other drug paraphernalia as well as a shotgun and rifle from his Jamaica Plain apartment. He had only been a guard at the Charles Street jail for three days.

Prosecuting a murder case without a body is not without precedent in Norfolk County. In 2002, Joseph Romano of Quincy was convicted of killing his wife, Katherine Leonard Romano, in their Hough's Neck home on DNA and other evidence. Her body was never recovered.