Seven years before he was released from a Massachusetts prison and then allegedly killed a couple in Washington state, Daniel T. Tavares Jr. led authorities to the skeletal remains of a woman in Fall River but was never charged in her slaying, a former Bristol district attorney said yesterday.
In the latest twist in a story that has raised troubling questions about Tavares's release from a Massachusetts prison in July, former district attorney Paul F. Walsh Jr. said Tavares had contacted State Police in 2000 and told them he knew where to find Gayle A. Botelho.
The 32-year-old Fall River woman disappeared in 1988, about the same time as the still-unsolved serial killings of nine drug-involved women whose bodies were found along New Bedford-area highways.
After interviewing Tavares sev eral times in prison, investigators unearthed Botelho's remains in a makeshift grave in the backyard of a house Tavares identified, Walsh said. The former district attorney said the grave was across the street from Botelho's residence, where she was last seen.
It was also the yard of the house where Tavares had been living before he pleaded guilty in 1991 to stabbing his mother to death in her Somerset home, according to another law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the unearthing who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Tavares told investigators that two acquaintances of his had killed Botelho in his presence after "some wild party," Walsh said. Authorities questioned the two men as well as Tavares, whose motives for disclosing the information were unclear, but never had enough evidence to charge anyone, Walsh said.
"The mere knowledge that this guy knew where she was buried can lead you to all sorts of conjecture about it, but at the end of the day, you need some evidence," said Walsh, who lost a bid for reelection in September 2006.
He said authorities considered the possibility that Tavares had killed Botelho and contacted them to relieve a guilty conscience, "but if that were the case, he would confess to the murder, which he didn't do."
But State Police investigators have begun reexamining the Botelho slaying after Tavares's arrest in the execution-style shootings on Nov. 17 of newlyweds Beverly and Brian Mauck in a rural area south of Tacoma, according to a State Police official with direct knowledge of the case. The official insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss State Police cases with the press.
Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol district attorney, C. Samuel Sutter Jr., who took office in January, declined to discuss the details of the Botelho case yesterday. He said Sutter is "actively investigating every unsolved homicide that occurred from 1991 through 2006 and also some from the 1980s, and this is one of them." Walsh was in office from 1991 through 2006.
Jocelyn Walton, one of Botelho's eight siblings, said she had not heard of Tavares until recent news accounts of his arrest on murder charges. Walton was shocked to hear that Tavares had led authorities to her sister's remains. "How do I know he's not the one who killed my sister?" Walton, of Fall River, said yesterday.
Her sister died of multiple stab wounds, she said.
Walton, who said she last saw Botelho the day before she disappeared in October 1988, said her sister was a drug addict and hung around with a tough crowd.
When authorities found her sister's remains, Walton recalled, police said a prisoner had provided the tip. She said authorities declined to identify the prisoner.
Tavares, 41, whom authorities described as a white supremacist, served 16 years for manslaughter for stabbing his mother to death in 1991. As he was about to be released, he was charged with assaulting two correction officers nearly 18 months earlier. A district court judge ordered him held on $100,000 bail after prosecutors argued that his violent history and his fiancée in Washington made him a risk to flee.
But in July, Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman released Tavares on his own recognizance - a decision former governor Mitt Romney, who appointed Tuttman in 2006, has denounced on the campaign stump. A warrant for Tavares's arrest was issued after he failed to appear in court July 23.
The Worcester district attorney's office had information that Tavares had fled to Seattle in July, but did not seek a warrant that would have allowed authorities to arrest him outside New England on the outstanding charges, according to federal and state law enforcement officials.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com. Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.
