Police arrest man in 1984 killing of 18-year-old woman

Police say DNA links Sultan Omar Chezulu to the rape and killing of Elsie Hernandez in a Roxbury lot.

For nearly 24 years, the man who raped, brutally beat, and strangled 18-year-old Elsie "Yolanda" Hernandez appeared to have gotten away with murder.

On a December evening in 1984, he dumped the teenager's body in a garbage-strewn lot in Roxbury, then disappeared.

Yesterday, Boston police and prosecutors said they had found her killer, through DNA he left at the scene.

Police said the DNA was matched to Sultan Omar Chezulu, a 60-year-old Georgia man who served time for rape, kidnapping, and sodomy in the 1970s and was released from a Massachusetts prison in 2004 after serving 14 years for attempted robbery and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Chezulu, who changed his name from Robert L. Scott for what police said were religious reasons, is expected to return to Boston today to face the charges, said police Commissioner Edward F. Davis.

Last night, Hernandez's sister and mother recalled for the Globe that Christmas was Elsie's favorite time of year. For 24 years, Christmas has been more mourned than celebrated, as it was around the holidays that Hernandez was killed.

Jessica Ruiz was only 9 when her big sister died. She has been the primary contact with investigators, urging them to produce results. She finally got the call yesterday morning.

"The police called me at 10 a.m., and they told me that they got him, that they knocked on the door around 5 o'clock in the morning, and he was surprised to see them there," said Ruiz, 33, of Roslindale. "I'm so excited. . . . To have closure 24 years to the date, basically it's just an amazing feeling."

Hernandez's 68-year-old mother, Elsie, for whom the victim was named, broke down in tears when she found out about the arrest.

"All the emotions of when it happened just came rushing back to me. I'm re-living the moment all over again," she said in Spanish, translated by Ruiz.

"On top of it all, I'm most grateful that they finally arrested someone."

Ruiz said she has spent most of her life in fear that her sister's killer might come for her.

"I was afraid," she said. "It was more like, everyday I would look into somebody's face, and I always thought, 'Is this the guy?' "

Investigators began to untangle the mystery in 2007. A homicide detective was reviewing cold cases and sent DNA that investigators had recovered from the scene in 1984 to a national database known as CODIS, for Combined DNA Index System.

A few months ago, detectives learned it matched that of Chezulu, who was forced to submit a DNA sample when he was released from prison in 2004, police said. The match took months to make because CODIS analyzes many samples from all over the country, police Lieutenant Robert Merner said.

Detectives did not immediately arrest Chezulu because they wanted to gather more evidence, police said yesterday.

But in the last few days, three detectives from the department's newly revived Unsolved Case Squad, which investigates homicides that are at least five years old, went to Atlanta to find Chezulu.

They obtained custody of Chezulu after Atlanta detectives arrested him because he had failed to register as a sex offender, police said.

Little was revealed about Chezulu yesterday. A woman who picked up the phone at the Atlanta house listed under his name identified herself as Chezulu's wife. She said she did not know about the charges until a reporter called her.

"I don't know what's going on," she said before hanging up.

Hernandez was last seen alive at about 6 p.m. on Dec. 28, 1984, when she left her job as a cashier at Robell's department store on Washington Street in Roxbury. She walked toward the vacant lot on Ball Street, which she regularly crossed to get to her grandmother's Roxbury apartment, where she lived.

It is there, police believe, that Chezulu attacked her, possibly with a rock, and strangled her.

Hernandez's mother told reporters at the time that she believed a rejected suitor might have killed her daughter, a studious Charlestown High School graduate who planned to become a veterinarian.

A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said detectives believe it was a random attack.

"Yolanda was a daughter and a sister," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said. "Had she been allowed to live, she might have grown into . . . a lovely mother, perhaps a grandmother some day."

Hernandez, who was born in Puerto Rico, was about to begin classes at Northeastern University when she was slain.

Ruiz and Hernandez said the arrest finally brings closure to their family; the victim also had two brothers.

"My daughter finally can rest at peace, knowing the person responsible for it is finally going to pay for what he did to her," Hernandez said.

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com. Globe correspondent John Guilfoil contributed to this report.