Suffolk County District Attorney

Former Hyde Park Resident Charged with '88 West Roxbury Murder

Almost a quarter-century after 20-year-old Janet Phinney was found strangled in a wooded area behind her West Roxbury home in an area known as the Grove, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis and Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced the indictment and arrest of the victim’s ex-boyfriend for her homicide.

The Suffolk County Grand Jury today returned an indictment charging Michael Coker, born on July 3, 1962, a former Hyde Park resident, with first-degree murder for Phinney’s 1988 death.  The victim was last seen by family members at the Cedar Road home where she lived with her parents and siblings on March 18, 1988; Phinney’s body was discovered by a neighbor a few days later on March 21.

Boston Police officers arrested Coker this afternoon, and he is expected to be arraigned tomorrow morning in the Magistrate’s Session of the Suffolk Superior Court.

Police Commissioner Davis stated, “Homicide detectives, Suffolk County prosecutors and the Phinney family have been seeking justice for Janet for more than 20 years. The dogged efforts of the Cold Case Squad, the painstaking re-examination of the evidence by the BPD Crime Lab and the relentless dedication of prosecutors made this  indictment possible. My hope is that this significant development provides Janet’s family with some sense of peace.”

“Today, after more than 20 years of uncertainty, Janet Phinney’s family members received the news that their loved one’s murderer has been indicted and arrested,” Conley said. “These developments are a direct result of modern advancements in the field of forensic analysis. In recent years, this has allowed Boston Police and Suffolk prosecutors to identify more and more offenders, ultimately holding them accountable in a court of law. Whether it’s days, weeks, months or years, the message here is that we will never quit in our pursuit of justice.”

Phinney, who had been working as a hairstylist and a waitress and living with her parents at the time, was discovered strangled to death by a neighbor after the victim’s parents filed a missing persons report with the Boston Police Department. Investigators say Coker was a person of interest at the time, but the state of the evidence was insufficient to charge him until recently.

In 2010, members of the Boston Police Department’s Cold Case Squad began a re-examination of Coker’s death bolstered by forensic technology that was unavailable at the time of the offense. Biological evidence recovered from the crime scene was uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database of DNA samples from unsolved crimes and known offenders. That uploaded biological evidence was a “hit” – a match to a known suspect, later identified as Coker, who had been ordered to provide a DNA sample to the database after an unrelated conviction.

Man ordered held without bail for '04 'cold case' murder ...

(Updated June 30, 5:10 p.m.) — A Dorchester man accused of suffocating a 26 year-old Malden woman to death in his Savin Hill apartment during a envy-driven argument— and then dumping her body in the Charles River in 2004 — was ordered held without bail this morning during his arraignment in Dorchester District Court.

Shabazz Augustine, 32, cowered out of view behind a door in a Dorchester court as the family of the victim, Julaine Jules, strained for a view at the suspect. Augustine, a dental hygenist, was arrested Thursday at the Kool Smiles clinic in Roxbury where he works by a team of Boston Police officers.

Jules was a pretty, Haitian-American woman who worked as a secretary at the Children’s Museum at the time of her death. She was missing for more than a month before her decomposed body— wrapped in plastic garbage bags— surfaced on the Cambridge side of the Charles River on Sept., 19, 2004. The arrest of Augustine after seven years stunned the victim's family— which learned of the break in the case from Boston Police and the Suffolk County DA’s office yesterday. Prosecutors say that Augustine was upset after learning that Jules — whom he had an apparent romantic connection to— had been spending time with another man in the days before her disappearance.

Augustine— furious at Jules— “enlisted one of his cousins to concoct a ruse” that prompted Jules to drive to the suspect’s Sydney Street apartment on the evening of August 24, 2004, according to Assistant District Attorney Mark Lee. (Prosecutors tell the Reporter that the female cousin is believed to have been an unwitting accomplice in luring Jules to the Dorchester apartment and is not likely to face any criminal charges.)

“An argument ensued and [Augustine] suffocated and subsequently killed her by asphixiation," said Lee, adding that “we may never know” precisely how Jules was murdered.

Augustine is then alleged to have disposed of Jules’ body in the river before driving Jules’ car to a strip mall on the Revere-Malden line, where he torched the vehicle.

Lee said in court that Augustine has made a “series of incriminating statements” over the years that implicate him as the murderer, including “an admission that he killed her.”

After the arraignment, Lee was pressed to explain why Augustine has been charged now — seven years later. Augustine was the focus of police investigators immediately following the discovery of Jules’ body, according to the Boston Herald, which reported that Augustine's former apartment at 137 Sydney Street was the subject of a police visit in 2004.

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