A murder in Central Square has been solved after 32 years, Middlesex district attorney Marian Ryan and Cambridge police commissioner Christine Elow said Monday.
Edward J. Watson, 65, of Mattapan and formerly of Cambridge, has been arrested in connection with the murder of Michelle Miller, a former U.S. Army soldier who was 29 when she was last seen alive in Central Square on July 28, 1992.
Her body was found “partially naked, with her face covered by a blanket, in the filthy basement of an abandoned building” two weeks later, after a neighbor of 245 Washington St., The Port, complained of a foul odor, Ryan said.
Evidence developed by the Cold Case Homicide Unit of the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office showed that Miller was the victim of a murder-for-hire plot, and that Watson killed her in the basement apartment for her abusive partner, Daniel J. Innis, Ryan and Elow said.
Innis, who was sentenced to 15 to 20 years in state prison for an unrelated manslaughter charge in 1994, died in 2012.
“Michelle Miller had served her country as a U.S. Army soldier, and she was a mother of two beautiful children, whom she adored,” Ryan said. “By 1992 she had fallen on hard times. She was abused by a jealous and violent partner, who had threatened to take away custody of her children.”
The cold-case unit used archived records from the Department of Social Services to find previously unknown details about Miller’s abuse, including that the day before her disappearance, Miller told her social worker she planned to get a restraining order against Innes. She was last seen at the Buffet Cafe Bar, 20 Prospect St., what is now the Donut Villa Diner in Central Square.
When her body was found two weeks later in 1992, police weren’t able to charge Innis, and “for more than 30 years this case had gone unsolved,” Ryan and Elow said in a press release. But the cold-case unit was recently able to identify Watson, an associate of Innis’, as carrying out the killing at Innis’ request, Ryan and Elow said.
Watson lived at the time at 36 Newtowne Court, in The Port.
Watson has been charged with first-degree murder in Cambridge District Court. He is scheduled for arraignment Monday.
This post was written from a press release.
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