Jurors in Essex County Superior Court Tuesday found a 66-year-old man guilty of murdering a 20-year-old Salem State student from North Andover near 40 years ago.
John Carey was found guilty of first-degree murder following an investigation that concluded Carey’s DNA on the black tank top shirt used to strangle Claire Gravel in 1986.
“What he left behind was his genetic blueprint on the murder weapon,” Deputy First Assistant District Attorney Kim Faitella told the jury during closing arguments Monday before Judge Jeffrey T. Karp in Essex County Superior Court in Lawrence.
According to previous releases from the district attorney’s office, on June 29, 1986, Gravel went to Major Magleashes’ Pub on Washington Street in Salem with friends. She was last seen alive between 1:30 and 1:45 a.m. the next morning being dropped off at her apartment on Loring Avenue in Salem. Three workmen discovered her body in the woods on the northbound side of Route 128 in Beverly on the afternoon of June 30. The medical examiner determined she had been strangled to death.
Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker said in a statement, “The family of Claire Gravel has waited 40 long years for justice. The prosecutors here today, together with our partners in law enforcement, never gave up on Claire’s case and today we are pleased that at least the family has some answers—some closure.”
Carey returns to court for sentencing Thursday, March 26 at 2 p.m.
At the time of her death, Gravel worked at National Braille Press. Her father, brothers and other family attended the trial. On the witness stand, her brother, James Gravel of Manchester, N.H., remembered his sister as a fun, feisty and friendly young woman.
Tucker lauded the work of Faitella; Homicide Unit Chief Jessica Strasnick; Deputy Chief of Appeals David O’Sullivan; Chief of Victim/Witness Services Maureen Leal; Massachusetts State Police Detective Lt. Robert DeMeo; former Massachusetts State Police Lt. Elaine Gill, now deputy chief of police at Merrimack College; retired Lts. Steven Buccheri and Jim Dowling; the late Detective Lt. Norman Zuk; and Beverly Police Department.