A Suffolk County grand jury on Oct. 1 indicted James Witkowski, 42, for the 1992 murder of Lena Bruce (E '92). Twenty-one-year-old Bruce was found dead in her South End apartment just a couple months after graduating from the university. The case went unsolved for more than two decades until DNA evidence linked Witkowski to the homicide in January.
According to an Oct. 1 Boston Globe article, Bruce grew up in Philadelphia before moving to Boston to study at Tufts. She was the only African-American woman in her class to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering.
In July 1992, Bruce, who was working at a Boston engineering firm at the time, was found by her roommate bound, gagged and partially undressed.
“My thing is, a bright light has gone out," Bruce’s mother, UnaVee Bruce said, according to a July 15, 1992 article from The Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's senseless. But she left a mark.”
All of the evidence from the crime scene -- sperm samples and fingernail scrapings - were stored in the Boston Police Crime Laboratory, according to Jake Wark, press secretary for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
Wark explained that when investigators first got hold of the DNA evidence, there was little they could do to link it to Witkowski.
"At the time, in 1992, investigators didn’t have any idea of the evidentiary power of DNA evidence," Wark said. "But what they did know is that, in some cases, a certain percentage of the male population[’s] blood type is identifiable through a sperm sample. So it conceivably could have helped to identify a person, although not nearly as distinctively as DNA evidence does today.”
According to Wark, the next development in the case came in 1998, when new advances in forensic technology allowed the Boston Police Crime Lab to develop a DNA database where they could store and record DNA profiles, including the profile for DNA found in Bruce's homicide case. That data was uploaded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's DNA database, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a year later when Massachusetts joined the system.
“[CODIS] has only grown larger over the past decade or two decades [and] allows the comparison of known offenders to the DNA profiles from unsolved crimes,” Wark said. "And that’s constantly updating, constantly checking for new submissions in the database, and despite the uploading of that DNA profile [from Bruce’s case], there were no hits.”
The 1998 advancements brought the police one important step closer to solving Bruce’s murder case, but many years were still ahead of the prosecutors before the suspect was identified.
“Periodically, Boston Police homicide detectives and Suffolk [County] prosecutors would try some new technique, maybe another appeal to the public, but in each case, unfortunately, [they] were not able to develop a potential subject,” Wark said.
During the summer of 2014, Witkowski, who was 19 at the time of the murder, was arrested for a probation violation for a 2013 assault and battery conviction and was sentenced to 18 months at the Suffolk County House of Corrections. State police collected a sample of of DNA from Witkowski during that time, Wark said.
“...[I]n Massachusetts, a person convicted of a felony must supply a DNA sample to the database," he said. "There’s not really an enforcement element of that law, however, so if a person gets probation and they walk out of court, there’s a chance that they may not actually give that sample ... So, periodically, teams of state police visit the various prisons, house of corrections, jails and other detention facilities throughout Massachusetts, essentially looking for anybody who hasn’t given a DNA sample as ordered to.”
In January of 2015, Boston Police were informed that Witkowski’s DNA matched the CODIS profile from the DNA evidence found at the crime scene in Bruce's apartment.
“And that leads to really a moment of what the district attorney called a ‘blizzard of activity’ on the case,” Wark said.
This "blizzard of activity" included re-interviews with each initial witness, a comprehensive investigation into Witkowski’s history, in-person interviews with Witkowski and the drawing of another confirmatory DNA sample, Wark said.
In addition to the revelation that Witkowski's DNA matched that found at the scene, interviews with Witkowski also provided evidence that he was involved.
“In his interviews, Witkowski claimed that he didn’t know Lena Bruce, had never met her, had never had sexual relations with her," Wark said. "When he was confronted with the fact that we had DNA, he made statements like he had been drinking in those days, was subject to blackouts, he had sex with a lot of women, it was possible that he did it and just didn’t remember.”
Witkowski was indicted for first-degree murder by a grand jury on Oct. 1. Wark said the Suffolk County Court expects to hold Witkowski's trial during October of 2016, though his next court date is Nov. 3.
“It’s usually at least a year, and more often about two years, before a murder case will go to trial," Wark said. "And that’s due in part to the constitutional protections that are afforded to every defendant.”
While at Tufts, Bruce was a member of the Xi Tau Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. Following her death, the sorority created the Lena D. Bruce / Anita Y. Griffey Scholarship, granted annually to a bright female high school senior in the Cambridge area. The sorority also holds an annual candlelight vigil for Bruce.
Following the development of the case, Tufts offered its condolences to Bruce's friends and family. The statement, issued by Tufts on the same day of the announcement, was cited by the Boston Globe and other news outlets.
"Tufts University extends its deepest sympathies to the loved ones and friends of Lena Bruce, whose death in 1992 deeply shocked and saddened our community," the statement says. "We hope they can take some measure of comfort in today’s news. We also extend our gratitude to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and the Boston Police for their continued efforts on this case."
Although the murder happened more than two decades ago, it's still an emotional case for Bruce's loved ones.
“The toughest part was realizing that both of [Bruce's] parents had died before Witkowski was identified, and that’s a sad fact to confront," Wark said. "She was certainly beloved in her community but obviously much more so within her own family ... It’s clear they were just devastated by her death and really hoping to find some closure, or at least an understanding of who had taken her life. And so that was a tough fact to confront.”
