MELROSE — In an increasingly nasty Democratic Party primary election battle for Middlesex district attorney, an infamous Melrose case may take center stage.
On Monday, the campaign of sitting Middlesex DA Marian Ryan issued a press release rejecting opponent Michael Sullivan’s claim that he worked closely with Melrose Police as they investigating the Christmas Day 1989 beating of a Grove Street woman during an apparent domestic dispute.
The release states, “For months Michael Sullivan has been struggling to answer a simple question: how could someone with so little trial experience — who hasn’t prosecuted a case in over 20 years — be the chief prosecutor for the largest, most diverse county in Massachusetts? He doesn’t really have an answer. Sometimes, he speaks in generalities. Mostly, he’s tried to change the subject.
“But on July 8, 2014, at a debate sponsored by the Lowell Sun and Middlesex Community College, Michael Sullivan went too far: he cited a specific case as an example of his experience working serious cases. When District Attorney Ryan asked him how he could gain the respect of prosecutors in the office when he had never worked on a single homicide case, Sullivan claimed that he had worked on cases that were “this close [to a homicide]”. And then he cited one:
‘[I] was responsible for being at Melrose PD at Christmas time, spending my Christmas Day at Melrose PD for a gentleman, and that’s a loose term, that kick boxed his wife to inches of her death, that when the police officers responded, they heard a gurgling sound. They thought the water was on upstairs, but there was no bathroom. It was her body. So Marian, I’ve responded to those calls. I’ve worked through the night. Maybe that’s something you didn’t realize, that I was an on-call ADA as well.’
“Ryan expressed surprise that such a junior prosecutor with so little experience would be responding to a crime scene in that way. Sullivan elaborated further:
‘I worked with Melrose PD, spent my Christmas Day there. And worked in terms of both the search warrant and making decisions as to how the individual is going to be treated, how clothes were going to be gathered, how we were going to gather evidence. That’s what I did.’
“The story was chilling. The only problem? The case was real. The people who worked on it are still around. And none of them remember
Michael Sullivan handling the case.
“The Christmas Day attack took place in 1989. (T)he attack was one of the worst the Melrose Police had ever seen. Two of the police officers that responded to the scene that day have gone on to highly-decorated police careers. Officer Mike Lyle, the responding officer, has since risen to become Chief of the Melrose Police Department. And he doesn’t remember Michael handling the case at all. ‘I remember the scene vividly,’ said Lyle. ‘It’s hard to forget something like that. I arrested (the suspect), and Audrey Parr was the prosecutor who handled the case. After the arrest, all the decisions about how the case would be handled were handled by ADA Parr, in collaboration with the Melrose PD and State Police detectives who were assigned to the District Attorney’s Office.’
Chief Lyle’s commanding officer that night was then-Sergeant Rick Smith. Smith has since risen to become the Chief of the Wakefield Police Department.
“‘I was the patrol supervisor who responded to the call that led to the arrest and eventual conviction of (the suspect),’ said Smith. ‘I remember we felt the case was going to be a homicide; we didn’t think the victim was going to make it. Audrey Parr was the prosecutor who handled the case from start to finish. She was the only prosecutor assigned to the case. I remember that distinctly, because prior to that night I don’t think I had ever met her before, and after that case I had a very strong working relationship with her. She was terrific.’
“Prosecutor Audrey Parr took the case to trial in Middlesex Superior Court just before Thanksgiving in 1990; the jury returned a guilty verdict, and (the suspect) was sentenced to years in state prison. Parr, who left the District Attorney’s Office in 1991, is now in private practice.
“Michael Sullivan says he was the on-call DA, working the case, gathering the evidence. The people who were really there? That’s not how they remember it,” the Ryan campaign statement concludes.
The release came two days before a published report of people in two more recent high profile cases throwing their support behind Sullivan.
A close friend of Jennifer Martel, murdered by Jared Remy last summer, and the mother of Lauren Dunne Astley, a Wayland teen killed by her boyfriend three years ago, “said they believe Sullivan will be more sensitive to the families and loved ones of murder victims” than Ryan is.
