ESSEX COUNTY, Mass. – A 74-year-old Alabama man who was previously employed as a correctional officer has been indicted in the cold case murder of an 11-year-old New England girl who was killed nearly 35 years ago, prosecutors announced.
Marvin “Skip” C. McClendon Jr. was indicted Wednesday by an Essex County grand jury on the charge of first-degree murder for the 1988 homicide of Melissa Ann Tremblay, Law&Crime reported.
The girl, known by her family as “Missy,” was found dead in the Boston & Maine Railway Yard in Lawrence, Massachusetts on Sept. 12, 1988. The slain girl suffered multiple stab wounds and her body had been left in the path of an oncoming train. Hence, her left leg had been severed postmortem by a passing railway car.
McClendon is expected to be arraigned in Salem Superior Court in July. He remains held without bail, according to the Essex County District Attorney’s Office.
McClendon is a former correctional officer with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, Law&Crime previously reported.
He was originally taken into custody while in Alabama in April and charged as a fugitive from justice. He pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder.
Investigators reportedly made the homicide case against McClendon using DNA evidence that was preserved from the crime scene, according to authorities.
“Evidence recovered from the victim’s body was instrumental in solving this case,” Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett said at the time of McClendon’s arrest. “The suspect lived in Chelmsford in 1988 and had multiple ties to Lawrence.”
The defendant didn’t surface as a suspect out of no where. Investigators previously said he has been considered a “person of interest” in the case “for some time.”
The precise nature of the DNA evidence obtained from Tremblay’s body has not yet been disclosed.
Prosecutor Jessica Strasnick said during a recent court hearing that McClendon relayed “information to investigators that was never made public” regarding the young girl’s death. Moreover, police also discovered that McClendon previously owned a van “consistent with what witnesses had seen [Melissa] speaking with.”
On Sept. 11, 1988, Tremblay’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend were dining at the LaSalle Social Club in Lawrence, Massachusetts, while “Missy” played outside in the nearby rail yard. Witnesses described a van in the area at the time of her murder.
“While her mother and mother’s boyfriend remained inside the club, Melissa played in the adjacent neighborhoods and was last seen by a railroad employee and pizza delivery driver during the late afternoon hours,” Blodgett said in April.
The girl was reported missing about 9 p.m. that night, which led to a frantic search. Her body was discovered the following day, only one block from the LaSalle Social Club, WMUR reported.
McClendon in 1988 lived in nearby Chelmsford, Massachusetts and had “multiple ties to Lawrence,” including the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Salem Street, Blodgett said in April.
The 74-year-old is a former corrections officer for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, though the D.A. was unclear as to whether he was so employed at the time of the murder.
Authorities have not discussed a motive for the slaying.
