Transcript of The Salem Strangler

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I'm no Superman.

Major McGleesh's was a very popular bar back in the day. Back in the '80s, when I worked here, Major's looked completely different. It's now The Babe. Seriously, this is where the line would go. All the way down here. I mean, not every night, but most nights, yeah. The line would be like right where I'm walking, 2 or 3 people deep, mostly Salem State College students. It's a busy place. It was the place to be. I was the bouncer, doorman. It was most Friday and Saturday nights. That door would be closed, and I'd be standing directly behind this door.

Oh, wow.

This place has changed quite a bit. Yeah, it's crazy coming back here after all this time. People would refer to me as, like, Cheers, like, Norm! Everybody knows your name. You would know everybody sitting here. You'd know the bartenders. You'd know the people in the kitchen. This was all the same. Actually, These are the same tables. I remember Claire sitting right there. Yeah.

I'm sorry.

This just— it just never goes away. All I did was show up to work one night And now I'm connected to this for the rest of my life. What happened to her, it shouldn't have happened.

My name is James Gravel, and I am Claire's younger brother by 2 years. I'm one of 6 with Mom and Dad, so there's 8 of us total in a small home, and Claire's, uh, 3 We were just a tight-knit Irish Catholic family that did everything with family.

We went to St. Michael's, which was a Catholic school there.

She was very feisty, very feisty redhead, had a lot of friends, knew what she wanted in life, would fight for it, would fight for her family.

Leah was a ray of sunshine and a breath of fresh air. She just had a very outgoing personality about her.

And tell me about her going off to college.

I was somewhat surprised she stayed somewhat close to home because Salem is only 40, 45 minutes from North Andover.

If you've heard of Salem, Massachusetts, the odds are the first thing that'll come to mind are the witch trials that happened in the 1600s. 1986 in Salem, Massachusetts was kind of a really interesting time because there was this transition going on where Salem was starting to recognize That even though this is an unfortunate thing that happened, it's part of our culture. It has become a huge tourism industry.

The witchy thing is what brings people here, and Salem is definitely a tourist town.

1986 was a big year.

Top Gun was a— was the big movie.

Very good year. The Celtics won their championship.

For the Celtics today, it was the sweet 16th NBA championship.

Gas was under a dollar.

Claire, she loved all sorts of genres of music. The album Rio, Hungry Like the Wolf.

Duran Duran.

Duran Duran was her favorite band.

I remember Claire introducing me to U2. She's like, oh, you gotta listen to this band, this band from Ireland. She was fiercely proud of her Irish heritage. She loved U2.

Claire and I went to a lot of concerts. We saw Rush, I don't know how many times. We saw Journey, I don't know how many times.

If it was up to Claire, she would have married Steve Perry from Journey because she absolutely loved his hair.

Claire Gravel, she was 20 years old. She was a student at Salem State College.

Claire got involved with a lot of stuff there at Salem State and ended up working for National Braille Press.

She used to talk about just how amazing it was all the time to see, you know, have people with disabilities, the way that, that things were made for them, whether it be elevator buttons or trying to give them greater access.

Claire liked to go to Major McCleesha's. It was where her friends hang out. It was just a typical college bar.

Take me back to June 30th, 1986. What do you remember about that day?

Um, that day in the morning, um, the phone rang, and I picked up the extension phone at the same time my mother picked up the phone upstairs, and it was National Braille Press saying, did Clare go home this weekend? Because she did not arrive at work. And my mother's like, no, she didn't come home this weekend.

Was that unusual for her not to show up at work?

Yes, it was very unusual. And because if she wasn't at work, she would be at home. I got my younger brother Mark and I, and we took a ride down to Salem.

You would just think, Claire, maybe she overslept. And that was very unlike her. She was always there, always on time. We went and contacted her roommate at the time, Julie. Julie hadn't seen her.

We went to a few spots that Julie knew of here in Salem that might be a hangout spot or to track down other friends, and no sign of Claire. Nothing.

That had to be strange.

It was. I was worried, but I was thinking, all right, maybe she just took off for a weekend.

Without telling anyone.

Right. Just got away. That early afternoon, we ended up going to Salem Police Department and filing a missing persons report. So Mark and I went back home.

Is the family getting panicked at this point?

Yeah, there was a lot of concern at the time.

On that day, June 30th, it was a beautiful summer day.

It was—

the sun was shining brightly. There were 3 individuals who were working for a surveying company doing some surveying out on Route 128 in the Beverly area. And they happened to see what they believed to be a woman's pocketbook laying on the side of the road. They were just trying to figure out what it was doing there. Obviously, it was unusual. One of them walked through the woods, and he saw the body of a woman.

And these road workers are obviously horrified by what they see, and they call police immediately.

I was 24 years old. I was a young trooper from the Massachusetts State Police. We received the call and responded around noontime on that day. We did immediately notice the items that were laying on the ground.

They find a pocketbook, a single sandal, a Cosmopolitan magazine. And they find a beer bottle that they suspect may be related to the dead young woman.

Ultimately, we got into the woods. And we did observe that there was a white young female lying on her back. It was pretty clear to us instantly that this person had been murdered.

So of course, the first question is, who is this person? So they look in her purse. They find her wallet. And in her wallet, they find her driver's license.

The photo appeared to be the same person laying on the ground in the woods. The name on that license was Claire Gravel.

One of the very first things police have to figure out is how this person died. When they look at Claire, they find something that is very disturbing.

The investigation is The pressure is ramping up. Police are looking everywhere for Claire's killer, and they're about to get a big lead.

We talked to several people. They witnessed something unusual in the bar that night.

There was one gentleman that stood out.

That definitely piqued our interest. After Claire's body was found, we traveled to the scene, and at the time there was no guardrail in the area that we ultimately stopped in. Today there is a guardrail there. When we came into the woods, approximately 50 feet, we could see The body of a white female lying on the ground on her back at the slight angle on the hill. The body was in this general area right here. It's like it was yesterday, honestly. I can still vividly picture it in my mind, standing here and looking at her body. Based on what we could see on the identification, Claire was 20 years old. She had an address in Salem, Massachusetts.

They see that she's barefoot. She's still clothed. She's wearing shorts, a white sweatshirt, but also a black tank top.

The shirts had been pulled up. Her breasts were exposed. It was obvious to us when we looked at her that the tank top that she had on was used to strangle her. This shirt is similar To the shirt that Claire had been wearing. Ultimately, the person kind of created an extra loop, almost like a figure 8, and brought it over her head and around her neck and pulled in order to strangle her.

This is what's known as ligature strangulation. That's 5 to 7 minutes of constant contact, constant pressure on somebody's neck. It's an intimate form of murder.

My name is Dr. Joni Johnston. I am a clinical and forensic psychologist, and I studied this case very closely. Strangulation is not a common way of murdering somebody. It isn't a gun. It isn't a knife. So it often has some specific meaning to the perpetrator.

There was a knock at the door, and it was the chief of police and a detective, and they asked me to step out. out of the room, to which I did. I went to the back stoop outside, and I heard my mother scream. And at that time, that time I ran in and said, what's wrong? And they said, Claire's dead.

I took one look at my parents' face.

I was—

I knew it was true.

I couldn't believe it.

It's the first time I ever heard my father cry.

Bob Gravel, Claire's dad, is now 90 years old, and he still lights up talking about his youngest daughter.

Do you have a story you want to share about Claire?

One time we went up to my sister's house.

Somebody says, where's Claire? She went for a walk in the woods. And all of a sudden, she's hollering for me, I'm lost, I'm lost!

We grew up in North Andover, Massachusetts, in the Merrimack Valley. Jimmy was closer in age with Claire. Jimmy was really close to her.

Where did you fall in the number?

I was 5 out of 6. I'm the second youngest.

So 3 boys and 3 girls?

3 boys and 3 girls, just like the Brady Bunch.

Just like the Brady Bunch.

Nice even split. Correct, yes.

The house was small. My brothers shared one bedroom. My sisters and I, we all shared a bedroom.

We had timed showers. We had scheduled showers.

We fought at times, too, 'cause, I mean, there's 6 kids.

We'd beat the tar out of each other. My mom would pull in the driveway, and we'd be like, I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me.

Okay.

Claire loved having a large family. That's what she wanted.

She had told some of her college friends she wanted 6 to 10 children, and I was like, wow, there's your Irish Catholic right there.

So we had a 25th wedding anniversary party for my mom and dad.

Hi, Mom!

Hi, Floyd!

366, Natalie and Nancy.

I remember Claire being there. She had a professional quality camera. She took all kinds of pictures and everything.

Claire was bubbly. She got along with everybody.

But she could get her Irish up. If anybody ever picked on her younger brothers, it was dead man walking.

She could be a little bodyguard, you know. She wasn't tall, you know, but she was the best.

Then she went off to college, and we bonded even more because I was her ride to and from college. And, you know, we would do a lot of talking about life and school.

When Claire started At Salem State, she went in as a political science major. She talked about going to law school. I, you know, thought, well, of course, because you love to argue. So, you know, that makes sense.

I wanted her to make something big for herself because I knew she could make something big for herself.

When I sat down with Claire's brother Jim, it was clear from the start how much he admired and looked up to his older sister.

She was the pretty one. She was the smart one. She was the athletic one. She was the outgoing one. And she had everything that you would want in a person.

We were trying to determine why somebody would do this to Claire. We ruled out other things such as robbery. Normally, if somebody was going to rob somebody, they wouldn't strangle them. And her checkbook was still in that pocketbook. You know, there was this very small amount of money there, so we could rule that out pretty quickly.

They look at sexual assault. The medical examiner later determined that there was no sexual assault.

We wanted to backtrack and try to see if we could figure out what her activities were before somebody killed her. We learned Claire did frequent Major McGlees's fairly often.

That was the college bar. It was very close to the campus, and that's where all the kids hung out at Salem State.

As police start putting the case together, they learned that Claire Gravel was at Major McGleesh's on the evening of Saturday, June 28th, into the early morning hours of Sunday, June 29th, just over 24 hours before her body was found.

Ultimately, we talked to the bouncers there, the bartender, and some of her friends there. And what we found was that several people witnessed something unusual. There was a man in the bar that night that stood out to them.

I'd never seen him before that night. He looked like he was out of place here.

He didn't fit with the attire, didn't fit with anybody else there.

Khakis, polo shirt with a collar on, a couple buttons. Everybody in here dressed in jeans and cutoffs and shorts.

All of them saw this person interacting with Claire, and so that Definitely piqued our interest.

Claire was just with her friends that night, but he kept looking over at her and hanging around next to her. He was like, right there.

There are all kinds of questions swirling about this mystery man, but it turns out Claire didn't leave the bar with him that night. She left with somebody else.

He's the last person that sees Claire alive. That's somebody that we want to talk to.

I found out about Claire Gravel's murder through the newspapers, the local newspapers. Salem State College student murdered. Coed murdered. Woman strangled. Those were the headlines. People were afraid. People were very afraid, very scared. I was a freshman in college.

Was there any thought of who would have done this?

There were so many names that came to my mind that it just— I wasn't sure which direction to go in.

I remember hearing after the autopsy how she had died, and it was like, OK, but who? I was just totally focused on the who. As far as whether Claire had any enemies, if she did, there wasn't any apparent to us.

Strangulation is a very personal way of killing somebody. Investigators are going to look at just about everybody who was in Claire Gravel's life.

She dated a guy named Michael Jenks. Were you suspicious at the time of him?

I had convinced myself that it was him. But then a lot of people said, no, he really, really loved his sister. He wouldn't do something like this.

That was sort of an on-and-off relationship. And so that's something else, obviously, we would look at. Was it a healthy relationship? Was it not a healthy relationship?

Years later, Claire's former boyfriend would sit down for an interview with the local station, WHDH. in Massachusetts.

It wasn't like we were madly in love and we were that close.

I was—

I knew her.

I had gone out with her. And I was the last— my name was the last one linked with her. So that's how I came about to, you know, be associated with it.

Ultimately, investigators were able to rule Michael Jinks out, and he was cleared.

So investigators are talking to everybody they can. They're talking to her friends. They're talking to people at the bar. And they learn that Claire was at Major McLeish's On Saturday, June 28th. She was dropped off at her apartment around 1:30 on Sunday morning, June 29th.

The person that gave her this ride, his name is Jim Kefalas.

Jimmy Kefalas was a regular patron at Mange McLeish's. Claire knew him.

Jim Kefalas is an acquaintance of hers. They weren't super close, but she seemed comfortable enough to accept a ride home.

When we looked into it, what we gathered was that he's the last person that sees Claire alive.

That's a huge thing for investigators.

The suspicion was on Jimmy Cavazos. All eyes were on him.

We were able to get information from him. Jim just said that when he was at the bar, Claire approached him and asked him if he could give her a ride. He basically told her, yes, but I'm not leaving right now. But when I am leaving, I'll give you a ride.

He says they left the bar somewhere between 1:00 and 1:30, and he remembers dropping her off around 1:30 AM.

We obviously had to make sure we followed up on it and made sure that what he was telling us was true. He said he pulled into a bank parking lot, which is just next to where Claire was living. He pulled up here to my right, just along this wall, and Claire got out of the car. And once she got out of the car, he saw her walking up the sidewalk here. He saw Claire just about to step onto these stairs right here.

He left, and he assumed that she got inside the apartment safely. She was right there.

The building is now like a dark gray color. At the time, it was like a bright yellow with white trim. Claire's apartment was upstairs on the left. The fact that she never made it inside, of course, that was our big question.

Well, what happened between this location Investigators want to interview tenants in Clara's building, and nobody heard anything. They didn't hear a door slam. They didn't hear a fight. They didn't hear a scream. And of course, that's then redirecting the spotlight again onto the last person who saw her, Jim Cafalis.

When I started working back in 1986, I was an investigative journalist. And the Claire Gravel story caught my attention. I got very connected to this case. I, I just couldn't give up. So I went to Claire's apartment a number of times. It was very chilling to be there. Claire Gravel was last seen walking up to these steps of her apartment at 4 Loring Avenue, directly across from Salem State College. As I talked to witnesses, many witnesses, and some of them were defensive of Jimmy, protecting Jimmy Cefallos. Others were like, I think it was him.

Jim Kafalis actually worked at Salem State College as a police officer in security. So he was working later that night. When he left Clear, he basically just circled around the intersection and headed right down to Salem State College.

Another thing was concerning to them. He was supposed to be at work at 11 o'clock that evening. And he ended up clocking in around 1:40.

This is a big deal. He's the last person to see her alive, last known person anyway. And he shows up almost 3 hours late for work. That could be considered very suspicious.

Obviously, when we start to hear things like somebody was late for work, that's something we want to look into. We also eventually learned that he had called ahead of time and told a coworker he was going to be late. And then ultimately, we learned that that coworker then saw him at 1:40 in the morning.

At this point in time, Jim Cafalis is really in a gray area. They can't rule him in, and they can't rule him out.

The police asked me questions about Jimmy Cafalis. And honestly, Jimmy Cafalis's name kept popping up. It was always, you know, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. And I'm like, Jimmy— Jimmy didn't do this. He didn't do it.

In the meantime, detectives are following up on all kinds of leads. And back at Claire's apartment, they find something intriguing.

We obtained Claire's diary. It was just a notebook, if you will, a flip notebook.

And there's a big clue— a name.

She was mentioning a person who was interested in her.

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Those first 48 hours July 1st and 2nd were just like a whirlwind and a blur. I remember they released her body. I took my parents to the undertaker, to the church, to the florist, to do all those things you need to do in order to get ready for a funeral. To this day, when I smell fresh flowers, like, my stomach turns a little bit because it takes me right back to that funeral home.

Tell me about that day, saying goodbye to your sister.

That was tough. The wake leading up to the funeral— walked in the funeral home and saw her laying there— is when I really lost it.

All of a sudden, it got real. It's not a headline. It's not something you saw on the news. Now it's real. That's actually her. And now you have to deal with it.

Claire's casket is going down the middle of the aisle, and our family going behind it and thinking that your sister's in this casket that you're never gonna see her again in, that we are here for Claire's funeral. I remember the cops telling us that they were gonna have some people— cops at the funeral— because sometimes the person shows up.

When I interviewed Mary Gravel, it's just this heartbroken mom that never was the same.

Do you know what it was like at her funeral, knowing everybody who came from that area expressing their condolences and shaking your hand, and in your mind you're saying, is this the one? It's a terrible feeling.

Jimmy Gravel told me that the day after Claire was murdered, Mary was never the same. She always wondered, who was it? Who and why? Is this the one?

That's the question police are also trying to answer, and they're looking at every part of Claire's life, including something they found back at her apartment.

Claire had a diary. She wrote everything down in a diary.

It wasn't your typical fancy diary. It was just a notebook, if you will. And Claire would just note on a variety of days, not necessarily every day, but just things that she felt that she wanted to write down.

The diary, I think, took on some significance for investigators because even though she didn't write in it every day, she obviously wrote things that were significant to her.

One name that popped up in her diary was Jerry Verrett. He was a Salem police officer.

And she did mention Jerry Varette in a couple of entries a month or so before her death. Claire had mentioned in the diary about Jerry wanted to buy her dinner. He wanted to take her on a date, and she really did not want to go.

Jerry Varette was an older man. He was around 40 years old, married, and clearly not somebody that Claire was interested in.

Much like Claire's friend Jim Kefalas, Jerry Varette also hangs out at Major McLeish's.

One of her friends had mentioned about him talking to them over the loudspeaker. So I would assume that would be the police cruiser loudspeaker when he'd go by when they're in the bar.

Investigators would be interested in Jerry Varette because this is somebody who seems to kind of have some unreciprocated love or affection. And we know that that can certainly be a motive.

And so once we heard that, we obtained his work records. We learned that he was working basically the whole time on the 28th, the 29th, the 30th. He worked so many hours during that time, there was no way that he could possibly have been able to accomplish that.

So Jerry Verrett did have an alibi.

So that turns out to be It's another dead end. But police are about to get their biggest lead yet.

When the road workers or the surveyors were at the scene with us, what they said was that in addition to finding the body, they noticed a pickup truck backed into a path 200 feet up the road from where Claire's body was found. They were asked, can you tell us more about the truck, what color it was? Would you— did you see anybody in it? They said it was a white male, probably mid-30s, in the vehicle with a mustache. So we wanted to determine who that person was that was in that pickup truck.

So remember Roger the bouncer? Police are interviewing him, and they learned that this mystery man was seen leaving the bar alone and also went to a white pickup truck.

I was standing right about here, and, uh, he walked past me this way and then went across the street heading towards a small white pickup truck parked right there. I'm assuming that's where the vehicle that he got into. But, you know, I had to turn around and go back in and, you know, do my jobs, and that was the last I saw of him.

The search for this so-called missing The search for the mystery man goes on, but then somebody connected to the white truck, the one at the crime scene, comes forward, and he's got an interesting story to tell.

And he told police, I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing.

Ultimately found the body. They had been by here, this area, earlier in the morning. And so they had noted that they saw a vehicle parked just up the road a little bit. They described it as a pickup truck. They did see somebody in the truck. They said it was a white male and that the person they thought was sleeping in the truck. Later, the Beverly police were approached by one of their officers who told them that it was his truck.

That officer is a man named James Stapleton. You can see him here in this photo, which would prove critical to the case. He works for the Beverly Police Department, which is only a 10-minute drive from Salem, Massachusetts.

James Stapleton is listening to roll call, and he hears about this truck that they're looking for.

And imagine he's sitting there listening to that and instantly knows he's that man.

As a result, my detective lieutenant and a captain from Beverly Police did an interview with James Stapleton. To determine more information about what he was doing out on Route 128. And Mr. Stapleton ultimately said that he'd had a fight with his current wife at the time, and so he did not want to go home. He made a statement saying, I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing. Of course, that is something that's intriguing, and we want to find out what is that.

He says he gets into an argument with his wife. He goes out drinking. He's drinking and driving and essentially pulls over on the side of the road to sleep it off.

That doing something he shouldn't be doing is referring to his drinking and driving. Stapleton tells investigators that he slept in his truck until around 9:00 the next morning. He says he woke up, saw those road surveyors, and then drove off.

Shortly after the news broke, I went to where the crime scene was. I wanted to do a stand-up right where it happened. During my stand-up, I was standing right where James Stapleton was parked. This is the dirt road off of Route 128 in Beverly near the Wenham town line where state DPW workers found the body of Claire Gravel strangled on Monday, June 30th, 1986, less than 36 hours after she was last seen in Salem. It was a tough place to find, and that made me think it has to be somebody that knows exactly where that road is.

When James Stapleton was talking to, uh, the other detectives, he had mentioned to them there was a gate there and he bumped the gate. He thought some paint chips might be on his car. They asked him if he would go for a ride with them back to that location. He did travel back with them to where he had parked. And they took a look around, and he noticed an orange soda can. He pointed that out to the detectives, saying, see that soda can? That's mine.

He's doing this because James Stapleton was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he knows it. So the next thing police have to do that are investigating the case is they got to take a hard look at James Stapleton. And they got to look into exactly where he was the night that Claire went missing.

As they began investigating James Stapleton, they realized that he had actually been at his sister's wedding Saturday night, the night that Claire had been at McLeish's and ultimately disappeared. And he was able to actually provide photographs that corroborated his story.

Later, as we continued the investigation, we learned that Claire was likely placed in that location, or she died in that location early Sunday morning. James Stapleton was there on Monday morning, June 30th. There's like at least 24 hours between the time she dies in those woods right there until he actually is seen parked in that location. He said he never knew that there was a body there, and if he had been aware, he would have made sure he did something about it. There are a lot of people who may know something, maybe just a small fact. The other route that I tried to take was to sort of keep the case open. in people's minds by getting out there and having the press either write another article on the case or have some news segment. We've talked to so many people. Numerous people we questioned regarding their whereabouts, their association with Claire. However, we have yet to talk to somebody who gives us enough evidence and actually leads us to Claire's killer.

As time goes on, there's a lot of concern. This is becoming a cold case. And once you've exhausted the immediate leads that you have, you have to start broadening your suspect pool.

Maybe it's not somebody she knows. Maybe it's somebody who passed through the area.

There was an active serial killer murdering women, strangling them, and dumping them on the side of the road.

You had the remains of woman after woman after woman found along the 2 highways.

The New Bedford murders was a big story in 1988.

Maybe it's a serial killer. I kept this case close to my heart. And I just had that determination. I wanted to find who did this because, you know, I had had those conversations with Claire's mom. And I could hear that pain in her voice when she spoke about her and, you know, and how— what a great person she was.

Why did she lose her life? Could she have done something that terrible?

Did she deserve this?

Why did she lose her life?

Questions that have been asked over and over by Mary and Bob Gravel.

Why was their 20-year-old daughter Claire murdered in late June of 1986?

So I just felt like there has to be some way that we can solve this case.

But heartbreakingly for Claire's family, years would go by. No arrests. They were losing hope.

After a number of years, I just convinced myself I was never going to have an answer. And part of that was I wanted it desperately for my parents. I just, just thought that was it, you know? We were never going to know.

I did have this box that I kept with a variety of little scraps of paper, notes and things, like a small photo of Claire, a picture of her with her, uh, I believe I believe it was her nephew. A picture of her, you know, patting a horse, those things that kind of kept it in my mind as this is a person that had family and had friends. It's not just this is another case. It's somebody that, you know, was loved by everybody and loved everybody. And so it kept it alive for me.

As time goes on, it's becoming increasingly clear that the suspects they had initially have been, if not ruled out, they certainly haven't been ruled in. And so I think because of that, there's a lot of concern this is becoming a cold case.

We considered everything. Maybe it's not somebody she knows. Maybe it's a complete stranger. Maybe it's somebody who passed through the area.

Maybe it's a serial So in between 1988 and 1989—

The skeletal remains of a young woman have been found along a southeastern Massachusetts highway.

There was an active serial killer that was dubbed the New Bedford Serial Killer who was murdering women and dumping them on the side of the road, but approximately 70 miles away from where Claire Gravel was discovered.

Taking a look at how Claire's body looked at the scene, how that ligature was used to kill her, and we're trying to determine, is this somebody that has some kind of paraphilia or some unique desires and motives that would drive them to do something like this?

A paraphilia is an unusual or deviant sexual interest, and that would include things Such as being sexually aroused by strangulation.

So the New Bedford Highway murders were women that were strangled in similar fashion that Claire was.

You had the remains of woman after woman after woman found along the 2 highways.

Noticing these similarities, which makes it worth investigating, they're also noticing very significant differences. The victimology is really important. In the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer, the victims tend to be either involved in sex work or in drug or alcohol use. That's very different from Claire. They were ultimately never able to connect the two. And as a matter of fact, 9 murders of these women has never been solved to this day.

As the years go by and the investigation goes on, investigation of Claire Gravel's murder. Forensic technology is advancing at an almost magical rate, and one of the things they started doing is what's commonly known as touch DNA. And murder cases across America and really the world began getting solved because of this new technology.

In 2004, I learned more about touch DNA. A little bit different from Getting DNA from blood or seminal fluid or hairs. This is more looking for somebody's DNA who might have had contact with an object, with an item. I knew that when I looked at that ligature, that the way the tank top was twisted and pulled over Claire's neck, somebody had to really hold that tight and really use force with their hand in order to make that ligature. And so I submitted it for processing.

It takes almost 3 years as the technology catches up to the case. In 2007, they are able to isolate a complete male genetic profile.

When I heard that they had the profile, I, I was just— I was blown away. I was— that was a huge moment for me. I felt like We're going to do this. We're going to get this person someday. Might not be tomorrow, might be the— not next month, not next year, but we're going to figure out who did this. So we took that profile then and figured out, okay, now what do we need to do?

So there's still one person who has spent all of these years living under a cloud of suspicion, and that's Claire's friend Jim Kefalas. And they're about to test Jim Kefalas's DNA, because remember, he was the last person to see her alive that night.

I had asked one of the other detectives if he would go and follow James Kefalas, and ultimately he contacted me and said, I just saw him drop his coffee cup in a trash barrel. I said, all right, take the coffee cup, which he did, and we submitted that to be tested against the profile that was located on the tank top. And ultimately they told us that it did not match. That DNA that was on the cup that James Kefalas had did not match the DNA on the tank top.

So after 20 years, Claire's friend Jim Kefalas is cleared of involvement in Claire's murder.

So Jim Kefalas is no longer under a cloud of suspicion, but he has said this case still haunts him, especially the idea that he drove Claire home but never made sure that she made it safely into her building. Detectives also go to the trouble of tracking down James Stapleton, that officer who slept in his truck the night before Claire's body was found. They test his DNA, and it doesn't match the profile on Claire's tank top either.

James Stapleton was ultimately cleared in this case.

The home run for every investigator is a CODIS hit, and that is the national database that essentially documents every known convicted felon in all 50 states. They submit this to CODIS, and they get nothing.

It was disappointing, but I thought, this is a good step for us, because now it's, it's, it's in that database. I retired in 2009, and it was hard to let it go, if you will.

I mean, I, like I said, I kept a report on it It's been more than 20 years since Claire's murder when Detective Gill retires. So now the case lands in the hands of a brand new set of detectives, and they're essentially starting at square one.

And then later, in a town not far away, there is an attack that— it is eerily similar to Claire Gravel's murder.

He's got this around your neck. Are you thinking you're about to die?

I live in Hamilton, which is a beautiful suburb of Boston, North of Boston, near Salem. People move there because it has a great school system. It's a family town.

In my job, I often find myself sitting down with people who are recalling the worst day of their lives. And this time, I sat down with a woman named Rosemary Diskin. She told me about that night back in 2007. It had been 20 years after Claire Gravel's murder, and Rosemary knew nothing about it. She was a mom separated from her husband who was at home with her 12-year-old son Jason.

I was a real estate broker, so I worked a lot of hours, and I had a son who was 12 years old. So most of, you know, my life was my son and my job.

So take me back to June 6th, 2007. What do you remember about that day?

It was a Wednesday, and it was like a normal day. It was a nice sunny day. I worked during the day and took my son to baseball.

Go, Bill!

And he wasn't feeling well, so I brought him home. And he informed me that he had to do a project for school. He had to make a Mexican dish. So I was going to make a flan for him.

It's in the evening around 9:30, 9:40. She is cooking on the stove. There's a knock at the door, and she thinks it's her husband. And he had been over earlier, and she thought maybe he had come back for something.

So I walked over to the door, and it And, and he was— there was someone standing there with their head bowed down.

And it is a man that she knows, John Kerry. They're not friends, but she knows him.

Was he a golfing buddy of your husband's?

Not really a golfing buddy. They knew each other because they go to the same golf clubs. And I knew him because he was one of my friend's ex-husband, and he used to live one street over. And his daughter played with my son Jason. I remember it looked like he was drunk. I opened up the slider and he came in the house and I didn't invite him in. He just came right in. I'm like, you know, what are you doing here? He said, your husband invited me for a drink. I'm like, my husband invited you for a drink? That doesn't sound right. Let me give him a call. So I reached over to get the phone, and he grabbed it out of my hand, threw it on the ground, and pulled out— didn't know what it was— put a tie around my neck and tried to strangle me. He pushed me back against the wall. And I did say, why me? What's going on? And he just said, I don't know. And that was the only conversation we had. And he just kept pulling and pulling.

I think it's so confusing at this point because here's a man who has come into a woman's house that he knows, that she can identify, and attacks her randomly. And as opposed to him, you know, grabbing her breasts or Trying to take her clothes off. He is strangling her.

He's got this around your neck. Are you thinking you're about to die?

Oh, I definitely— and it was cutting through my neck. I thought I was going to die. I really thought I was going to die.

There's a struggle. She ends up knocking over this heavy chair. Her 12-year-old son hears this, and he comes down to see his mom on the floor and John Carey He saw John was hurting me, so I said, get a knife and stab him.

He got a knife. He went behind him, and he stabbed him in his back, but the knife broke. And then when he did that, John Kerry let go of the noose around my neck and went after him. My son went right out the slider and was screaming, murder, murder! And the neighbors all heard him. I was in the kitchen. I came to. I got up. He turned around and came back, and he sucker punched me right in the face.

Ah.

So he gave me a black eye. And I just still to this day remember that the hand hitting me and the blood dripping down. Then he turned around and went after my son.

What's going through your mind?

Just that I didn't want him to get my son. But my son went across the street through the yard, down to his friend.

Rosemary makes it to her friend's house. She tells him what's happened. She's hysterical. He picks up the phone and he calls 911.

911, what is your emergency?

My neighbor Rose Diskin just came in saying someone has tried to attack her.

Where did this happen? This is— OK, hold on.

Hamilton, Massachusetts is a pretty quiet town. And for 911 operators, some of their shifts can be pretty boring. All of a sudden, about 9 o'clock on this evening, The call board lights up, all describing the same incident of this man who came into the house and attempted to strangle Rosemary.

Something has happened very seriously. Castor Street.

Police respond immediately.

That was my first feeling that, oh my God, I'm not dead. I, I got away and my son was okay. My son Jason thought I was dead. He thought that I had been killed. And they— the ambulance came when I went to the neighbor's house, and then they got Jason and brought him to me.

Ah, this had to be terrifying.

I had never had any violence in my life before. I mean, I lived in Hamilton. You don't expect to have a neighbor that, you know, do something like that.

Rosemary and Jason are taken to a hospital, and police know exactly who her attacker is. So they go to find John Kerry, and the story he tells them is pretty stunning.

So, uh, I, uh, I'm a kinky guy, and that's well known. That's the way I am.

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After neighbors call 911, police are on the scene pretty quickly. Rosemary suffered some pretty severe injuries to her head and her neck. Tell me about this. This is where the tie was around your neck?

This is where I had my hands underneath trying to stop him from strangling me. So this is basically what happened to my neck. It was cutting in all the way around my neck.

And then what happened? Your eye is really red here.

I think this is where he, he punched me.

Ah.

In the face. Luckily, my son came and saved my life.

So this is Jason. He looks pretty serious in these pictures.

Yeah, he does.

You see a change in him afterwards?

Yeah, there was definitely a change. I mean, he went through a very traumatic situation.

The next day, John Kerry shows up at a police department.

Now, can you do me a favor and just explain to me what happened last night? Yeah.

With a very, very different tale to tell.

I went over there, and, uh, Bronson and I had been drinking. You know, even— I'll just say, bodies. I don't know, I don't want to get too rude. I mean, crude. Yeah.

John Kerry tells them that there was a situation that happened the night before, and it was consensual.

So we started, you know, kind of going at it. We don't kiss. We don't hug. It's strictly sex, you know? It's better than me going to find a hooker, and she knows that I'm safe. So that's what we did. And, uh, but she was, uh, bent over the chair in the kitchen. So, uh, I, uh, I'm a kinky guy, and that's well known. I like bondage. I like that, uh, asphyxia type stuff, you know. That's the way I am.

John Kerry comes in with this, hey fellas, you know how this is. This was Crazy kinky sex night. As you watch that video, you can see this guy is reliving the act as he's telling it to the police.

There was something on the table that I grabbed, and I put it around her neck, and I was pulling her backwards, pulling back the reins like you would on a dog sled type of thing. She said, let's go in the bedroom. I said, no, I have to get it. Because I didn't want to lose what I had gone. I just wanted to get it over with and get out of there, which is what I do when we get together anyway.

John Kerry is describing this terrible misunderstanding where he's gone in to have consensual sex with this woman. As he's strangling her, he looks up and he sees this young man, this 12-year-old boy, looking at him.

He knows who I am, but I just tried to block myself. Caught the cable, and then I ran out the door. The sliding glass door was right there. I ran out the door. Now, you know, I don't know what Rose is saying, but it was very embarrassing for both of us, obviously.

John Kerry claimed it was consensual sex because he knew there was overwhelming evidence that he had been there. There were eyewitnesses. There was corroborating physical evidence. I mean, it was an incredibly well-documented attack.

So usually when we have a situation like this, stories are somewhat similar and they vary slightly for kind of embarrassment or whatever. On this one, they vary greatly.

She has a huge injury on her neck, and this is far more consistent with somebody who's trying to kill someone than somebody who's engaged in sexual play. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to pin him down on details, and they're essentially either trying to confirm or refute his story.

So how long have you been seeing him? Since December, but it's only, it's only the 3rd or 4th time. Have you ever been over there when, um, your son is there? No, no, he's either in school or, or maybe with his dad, but that's the first time. How did you— I didn't know he was there.

And then they're going to lower the boom and let him know they don't believe him.

How can you not, with this type of injury, take her more credible than him? You know what I mean?

So police arrest John Kerry, and they charge him with attempted murder.

So he's charged with this as a crime.

It definitely was a crime for what you did to me.

And if Jason hadn't been there that night—

I don't think I'd be alive.

John Carey is ultimately tried and convicted of attempted murder and home invasion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. So then you hear the guilty verdict. What was that like?

I was happy. Good, he's gone. Hope he never gets out.

This ordeal may be over, but this case is about to breathe new life Into a decades-old investigation.

He was not on anybody's radar.

That moment was incredible. It really was. Currently, I work as the Deputy Chief of Police at Merrimack College, where I've been now for 16 years, and I've loved every minute of it. We ensure the safety of over 4,000 students here. Obviously, for the last 40 years, I've thought about Claire and her case. It's never left my mind. She was a young college student. She never got to experience all these wonderful things that ultimately you want. Kids to experience at college. She never got to do that.

Decades have now passed in Claire's murder case, but CODIS doesn't sleep. And we have an unknown DNA profile from the black tank top, and the computer in CODIS is constantly looking for matches. And every state in America submits DNA from their convicted felons. Detectives are always hoping that somewhere along the way, the killer, his DNA is going to pop up in the system. So in 2012, there is a huge break in Claire Gravel's murder case.

I heard from the district attorney's office that they actually had a match from the CODIS database. The DNA on the tank top matched the DNA of somebody who was serving time in prison. That moment was incredible. It really was. It was— it makes me emotional, actually, to talk about it. When the District Attorney's Office told me the name John Carey, I said I never heard that name before. Nobody ever provided that name to us through our entire investigation. And no information or evidence ever led at that time to John Carey. I didn't know anything about him.

He was not on anybody's radar. As far as they knew, he had absolutely no connection with Claire Grabill.

So the very first thing police do is they look at the offense for which the guy's been jailed. And what do they find on John Carey? He's serving 20 years for the strangulation and attempted murder of another woman. Rosemary Diskin.

So once the district attorney's office knew that they had this match to John Kerry, it created a whole new investigation, basically.

One of the things they want to know, of course, is was he around in 1986? And they find that he was. He was 26 years old. He was living in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which is not very far from where Clara was found.

Gloucester is actually north of Boston. of Beverly, where Claire's body was found. And the way to get to Gloucester is on Route 128 and passing right through Beverly. He had gone to Salem State prior to Claire, back in the late '70s, so he was familiar with the area.

He graduated from high school in 1977 in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

These are high school yearbook photos of John Carey, and you see in one he's golfing. He goes on to become an avid golfer.

And in 1989, he actually started his own turf maintenance company.

Police now want to know more about John Carey. They track down his friends. They learn about relationships. They even speak to his ex-wife.

My name is Charlene Carey. I was married to John Carey. First time I ever saw John Carey was in the 7th grade. I remember walking down the hallway and seeing him, and just my eyes lit up and my heart was aflutter. John Kerry was very charismatic. He was a really good-looking kid. It was just this real attraction. I kind of just waited and hoped that someday I'd be able to go out with him, and that finally happened in, I think it was 9th grade.

That young love leads to marriage. The 2 make it official in 1995.

We were married for 7 years, then we had a child. In the early days, there came a time where he just basically said, can I try this? There's a way to, like, make It makes your orgasms more erotic, and I just wanna, you know, pretend I'm strangling you or whatever. It just helps me get off. I kinda really didn't understand it, but because I was totally in love with him, I went ahead and did this, I think, play-acting type thing He would either take my nylons, or he would grab the belt on my robe. I was afraid of anybody putting anything around my neck, so I wouldn't let him just, you know, strangle me unless I had some control. And I was very strong, so I'd always make sure I was on my stomach, and I would put my hand under. I remember at one point I was crying. I was, like, screaming and crying. And then he did stop. I thought it was weird, but, like, I knew other people that got into sadomasochism or whatever you want to call it. Like, so I figured out I was with somebody that liked that type of stuff.

So now I have to deal with it. I'm married to him. I love him. In my mind, I didn't think he was doing it for any other purpose except for him to heighten his orgasm.

As investigators are looking at this, they're really starting to see this puzzle pieces kind of come together. They're looking at clear Gravels murder. There was no sexual assault. Now they're learning from Charlene about somebody who's interested in strangulation. And then they have Rosemary Diskins' experience. When it comes to John Carey, his sex is strangulation. That's what turns him on. Is it the fact that he's controlling another person's breathing? Is it, you know, the dominance? Is it the fear? I mean, there's lots of possibilities there, but it's always very specifically about strangulation.

In 2002, after 7 years of marriage, John and Charlene split up and eventually divorced.

When he left, he said to me, Charlene, one of these days, One of these days, you're gonna look back and wish you had left me sooner. He said, there's a side of me that you know nothing about. Never for a million years thought there was a dark side. And there is a dark side. There's a really dark side.

So investigators in the Claire Gravel case now want to talk to John Kerry.

I'm John Kerry.

How are you?

Oh, we missed you. You think you can identify a girl for me?

The detectives showed him a picture of Claire.

A girl?

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You want—

this is a tape recorder. It's gonna be recording what's being said here. Okay. You are John Kerry.

Detectives from Essex County went to Concord State Prison to see John Kerry, who was doing 20 years for the attempted murder and home invasion of Rosemary. He had no idea why he was being interviewed.

At this point, he's been in prison for Having these rates in mind, do you wish to speak to us now? I don't know what we're talking about.

So, I mean, I'll speak until—

sure, we get to a point where— okay. Yeah, we're not gonna use no tricks.

We're not trying to trick—

yeah, okay.

They spend a considerable amount of time just kind of establishing rapport with him.

You're a good golfer.

Uh, I used to be.

You ever get to golf, you know?

No, no, no. I was in prison.

He has no idea that he is a suspect because they tell him that there's been a strangulation case and they'd like his help.

I was hoping to get some insight from you on the strangulation thing. Yeah. People who do that for a sexual nature and people who do that for fun, I guess.

Yeah.

I mean, is that something that was something you were into?

That's my past.

Yeah. You were into that your whole life?

No, not my whole life.

He's very quick to I don't do that anymore.

Back in '86, where'd you live in '86?

Gloucester.

Gloucester area? So the, the case I'm working on was in that area.

Okay.

And I'm hoping that maybe you maybe knew some people who were into that sort of thing back then.

Um, yeah, I can't help you with that because I wasn't into it back then.

Yeah?

Yeah.

John Kerry did everything to distance himself from anything like that in 1986.

At one point, they show him a picture of Claire Gravel.

Okay.

Well, if I showed you a picture, you think you can identify a girl for me?

A girl?

Yeah.

Maybe.

Back in '86.

And then the second time they showed him this picture of Claire. He looked at it and he goes, I need some glasses to look at it.

Oh, they're my glasses.

Your glasses?

Yeah.

They're, uh, I think they're 175s.

Yeah, that's good.

You don't mind, do you? No, absolutely.

He thinks it's a little fun. It was almost his way of, like, trying to be, like, cooperative and friendly, but putting on a front.

It looks like a guy.

That's an old picture.

Yeah. No.

Claire Gravel. That's her name. Claire Gravel.

From Gloucester?

She's— she was from— well, she lived in Salem at the time. She's from North Andover.

Yeah. Yeah.

Doesn't ring a bell at all.

No, I never visited the North Andover area.

They're trying to get him talking, and then their plan all along is they're going to hit him with the idea that, hey, man, your DNA is on the tank top on this poor, dead young woman. How do— how do you explain it?

The reason I asked is because she was found strangled to death, and I'm asking maybe you could shed some light on why. Are you accusing me?

That's fine.

Well, I'm gonna ask you—

we're gonna tell you because we did find on the thing that strangled her—

yeah, the thing around her neck— your DNA was found on this. Yeah, on that black thing around her neck.

The photo was almost a Polaroid taken from one of the crime scene photos. So it depicted her face and the ligature around her neck.

I don't even know what that black thing is.

It's her tank top.

And he took it, looked at it quickly, and then pushed it very quickly away, as far away from him as he could get it.

Well, I don't know.

And from that point in the conversation, it was like he would refer to Claire's picture Really not as a human being, but as that.

I mean, maybe I could have run into her at some point, but I can tell you that that's not my, my thing. 86? Yeah, that, that's a lot of years.

I think you'd remember a girl if she— you were playing around with her.

If I was doing that, yeah, I would have. Absolutely would have.

Yeah.

No, no, I'm telling you, you know, who knows?

I could have been dancing with that girl.

I could have. Yeah, who knows?

Well, were you?

I don't know.

John Kerry is looking for a way to explain the evidence against him. And this sounds very familiar to investigators because this is exactly what he did in 2007 with Rosemary Diskin. He realized what he needed to explain away.

Your DNA is around the murder weapon, and that's a huge problem for you.

Yeah.

And you're claiming you have No knowledge of her? You may have danced with her?

I don't know. I mean, again, I mean, my— I, I was with a lot of women. I mean, a lot of women.

I understand that.

I know it's not—

I don't—

That's not what we're saying.

I'm not real happy about my past either. No, no, I'm not.

Understand that.

I am not.

Do what you have to do.

I am not pleading to this thing.

He denies, denies, denies it. And one of the things he says is That's not my work.

This is not my work. I did what I did that night with Rose. I've done this stuff in the past. No, absolutely not.

That is an odd thing to say. I mean, that's the kind of thing you would expect somebody who has a track record of perhaps strangling women would say.

And they say, did you ever Google Claire Gravel? And he doesn't deny it.

Do you have a Google Play on your iPhone? I probably got a list of strangulation victims and so forth, and then I Googled them, I'm sure. Do you have a memory of doing it? I don't really have a memory because I did so many.

It's mind-boggling. Like, why would anybody be remotely interested in that?

And he reaches a point in the interview where he realizes these guys know a lot more than they originally let on. he shuts the interview down.

That's enough. I'm not answering any more questions.

Oh, you're done?

I'm done.

Not only do we have his DNA on the murder weapon, but also everything that he's saying just helps us even more in this case. I felt confident that he's the right guy. This is the guy that killed Claire.

Well, tonight, a break in a murder on the North Shore that went unsolved Unsolved for more than 35 years, the Essex District Attorney announced that detectives identified a suspect.

More than 3 decades after Claire Gravel's death, John Carey is finally charged with first-degree murder.

Earlier this morning, an Essex County grand jury indicted John Carey, 63, for the murder in connection with the strangulation death of Claire Gravel.

They said, we got him. I'm like, Got him? And they said, yeah, they're arresting somebody for killing Claire. And I remember I started to cry because I just was stunned. My mother passed away in March of 2015.

It's sad that my mom wasn't here to see it, but I just remember being ecstatic and we're halfway home. Our next, you know, third base is the trial.

Court is in session.

You may be seated.

Good morning, Your Honor.

When the trial started, John Kerry has a new story.

So he writes this letter with some kind of alibi. Leading up to the trial, it was— It was nerve-wracking because it had been 40 years. I never had that kind of emotion going into a trial before.

What was that like for you in court and to see him, John Kerry? Did you make eye contact?

I didn't. I, I didn't want to. But for the family to see this day that we didn't think was going to happen, it was very fulfilling.

Local Massachusetts station WHDH was there in the courtroom John Kerry murdered Claire Gravel on June 29th, 1986, motivated by his sexual arousal to the act of strangulation.

The first thing that I told the jury was that there was nothing cold about this case in 1986 at all. The police simply ignored potential suspects. investigation was absolutely corrupted by bias, and that evidence is going to show that Mr. Carey is not guilty.

Prosecutors call Roger Boulet, that bouncer from Major McGleesh's who remembers seeing Claire with that mystery man the night she disappeared. This is audio from his testimony.

Well, he wasn't a regular, which was one reason he stood out. And he wasn't, uh, yeah, he looked like he was going out for a night to have a good time and dressed up. When I saw him in court and I made eye contact with him, it all came rushing back to me. And yeah, it was him. It was the guy I saw 40 years ago.

Sorry.

I'm not surprised that now, 40 years later, a witness is saying, Saying, Mr. Carey, I recognize him as the person who was in the bar. That's exactly the mischief of putting on a case that is fueled by cognitive bias. No one ever identified Mr. Carey as having been in the bar before this trial occurred.

So remember, John Carey originally said he'd never seen Claire Gravel before. Now he's coming to trial with a brand new story detailed in a letter that he wrote from prison So this letter is a letter that John Kerry wrote in June of 2021.

So this was after the interview he had done with the detectives. It says, I met Claire after one of our Salem State outings in June of 1984, I believe.

We got into a small talk about the Salem State case.

So he's saying that he met Claire at the end of the night when Claire's friends caught her and I together in a bathroom, of which she followed me into.

He's looking for somebody to corroborate his brand-new story that he didn't originally tell detectives, that he did know Claire Gravel.

John begins to think, the investigators are telling me that my DNA is on this murder weapon. I think any reasonable person in that circumstance might think to themselves, could I have met this person? Could I have danced with her in the bar?

The golf coach testified that he didn't keep any records from that event, who was there, and didn't remember anything from the early 1980s. So even though John Kerry is now putting himself at the bar that night, his defense team insists that he's not the murderer. In fact, they point their finger at James Stapleton.

Remember, James Stapleton is that officer who says he was sleeping in his truck the night before Claire's body was found.

Their argument is that James Stapleton was never thoroughly investigated and that he could be the killer of Claire Gravel.

Mr. Stapleton, I'm just going to direct your attention to June 28th, 1986, okay? Do you remember where you were?

I was at a wedding.

Whose wedding was it?

My sister's.

So the prosecution introduces pictures of him being at the wedding. So in these photos, each side is arguing something completely different. The prosecution is arguing that this proves that he was someplace else and he's got an airtight alibi.

There were witnesses who testified that they saw a man in the bar who was wearing an outfit That looks quite close to what the outfit we know Mr. Stapleton was wearing at his sister's wedding.

Do you know if they looked in your truck at any time?

I don't recall if they looked.

They never took a photograph of the truck. They never inspected the interior of the truck. They never did any of those things.

Did you kill Claire Gravel?

No, ma'am.

cooperated.

He took police to the scene. He explains what he was doing there. Essentially, who cares if they took pictures of the truck? James Stapleton's DNA is not on the black tank top. John Kerry's DNA was.

But the defense questions that DNA evidence, pointing out that it's touch DNA, which they argue can be left behind in all kinds of ways.

Could John's DNA have Landed on the tank top because he was in the bar and interacted with Ms. Gravel? Perhaps. We just don't know.

So even if the jury struggles with the idea that maybe there's some other way that John Kerry's DNA could have wound up on her tank top, the judge also lets in other information regarding his criminal history.

You're called to testify. What was that like for you?

Well, I wanted to testify because I wanted them to know exactly what he did to me.

And, um, what was he doing with respect to the noose that was around your neck? What was he doing with it?

He's pulling it tighter and tighter. That's exactly what he did to her.

Were you believing that this seemed like a pattern, that this could I knew it was the same man.

I mean, why would he come to my house and try to kill me? I had nothing to do with him before. So, um, obviously he strangled that girl too.

But during their closing argument, the prosecution attempts to answer questions that they anticipate the jury might have.

I can't answer for you exactly what he did to her. I don't know exactly how Claire came to be with John Kerry, but based on the evidence, I offer you this.

They basically say she voluntarily got in Kerry's car, they were driving north together, that she may have stopped to go to the bathroom.

Maybe Claire had a beer from somewhere. Maybe there was something in the car. The '80s was a very different time.

She needed to stop and use the bathroom.

And she takes her belongings and she walks over and she places them down on the grass.

They, they speculated that that's when Kerry thought, this is my opportunity to go and strangle her.

Well, the problem is there's no evidence to support any of that. There's absolutely no evidence that Ms. Gravel ever was in a car with John Kerry. There's no evidence that Ms. Has Gravel stopped anywhere to use the bathroom?

But what actually happened, the only 2 people that know for sure are Claire and John Kerry.

When the case went to the jury, I was shaking. That never happened before.

All it takes is 1 ounce of reasonable doubt, and The jury, they got the case on a Monday afternoon.

A range of emotions are going through your head because it's—

it's—

you're hoping for the best.

We were all holding hands and holding our breath. And then we heard the word guilty, and it was like this gasp.

When I heard those words, I actually cried, which I have never done in court before.

What'd you feel at that moment?

Um, happiness for my mom, um, happiness for Dad, and happiness for all of us, just Like we, we got the answers finally, 40 years later.

I haven't breathed in 40 years. Now I can breathe.

It took decades, but today the siblings of Claire Gravel finally had the chance to confront their sister's killer.

You and your siblings all spoke at the sentencing hearing.

It was important for our family to let him know how 40 years of agony felt.

Parents are not supposed to outlive their children. Because of your cruel act, they had to bury their little girl.

Today I stand here for Claire. I stand here for the life she should have had and the moments she should have been a part of. I pray now that Claire, my mom and dad, and my siblings feel a sense of peace Which I have spent 39 years, 9 months, and 9 days searching for.

It is hereby ordered by the court that you be punished.

The judge sentences Kerry to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

39 and a half years it was unsolved, and here we are 40 years later with it solved. We were the— one of the unsolved families out there, and we no longer are. For all the unsolved, there's Keep hope, and we hear and see you.

I do visit Claire's grave. I most recently went after the trial had ended because she's been such a part of my whole law enforcement career, and I just wanted to know, like, you know, you've been with me during all of my career.

So this is actually the first time that we've all been here together as one group in a long time.

Mom and Claire are buried side by side, and I would like to think that they're hugging right now.

My father's 90 years old. And I think my father lived to be the age that he is now because I think my father made a promise to my mother and said, I'm not going until I find out what happened to my little girl.

My mom died March 8th, 2015. When the doctors declared her dead, a ray of sunshine came in that hospital room.

What do you think that meant?

Claire was like, finally, Mom, you're with me.

Jim tells me he was comforted by that ray of sun, David, found it a bit healing. He says that Claire's case is a reminder that no matter how long it takes, there's always hope for justice.

This story certainly proves that.

We should also note tonight that John Carey is appealing his first-degree murder conviction That is our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching.

I'm David Muir.

And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at 20/20 and ABC News, good night.

One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna Luke. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions.

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Who else knows about From CBC's Personally, this is Agent Layla, the story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on, let's go, let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.