Authorities in Massachusetts have arrested a Boston-area man in connection with a murder plot in the 1992 slaying of an Army soldier, officials said Monday.
Edward J. Watson, 65, of Mattapan has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Michelle Miller, 29, who was last seen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1992, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Cambridge Police Commissioner Christine Elow said in a statement on Monday.
During an arraignment Monday, Watson, who was jailed without bail, pleaded not guilty.
Authorities said Watson killed Miller at the behest of Miller’s abusive partner, Daniel J. Innis.
Innis, who died in 2012, was sentenced in 1994 to 15 to 20 years in prison on unrelated manslaughter charges.
Miller was a mother of two children and Innis had threatened to take custody of her children, the prosecutor said.
Michelle Molenaar.
She disappeared on July 28, 1992, the day after she told a social worker that she planned to obtain a restraining order against Innis, Ryan said.
She was found dead in the basement of a vacant apartment after a neighbor complained of a foul odor, prosecutors said.
“Her body was found two weeks later, partially nude, with her face covered by a blanket, in the squalid basement of an abandoned building in Cambridge’s Central Square area,” Ryan said. “For more than thirty years this case had remained unsolved.
The prosecutor said the Cold Case Unit relied on archived documents from the Department of Social Services to uncover details about the abuse Miller was subjected to and how she tried to protect herself shortly before her disappearance.
“Our investigation identified Edward J. Watson, an associate of Daniel Innis, as the man who committed the murder at Innis’s request.”
Authorities did not specify in their statement what evidence linked Watson to Miller’s death.
The attorney listed in the lawsuits as representing Watson could not be reached for comment Monday.
A probable cause hearing is scheduled for Feb. 11, according to court records.
NBC Boston reported that the prosecutor spoke to Miller’s two adult children and told them that the murder appeared to have been orchestrated by their father.
“It was very bittersweet information,” Ryan said. “On the one hand, realizing that the police never gave up the search for what happened to their mother, but on the other hand, learning that the person who was their biological father would have been the person who initiated that.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
