Lengthy article highlighting various cold cases.. rbbm
www.masslive.com
Jan 22 '24 By Stephanie Barry | sbarry@repub.com
''SPRINGFIELD — The dead still have voices.
Seventeen-year-old Wanda Cartagena drew her last breath just a few feet from her toddler, perched in a playpen, in 1989. Her live-in boyfriend called police when he found her with a plastic bag over her head and a string wrapped around her neck. It was a curious and sinister set of circumstances. Cartagena was pregnant with her second child — a girl — when she died.''
Cartagena’s case received little to no publicity at the time of her death and is among the homicides getting a fresh look by the Hampden District Attorney’s office, as part of a push to leverage advances in DNA technology and genealogy testing.
Prosecutors are seeking the public’s help to widen their DNA database and catch killers and rapists who have not yet been brought to justice.''
''What follows is a sampling of cases the district attorney’s office is trying to break using genetic testing, soon offered widely and for free to the local public. The tests will be provided at the Thunderbirds hockey game at the MassMutual Center on Saturday, Jan. 27. The public can also request test kits at the Hampden District Attorney’s website.''
“You can be the hero in these cases,” Gulluni said of members of the public. “And we’ll pay for it.”
''Around 4:30 p.m. on that day, her live-in boyfriend and the father of their young daughter, Amanda, called 911 to report he found Cartagena on the floor of their Mill Street apartment in Springfield. She had plans to go shopping with her mother for clothes for the new baby, who didn’t survive the attack.''
A look at cold cases Hampden County prosecutors hope to solve with DNA advances
Mothers stabbed and strangled, an abandoned newborn and decades-old sexual assaults.
Jan 22 '24 By Stephanie Barry | sbarry@repub.com
''SPRINGFIELD — The dead still have voices.
Seventeen-year-old Wanda Cartagena drew her last breath just a few feet from her toddler, perched in a playpen, in 1989. Her live-in boyfriend called police when he found her with a plastic bag over her head and a string wrapped around her neck. It was a curious and sinister set of circumstances. Cartagena was pregnant with her second child — a girl — when she died.''
Cartagena’s case received little to no publicity at the time of her death and is among the homicides getting a fresh look by the Hampden District Attorney’s office, as part of a push to leverage advances in DNA technology and genealogy testing.
Prosecutors are seeking the public’s help to widen their DNA database and catch killers and rapists who have not yet been brought to justice.''
''What follows is a sampling of cases the district attorney’s office is trying to break using genetic testing, soon offered widely and for free to the local public. The tests will be provided at the Thunderbirds hockey game at the MassMutual Center on Saturday, Jan. 27. The public can also request test kits at the Hampden District Attorney’s website.''
“You can be the hero in these cases,” Gulluni said of members of the public. “And we’ll pay for it.”
''Around 4:30 p.m. on that day, her live-in boyfriend and the father of their young daughter, Amanda, called 911 to report he found Cartagena on the floor of their Mill Street apartment in Springfield. She had plans to go shopping with her mother for clothes for the new baby, who didn’t survive the attack.''