MA Kathleen Welsh

[MadisonS]

Kathleen Welsh was stabbed over fifty times in her first floor apartment on Revere Street, Beacon Hill, Boston during the evening of December 12, 1976. She was a 22 year old graduate student of music at Boston University. Sadly, her murder remains unsolved.

I succeeded in locating only two newspaper articles about Kathleen, both of which were published 20 years after her murder. The first article "I Still Have No Answer," was written by Eileen McNamara, a neighbor of Kathleen, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the piece. The second article, "Unsolved Slaying Still Haunts Family," was published in the Boston Globe and includes some rather graphic details of the murder. (I will copy/paste each article in separate posts.)

Does anyone from Boston remember Kathleen's murder? Could it be linked to Michael Sumpter who was linked by DNA to the rapes/murders of at least 3 Beacon Hill women in the 1970s? He was convicted of rape and imprisoned in 1975, but managed to escape. Precisely when he escaped and resumed his attacks, I could not find.

 

[MadisonS]

Here is a link to the article, "I still have no answers." I'm unsure if copyright prevents me from copying/pasting it, so I will link it instead. {{(global.pageOgTitle) ? global.pageOgTitle : global.pageTitle}}

Edited to add: Well that looks weird. Any tutorials on how to insert the article name in the quick link? Much appreciated.

 

[jgfitzge]

Your Eileen McNamara article linked ok. I have lived in Boston all my life and never heard of this case.

 

[Fede]

Only those articles have surfaced when I searched for Kathleen's murder. I wonder why

 

[jgfitzge]

Hello, could be a number of factors why a certain cold case doesn’t get more articles or notoriety. A lot of families go to the forefront and keep it out there in the media. Whereas other families just take the opposite approach and don’t talk about it or don’t want the limelight.

Just look at the small number of cold cases for Massachusetts under Websleuths. Do you really think that is a complete list of cold cases from the 1970s 80s and 90s?

On the bright side I think I read that earlier this year the new Suffolk district attorney has created a unit within the district attorneys office dedicated to solving all cool cases in the county.

 

[MadisonS]

Hello, could be a number of factors why a certain cold case doesn’t get more articles or notoriety. A lot of families go to the forefront and keep it out there in the media. Whereas other families just take the opposite approach and don’t talk about it or don’t want the limelight.

Great points!

There was subscription-only article from the Boston Globe that was published on the 20th anniversary of the murder. It included the following quote:
"The family has not contacted Boston police in 10 years, said Patrick Welsh, Gloria's brotherinlaw. And Gloria long ago gave up hope that each day might bring the telephone call that a suspect had been charged.

But as the 20th anniversary approached, Gloria discovered that a flicker of hope remained. And she placed a phone call to a Boston newsroom to ask that a brief reminder of her daughter's death be published, on the slightest chance that fresh information might surface. "

Unfortunately, the subscription service that I use blocks access to several decades of Globe articles including the 1970s. But there were definitely more articles including one from 1973 which featured a photo of Kathleen. I'm still trying to find a way to access it.