Lucia Roberts, 16, was killed in 1982. A detective says the slaying was tied to an alleged rape at an officers' club.
Retired police detective Richard Armstead pursues the
Silver Shield case at his home in Maine. He believes
police were responsible.
(FRED J. FIELD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | September 26, 2007
Louise Roberts felt certain she was giving her 11-year-old daughter a better life when she sent her from their village in Liberia to Boston in 1977 to live with a family friend.
"We in Africa, we think America is heaven," Louise Roberts recalled in a recent telephone interview. "I told the woman to give my daughter the best of education and the best care."
Five years later, on a warm August evening, two men chasing a soccer ball in Franklin Park in Dorchester stumbled upon a body nestled in a thicket of trees and bushes.
It was Roberts's daughter, Lucia Kai Roberts. She had been strangled. Her purple pants had been yanked down to her thighs, and her red and white striped shirt pulled up.
Her killing was never solved, but the case became one of the most polarizing and closely watched in Boston after two city police officers were implicated and ultimately cleared.
A quarter-century after the slaying, the headlines have faded, but Louise Roberts, 64, is still looking for answers. Several times, she has traveled to Boston to visit her daughter's grave and to meet a retired police detective who has made it his personal mission to crack the case. She wants police to make her daughter's killing a priority.
"I don't want those people to just walk away," she said. "Her soul is not at rest."
The retired detective, Richard Armstead, 78, a gray-haired grandfather who grows vegetables at his home in rural Maine, keeps news clippings and police reports of the case carefully preserved in a leather folder. Every time Boston names a new police commissioner, Armstead said, he calls him about the case.
One of the two accused officers, now 67, said the damage to his reputation still stings 25 years later.
A friend of Lucia Roberts who was questioned repeatedly by police about her death said he remains bitter about the treatment.
Full Story:http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/09/26/hub_slaying_still_haunts_those_pursuing_suspects/
Retired police detective Richard Armstead pursues the
Silver Shield case at his home in Maine. He believes
police were responsible.
(FRED J. FIELD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | September 26, 2007
Louise Roberts felt certain she was giving her 11-year-old daughter a better life when she sent her from their village in Liberia to Boston in 1977 to live with a family friend.
"We in Africa, we think America is heaven," Louise Roberts recalled in a recent telephone interview. "I told the woman to give my daughter the best of education and the best care."
Five years later, on a warm August evening, two men chasing a soccer ball in Franklin Park in Dorchester stumbled upon a body nestled in a thicket of trees and bushes.
It was Roberts's daughter, Lucia Kai Roberts. She had been strangled. Her purple pants had been yanked down to her thighs, and her red and white striped shirt pulled up.
Her killing was never solved, but the case became one of the most polarizing and closely watched in Boston after two city police officers were implicated and ultimately cleared.
A quarter-century after the slaying, the headlines have faded, but Louise Roberts, 64, is still looking for answers. Several times, she has traveled to Boston to visit her daughter's grave and to meet a retired police detective who has made it his personal mission to crack the case. She wants police to make her daughter's killing a priority.
"I don't want those people to just walk away," she said. "Her soul is not at rest."
The retired detective, Richard Armstead, 78, a gray-haired grandfather who grows vegetables at his home in rural Maine, keeps news clippings and police reports of the case carefully preserved in a leather folder. Every time Boston names a new police commissioner, Armstead said, he calls him about the case.
One of the two accused officers, now 67, said the damage to his reputation still stings 25 years later.
A friend of Lucia Roberts who was questioned repeatedly by police about her death said he remains bitter about the treatment.
Full Story:http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/09/26/hub_slaying_still_haunts_those_pursuing_suspects/