Cullman County man arrested in 1988 slaying of 11-year-old girl in Massachusetts
A 74-year-old Cullman County man was jailed Tuesday afternoon, arrested on a fugitive from justice warrant charging him in connection with a nearly 34-year-old New England murder case.
Marvin C. “Skip” McClendon Jr. of Bremen is being held in the Cullman County Jail pending extradition to Essex County, Massachusetts, to face charges in the 1988 stabbing death of 11-year-old Melissa Ann Tremblay.
Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett announced the arrest Wednesday, saying the warrant for McClendon’s arrest was issued Tuesday.
McClendon is scheduled for arraignment Thursday, and the timing of his return to Massachusetts will depend on whether he waives extradition.
Blodgett in a news conference described him as a retired Massachusetts Department of Corrections officer, and said he recently had been doing carpentry work.
Disappearance of Melissa Ann Tremblay
On Sept. 11, 1988, Tremblay, of Salem, New Hampshire, went with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend to Lawrence, about 10 miles away according to Google Maps.
While the couple was at the LaSalle Social Club, the girl played in surrounding neighborhoods, and was last seen by a Boston & Maine Railroad employee and pizza delivery driver during the late afternoon hours.
That night, Tremblay’s mother and the mother’s boyfriend searched frantically for the girl, and reported her missing to Lawrence police at about 9 p.m.
Her body was found at about 3:45 p.m. the next day in the Boston & Maine Railway Yard. She’d been stabbed, and her body left so that a train ran over and severed her left leg.
Blodgett said in the years after the girl’s murder, scores of witnesses, suspects and people of interest were interviewed by police, but no one was charged in the case.
Solving the case
A cold case investigation resumed in 2014, and assistant district attorneys and state police detectives specializing in cold cases and assigned to the Essex District Attorney’s Office have been working on it.
Evidence recovered from the victim’s body was instrumental in identifying McClendon as a suspect.
McClendon in 1988 lived in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, some 16 miles from Lawrence, where Tremblay was killed.
He had multiple ties to Lawrence, according to the district attorney’s office: he worked there and frequented establishments there, including the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Salem Street.
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Essex victim advocates contacted surviving members of Melissa’s family Tuesday night, and were in contact with them again Wednesday morning.
A friend of Melissa, Andrea Ganley, told WBZ-TV in Boston that she was “beyond shocked” by the arrest.
Ganley was 7 at the time of Melissa’s death, and said she’d been hoping for a break in the case.
“I think about it all the time. I think about it every day,” she told the station. “To hear this is beyond amazing.”
Ganley described her friend as “bubbly,” adding, “She was fun. She was tough. She was very spunky.”
Blodgett said, “I want to thank everyone involved in this investigation from beginning to end. Their tireless pursuit of justice for Melissa has brought us to this moment. We never forgot about Melissa, nor did we give up on holding her killer accountable.”
He singled out Essex Chief Homicide Prosecutor Jessica Strasnick and Appeals Unit ADA Marina Moriarty; the Essex State Police Detective Unit, headed by Capt. Steve McDonald and lead investigator Lt. Peter Sherber; and Lawrence police detectives, both current and retired, particularly retired detective Thomas Murphy, for their work in the case.
Contact Gadsden Times reporter Donna Thornton at 256-393-3284 or donna.thornton@gadsdentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Cold case: Alabama man charged in 1988 murder of Massachusetts girl
