A half-century later, remembering Eileen Ferro, slain in Shrewsbury home

SHREWSBURY — On Feb. 22, 1974, Eileen Ferro was brutally stabbed to death in her Ladyslipper Drive home. She was 21.

On Thursday - 50 years to the day Ferro was slain — her life was celebrated on the Town Common with poetry and song.

“It’s important to remember,” said Edward P. Reardon Jr., a Worcester native who organized the event with the blessing of family members.

The murder of Ferro, a dental hygienist who grew up in Worcester, went unsolved for four decades until prosecutors in 2014 charged a Georgia man based on new DNA evidence.

The man, Lonzo Guthrie, was acquitted of the crime in 2016 following a closely watched trial that was preceded by a judicial ruling that drew criticism. 

The vigil Thursday evening was not a night to relitigate the past, Reardon said, but rather to remember and respect a young woman whose life was callously cut short.

After he stepped onto the common's gazebo shortly after 6 p.m., a guitarist and violinist on his left, a pastor on his right, Reardon read a statement from Ferro’s husband, Anthony T. Ferro Jr.

“Thank you Eileen for being the warm, caring loving person you were,” wrote Ferro, who was once a suspect in the case but was ruled out by prosecutors prior to Guthrie’s charge.

“I loved you then, and love you now, and I will always love and remember you until the day I die,” wrote Ferro, who moved out of state following his wife’s murder and the cloud of suspicion cast upon him.

Ferro recalled how much people loved his wife, saying that, wherever they’d go, folks of all ages would gravitate toward her.

“Whether they were babies, small children, teens or adults, she had a special way about her that made everyone feel comfortable and loved.”

A graduate of South High in Worcester, described by loved ones as bubbly, Eileen Ferro worked for a dentist in Worcester and, according to Telegram news reports at the time, had seen her mother as a patient in the office just hours before her death.

Reardon, now 59, was about 9 years old when Ferro was killed. He remembers the case. Now a contracts lawyer in New York, he attended Guthrie’s trial, and recalled concluding that a guilty man walked free.

He told the Telegram & Gazette this week he wanted to memorialize the 50th anniversary of Ferro’s passing, and got the approval of members of her family.

Those members found it too painful to attend Thursday’s event, though a nephew, Steve O’Neill of Harwich, confirmed to the T&G the family appreciated the gesture.

“We’re disappointed in the system that let us down,” O’Neill said Wednesday. “Unfortunately the victims have no rights, and the criminals have all the rights, it seems to me.”

Guthrie, who’d delivered furniture to Ferro’s home the night before she was killed, left town shortly afterward and, within two months, raped and stabbed a woman in Los Angeles.

However, the judge presiding over the Worcester murder trial ruled the California crime — for which Guthrie was convicted and served seven years in prison — wasn’t proper for jurors to hear about under the law.

Instead, jurors heard of DNA from a drop of blood near the foyer of the home that matched Guthrie, and that DNA from underneath Ferro’s fingernails could have come from Guthrie.

The defense argued Guthrie could have cut himself delivering furniture. The fingernail evidence, the judge wrote in court documents, could have come from 10 to 15 % of the male population. And while the prosecution argued testimony showed Anthony Ferro was at work when his wife was killed, the defense cast suspicion on him, noting testimony unfavorable to him from Ferro's friends.

Guthrie, 71 at the time of the 2016 trial, was acquitted in three hours. He was still a registered sex offender in Austell, Georgia, as of August 2023, Georgia state records show.

Guthrie’s name wasn’t mentioned at Thursday’s event, at which Reardon and Rev. Holly MillerShank, of the First Congregational Church across the common, took turns giving readings of poetry and a few Bible verses.

The event was not well-attended - Reardon noted he, not being a social media person, did not advertise it online - but, he said, was taped by local access cable television for broadcast.

A town resident who gave her name only as Dianne L. said she got up from her couch after seeing the vigil mentioned on TV news and drove to the common out of respect.

She said the event was beautiful, including a white and pink floral wreath featuring Ferro’s name that Reardon said Danielson Flowers provided at a discount.

The woman, speaking with Reardon afterward, lamented that so many people nowadays seem preoccupied with celebrity gossip or other trivial things than more meaningful matters.

Reardon said if you told him before that not many folks would come, “I’d do it all over again,” adding it was important to remember Ferro and honor her family.

In his written remarks, Anthony Ferro said the event “renewed my faith in mankind.”

One of the songs violinist Lynne Canavan and guitarist Christopher Weigel, both of Marlborough, ably performed was from Diana Ross’ 1973 record, “Touch Me in the Morning.”

Reardon said he made the selection because Ferro told him his wife loved the record — and that, in fact, it was cued up to be played the night of her murder.

Ferro was one of about a half dozen women stabbed to death in Central Massachusetts in a nine-month period in 1973 and 1974.

While charges were eventually brought in her death, no one has ever been charged in many of the other cases.

Those cases include: Marcia Tyman, 18, found stabbed dozens of times in October 1973 at a Harvard rest stop; Maureen Moynihan, 32, and her 4-year-old daughter, Jennifer, both found stabbed inside a vehicle several miles from their Rutland home on June 6, 1973; Judith Vieweg, 31, found stabbed not far from her Townsend home on Sept. 10, 1973;  and Jo-Anne Muldoon and Debra Ann Johnson, both 20, of Fitchburg, found stabbed on Sept. 30, 1973 inside Muldoon’s apartment.

Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.’s office lists all the murders — with the exception of Vieweg’s, which is outside his jurisdiction — on a section of his website devoted to unsolved cases.

Anyone with information about any of the cases can reach out to state police assigned to Early’s office at 508-453-7589 or email WorcesterDAunresolved@mass.gov.

Authorities have previously said the earlier killings are not believed to be related. 

One killing that went uncharged for decades — the Jan. 6, 1974 stabbing murder of Clara J. Provost in Fitchburg — resulted in a conviction in 2012 after DNA evidence surfaced in 2006.

The man convicted in that case, Ronald C. Dame, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on first-degree murder.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Vigil on Town Common: Remembering Eileen Ferro, slain in Shrewsbury home