Massachusetts cold-case murder solved by DNA found on conch shell

A conch shell may have just closed a 20-year-old cold case murder in Massachusetts.

A grand jury indicted David Reed, 53, last week in connection with the previously unsolved 2001 murder of his half-sister Rose Marie Moniz inside her New Bedford residence.

The former Acushnet and New Bedford resident was indicted on charges of murder and armed robbery, according to a press release Thursday from Bristol District Attorney Thomas Quinn III.

Reed in September was also indicted for a 2003 attempted murder and robbery of Maribel Martinez-Alegria, also of New Bedford, about 30 miles southeast of Providence, R.I.

“I’m pleased to announce the indictments related to the previously unsolved cold case homicide of Rose Marie Moniz. She was a mother who was brutally murdered inside the sanctity of her own home,” Quinn said in the release. “We were able to bring some sense of relief to the victim’s family, all of whom suffered for the past 20 years from not knowing what happened to Ms. Moniz.”

Moniz, 41, was found dead in a pool of blood on her bathroom floor on March 23, 2001 when her father arrived to her house to take her to a doctor’s appointment, according to the release. She was found to have been fatally bludgeoned with a fireplace poker, conch shell and cast-iron kettle. There was no sign of forced entry.

While reviewing dozens of cases in 2019, the cold case unit noticed that the conch, according to autopsy photos, had likely made contact with Moniz’s face and her killer would have had to place his fingers inside the shell to “strike the victim with extreme force.”

Authorities tested that area and got the full DNA profile, which belonged to Reed. DNA from Reed’s family was also found, using samples from under Moniz’s fingernails.

Reed was questioned by police in 2020 before he briefly fled to Alabama, until authorities went to speak to him at the lumberyard where he was employed and he high-tailed it to California, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

He was captured on Sept. 10, 2021, and indicted on charges connected to the bludgeoning assault of Martinez-Alegria, according to the release.