Jury begins deliberations in the case of a former Massachusetts corrections officer accused of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1988

October 29, 2024

Michael Casey, Associated Press

A jury began deliberating Monday in the case of an Alabama man accused of beating and killing an 11-year-old New Hampshire girl more than 35 years ago.

Prosecutors and defense counsel Marvin “Skip” McClendon Jr. Closing arguments were made Monday in a case that hinges in part on whether a jury believes DNA found under Melissa Ann Tremblay’s fingernails came from McClendon.

This is the second trial in McClendon’s murder, after he went to trial last year reported an error due to deadlock of the jury.

The body of a girl from Salem, New Hampshire, was found at a train station in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1988, a day after she was reported missing. She was stabbed in the neck.

The victim accompanied her mother and her mother’s boyfriend to the Lawrence Social Club near the train station and went outside to play while the adults stayed inside, authorities said last year. That night she went missing.

The girl’s mother, Janet Tremblay, died in 2015 at the age of 70, according to her obituary. But surviving relatives attended the court to watch the final proceedings.

After initially ruling out several suspects, including two drug addicts, authorities turned their attention to McClendon.

In 2022, he was arrested at his home in Alabama, based in part on DNA evidence.

Essex County Assistant District Attorney Jessica Strasnick told jurors that McClendon’s comments during his arrest indicated that he knew the details of the crime and that he was “fixated on the fact that she was beaten, ladies and gentlemen, because he knew that she was not just killed that day, that is, she was beaten.”

Strasnik said a lefty like McClendon hit Tremblay. She told jurors that the carpenter and former Massachusetts correctional officer knew Lawrence because he frequented the city’s bars and strip clubs. He also lived less than 20 miles away at the time of the murder.

“He assumed he got away with it after 33 years,” Strasnyk said.

“He suggested that leaving her battered and cut body next to the train wheel would make it look like she had been run over,” she said. “He assumed they wouldn’t investigate. He assumed he would be overlooked.”

Strasnick told jurors that DNA evidence taken from under Trumble’s fingernails ruled out 99.8% of the male population.

“This 11-year-old girl used her last bit of energy to fight for her life, scratching and clawing at him,” Strasnick said. “Because of that, she was able to get his DNA under her fingernails… That’s why, after all these years, his past finally caught up with him.”

But McClendon’s attorney, Henry Fasoldt, said there was no evidence the DNA was taken from Tremblay’s fingernails or was from McClendon. “Their initial guess that the DNA came from the killer is a bad guess,” he said after the court hearing.

Fasoldt also said the evidence showed a right-handed person, not a left-handed person, could have hit Trumble. He also claimed that McClendon had no “significant connection” to Lawrence – apart from the fact that he lived 16 miles away in Chelmsford. In 2002, he moved to Alabama on a plot of land that his family owned.

“I’m worried. He is 77 years old and in bad health, and he has to go through this again,” he said. “I don’t believe he did it.”