On May 23, 1988, 37-year-old Mary Elaine Shereika, a female, went for an early morning jog near her home in Gambrills, Maryland, a routine she followed before heading to her job as a paralegal. When she failed to return, her fiancé reported her missing. Later that day, a farmer discovered her partially clothed body in a rye field he was plowing. An investigation revealed that she had been sexually assaulted, beaten, stabbed, and ultimately strangled to death.
For years, the brutal
murder of the mother of two remained unsolved, becoming a cold case that haunted her family and the community. The case, along with two other unsolved homicides in Anne Arundel County, was revisited by the county's cold-case unit formed in 1998. The turning point in the investigation came with advancements in DNA technology. Evidence collected from the crime scene, including a bloody sock and biological samples, was re-examined. In the early 2000s, DNA evidence from the Shereika case and the two other cold cases were entered into the Combined DNA Index System a national DNA database.
This led to a breakthrough in October 2003 when the DNA from the Shereika crime scene was matched to Alexander Wayne Watson Jr., a man already serving a life sentence for a 1994 murder in Prince George's County. Watson had lived in the same neighborhoods as his victims at the time of the killings. In 2004, authorities charged Watson with the murders of Elaine Shereika, Boontem Anderson, who was killed in 1986, and 14-year-old Lisa Haenel, who was killed in 1993.
In August 2007, to avoid a possible death sentence, Alexander Wayne Watson Jr. pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of rape in a plea bargain agreement. The agreement was made with the support of the victims' families. Before his sentencing, in an unusual arrangement, the families were allowed to meet with Watson. He received three additional life sentences without the possibility of parole.
