In the winter of 1973, Mary Lee McClain, a 24-year-old woman, was building a life in Boston, Massachusetts. She worked as a secretary for the Boston Alcohol Safety Action Project and lived in a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates on Mt. Vernon Street, in the historic and charming neighborhood of Beacon Hill. Her life, full of the promise of young adulthood, was horrifically cut short in an act of violence that would remain a mystery for nearly four decades.
On the night of December 12, 1973, an intruder climbed the fire escape of Mary’s apartment building and entered her home. In a chilling detail of the crime, Mary’s two roommates and a male friend were present in the apartment at the time, completely unaware of the terror unfolding in the next room. A neighbor later reported hearing "whimpering" and "muffled screams" followed by the sound of someone descending the fire escape, but the police were not called.
The following morning, one of Mary's roommates made a devastating discovery: Mary was in her bed, having been sexually assaulted and asphyxiated.
The Boston Police Department launched an investigation, but with no signs of forced entry and few leads, the case grew cold. For years, Mary’s family and friends were left with unanswered questions and the enduring pain of not knowing who was responsible for her death. The case remained an unsolved homicide, a file collecting dust, while a killer remained free. The family, however, never gave up hope that they would one day have answers.
The perpetrator was Michael Eugene Sumpter, a man with a history of violent crime. In June 1972, Sumpter had been sentenced to a six-to-ten-year prison term for assault and battery. Shockingly, on November 20, 1973, less than a month before he would murder Mary, Sumpter was granted a furlough from which he never returned. While a fugitive, he committed the brutal attack in Beacon Hill. Just days after killing Mary, on December 19, 1973, Sumpter was arrested again for purse snatching. He was convicted of this and other charges, including assault on an officer, and sent back to prison, but authorities at the time had no evidence to connect him to Mary’s murder.
Sumpter was a serial killer, responsible for the deaths of at least three women in the Boston area between 1969 and 1973. His other known victims were 23-year-old Harvard graduate student Jane Britton in 1969 and 23-year-old Ellen Rutchick in 1972. He was eventually convicted for a 1975 rape and sentenced to 15-20 years in prison. Sumpter was never a free man again for any significant length of time and died of cancer in a prison hospital on August 10, 2001, at the age of 53, his deadliest secrets still unknown to law enforcement.
The break in the long-cold case came from a place of scientific advancement. After Sumpter's death, his DNA profile was entered into the national CODIS database. In 2010, his DNA was matched to the 1972 murder of Ellen Rutchick. This breakthrough prompted investigators to re-examine other cold cases from that era. On October 18, 2012, nearly 39 years after Mary was killed, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced a positive DNA match. Evidence carefully preserved from the 1973 crime scene definitively identified Michael Eugene Sumpter as the man who had raped and murdered Mary Lee McClain.
Though Sumpter could never face justice in a courtroom, the identification brought an end to the decades-long mystery. Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley stated, “This is a story about an old case and new technology, but it's also a story about hope and perseverance.” He acknowledged the unwavering faith of Mary’s family that her murder would one day be solved. The case is now officially closed, with the primary suspect deceased, finally bringing a measure of closure to a family that waited so long for the truth.
