On April 21, 1991, a concerned relative of Lisa DaSilva reached out to police in Springfield, Massachusetts. It had been an unusual amount of time since anyone had heard from the 21-year-old woman, and a feeling of unease was setting in. When officers arrived at Lisa’s apartment on Tracy Street to perform a welfare check, they made a devastating discovery. Lisa, a young woman at the start of her adult life, was found deceased in her own bed. An autopsy would later confirm the cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation, and her case was immediately ruled a homicide.
Lisa’s murder did not happen in a vacuum. It was a terrifying time for women in Springfield, as a series of violent crimes had shaken the community. Between 1990 and 1996, at least twelve women were murdered in the city, their deaths often separated by mere months or weeks. The killings were brutal and varied; some victims were stabbed, while others, like Lisa, were strangled.
The frequency and violence of the murders were so alarming that FBI profilers, including the well-known Robert Ressler, were called in to consult on the cases. They speculated that a Black male in his 30s or 40s who lived or worked near where the bodies were found might be responsible for some of the crimes.
The investigation into Lisa’s death was handled by the Springfield Police Detective Bureau. Her case was looked at alongside several other homicides that bore striking similarities. Just four months before Lisa was killed, in December 1990, the body of 17-year-old Shana Renee Price was found beaten and strangled in Blunt Park. Lisa’s apartment on Tracy Street was within walking distance of Shana’s home, a detail that did not go unnoticed by investigators. The pattern of violence continued. In May 1992, 32-year-old Corine Lee was found strangled, her body left in a dumpster in the South End neighborhood. Then, in June 1995, 24-year-old Celestina Perez was found beaten and strangled in Gurdon Bill Park.
For years, investigators explored the possibility that a single killer was responsible for the deaths of Lisa, Shana, Corine, and Celestina. The city was on edge, fearing a serial killer was in its midst. The theories of the FBI profilers proved partially true when a man named Alfred Gaynor was arrested in 1998. Using DNA evidence and Gaynor's own confessions, authorities eventually linked him to nine murders, including six of the women killed in Springfield during that period. However, Gaynor was not forensically linked to the murders of Lisa, Shana, or the other two women. For a time, he was considered a suspect in Celestina Perez's death, but there was not enough evidence to connect him.
Decades passed, and the four cases grew cold. The families were left without answers, and the community without a resolution. Then, in July 2026, a major breakthrough came in one of the cases. The Hampden District Attorney's Office announced that through advanced forensic technology, they had identified the killer of Celestina Perez. The DNA evidence pointed to Joseph James Ceravolo Jr., who had died in 2013. While this development finally brought closure to the Perez family, it also confirmed that a different individual was responsible for her death, officially separating her case from the others.
The murders of Shana Price and Corine Lee remain unsolved, as does the homicide of Lisa DaSilva. With no forensic links to known offenders and no new leads, her case has remained frozen in time. The investigation is still considered open by the Springfield Police Department and the Hampden District Attorney's Office, which continues to list Lisa’s case among its unresolved homicides. As of 2026, more than three decades after her death, no one has ever been charged with her murder, and the identity of the person who took her life remains a mystery.
Detectives with the Springfield Police Detective Bureau and the Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Cases Unit continue to seek information that could lead to a breakthrough. Anyone who may have information regarding the murder of Lisa DaSilva is urged to contact the Springfield Police Detective Bureau at (413) 787-6355 or the State Police Unresolved Cases Unit at 1-855-MA-SOLVE.
