"18 years later, still no answers in Deanna Cremin’s death" by Meghan E. Irons | Globe Staff, March 30, 2013
SOMERVILLE — On Saturday, friends and the rest of the Cremin family will say a 4 p.m. prayer service in St. Ann Church where Deanna Cremin was baptized — and hold a rally in a nearby school yard. They plan to stand in silence in front of the Broadway home of the teenager’s former boyfriend, who they believe took her life.
Then Katherine Cremin will lead the group down Jaques Street, along the route they believed Deanna Cremin walked on her last night, from her boyfriend’s home to the spot behind a senior housing complex, where her body was found.
“I’m praying that someone is still out there who heard something, who saw something,’’ Cremin said. “You don’t know how minuscule or how valuable that information is. Maybe they can do something to solve this.”
Deanna J. Cremin would have been 35 on March 26. She’s been dead longer than she was alive....
Katherine Cremin was not too worried when she awoke late in the night on March 29, 1995, and discovered that Deanna was not home. She called Deanna’s beeper number and got no response. She figured Deanna must have fallen asleep while hanging out at her boyfriend’s. That morning she called the boyfriend, concerned.
“Tell Deanna to get her [butt] home,’’ Cremin recalled saying.
He explained that he had walked Deanna halfway home the previous night. Deanna’s close friends had not seen her either. Cremin left for work that morning filled with worry. She told her husband, Michael, to call the school and then call her as soon as he heard from Deanna.
Around 8 that morning, two school girls found the teenager’s body on Jaques Street. An autopsy revealed that she had been strangled and sexually assaulted. She was found with one of her legs partially out of her pants and only one sock on, a sign that there might have been a struggle, her mother said.
Cremin’s husband was the one to bring the sad news when he called her at work that morning. “I ran’’ out of the office, Katherine recalled. “I knew I was going home to a dead daughter.”
When she got home, she began screaming and thrashing about. It would take years to settle down. Grief tormented her. She lost her job because she couldn’t stop crying at work. Her marriage, shaky even then, fell apart. She turned to the bottle for solace. The loss of her daughter was too much....
Somerville police have not responded to repeated Globe phone calls about the case. Middlesex County prosecutors say they are actively investigating, though they have released little detail about whether there are suspects, new leads, or anything else that might bring the family closure and solace....
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