A Boston man is charged with the nearly 30-year-old murder of a Dorchester woman

Local News

Cornell Bell, 54, is charged with the 1999 murder of a Dorchester woman, after the case was unsolved for nearly 25 years.

A Boston man is now charged with the nearly 30-year-old murder of a Dorchester woman, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Cornell Bell, 54, is charged with one count of first-degree murder for the murder of Caryn Bonner, 34, who was found stabbed to death in her kitchen in 1999, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office said. 

Bell, formerly on the Massachusetts State Police’s Most Wanted list, is currently serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2022 for the murder of his girlfriend, the DA’s office said in a press release. 

Bell’s DNA was sent through the FBI’s CODIS, a DNA comparison system, which led investigators to discover Bell’s DNA on a cigarette butt found in Bonner’s apartment, prosecutors said. 

“Investigators also rediscovered photographs of latent fingerprints in blood from inside the apartment and were able to individualize one of the prints to Bell,” the DA said.  

According to Bell’s attorney, Joseph Simmons, the prosecution filed a motion requesting that Bell give a DNA sample for a comparison found on the cigarette butt. Simmons objected to the motion. 

“The prosecution claims that there was some sort of fingerprint found at a crime scene. Once we get evidence as prosecution, I’m going to hire a fingerprint expert to take a look at that evidence, [and] see if it’s reliable,” Simmons said. 

Bell is the second person to be charged in a decades-old murder case in Boston in several weeks. Brian Keazer, 50, was indicted and arrested in December for the 1997 murder of Ruth Foster.

“The combination of advanced forensic science and unrelenting investigative work has given the family and friends of Caryn Bonner, like those of Ruth Foster before them, the reality of seeing a charged defendant answer for a crime that has left years of loss and sorrow in its wake. We never consider a homicide case unsolvable, no matter how much time has elapsed,” DA Kevin Hayden said in the release. 

Bell is expected to appear in court on Feb. 19, and is being held without bail, the DA said.

“I would ask the public [to] reserve judgement and to understand the court has specific rules and procedures to make sure that somebody gets a fair trial. Anybody can be accused of a crime, and I would suggest the more serious the crime the more important it is to wait until the facts come out, wait until somebody has their day in court,” Simmons said.