The case of a Salem State College student found strangled to death and dumped in the woods 36 years ago may finally find some closure.
An Essex County grand jury on Wednesday morning indicted John Carey, 62, for the 1986 murder of Claire Ann Gravel, a 20-year-old computer science major who would have turned 57 years old this month.
“For 36 years, Claire Gravel’s family and friends have had nothing but questions about her death,” Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said in the Wednesday announcement. “Today, we are able to give them some of the answers.”
Carey is already locked up in MCI-Concord on a 2008 conviction for attempted murder. He’ll be arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder for Gravel’s strangulation death at Salem Superior Court at a later date.
Gravel’s body was found June 30, 1986, by a public works crew in the brush along a dirt path about 25 yards from the northbound lanes of Route 128, one of the first stories stated.
Gravel was last seen drinking two days earlier at the Major Magleashe’s pub on Washington Street in Salem after taking in a restaurant-league softball game, a friend of hers told the Herald then.
“She was a really nice girl,” the fellow Salem State student told the Herald at the time. “You could always find her down at Major’s bar. She was a regular.”
A friend dropped Gravel off at home at 1:30 the following morning, Blodgett said Wednesday, but Gravel was not seen again.
Gravel, a 1983 North Andover High School graduate, had dropped out of Salem State’s computer science program a semester earlier but had plans to reenter the program, the Herald wrote. In college, she had worked as a work-study student in the school’s Office of External Affairs and Development.
“For 36 years, Robert Gravel has carried (a prized) photo of his daughter, Claire, in his wallet,” Blodgett said. “Today I am pleased to announce that the man we believe is responsible for this murder has been indicted.”
Friends spoke fondly of her to Herald reporters in 1986, and her yearbook was full of well wishes for her promising future.
“You’re a wicked nice kid! We had a great time screaming down the hall and tickling each other. I still owe you one last tickle,” one person wrote.
Yet another wished her well in college but warned, “Watch out for all the boys there!!”
This is second cold case in recent months that Essex County has charged a suspect.
In late April, Blodgett announced that his office had charged Marvin “Skip” McClendon Jr., a 74-year-old former Massachusetts Department of Correction employee who was living in Bremen, Ala., at the time, in the 1988 murder of Melissa Ann Tremblay.
The 11-year-old girl’s body was found in the Boston & Maine Railway Yard near the corner of South Broadway and Andover Street in Lawrence. A passing train had severed her leg after her stabbing death.
He was moved from Alabama to Massachusetts to face the charge and he pleaded not guilty.
