DNA from the crime scene was found in 2001, but police had nothing to compare it to until Diaz agreed to give a sample of his own DNA in November. Watch video
01.22.2013 | Faustino Diaz Jr., of Springfield, stands in District Court Tuesday for his arraignment on murder charges related to the death of Myrtle Marrett in January 1991.
According to police affidavits filed with the court by Springfield Police Detective Anthony Pioggia III, he and Det. Lt. Thomas Kennedy interviewed two witnesses who each recalled something there being something odd about Diaz in the days following the Jan. 20, 1991 discovery of Marrett’s badly beaten body in her apartment at Wright Town House.
Co-workers noticed that after the murder, Diaz stopped wearing the jacket and work boots he used to wear every day doing general maintenance at the Wright facility. And then a short time later, he just stopped coming to work entirely.
Diaz , 54, of 490 Chestnut St. was arrested Monday night by Springfield police, one day removed from the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 20, 1991 murder of Marrett. The arrest marks the first high-profile success by local law enforcement since the Hampden District Attorney’s Office had made a renewed push to pursue several unsolved homicides.
Diaz is charged with murder and aggravated rape in the death of Marrett, a former missionary and devoted member of the Springfield Nazarene Church. At his arraignment Tuesday in Springfield District Court, he denied the charged. He was ordered held without the right to bail pending his trial.
Results from the State Police Crime Lab linking Diaz to forensic evidence collected in 1991 at the murder scene were delivered to Springfield police on Saturday, leading to an arrest warrant being issued and Diaz being taking into custody two days later.
But based on the narrative submitted to the courts by Pioggia and obtained by The Republican and Masslive.com, Diaz appeared to have emerged as a suspect as early as Oct. 31 when his name came up as Kennedy and Pioggia were re-interviewing people originally questioned by police more than 20 years earlier.
They managed to track him down, interview him and get him to voluntarily submit saliva sample for DNA testing by Nov. 28.
Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni at a press conference Tuesday termed the approach a combination of both forensic science and “old-fashioned police work."
Marrett’s son, David Marrett said in a press conference Wednesday that he did not think his mother’s murder would be solved after so many years.
"I was surprised. I don't think I would say shocked... I was pleased. I was happy,” said David Marrett, 70, of Hampden.
Matching Diaz’s DNA sample with evidence from the scene seems rather commonplace in the modern age of forensic science. But it should be noted that DNA was still in its infancy in 1991; many states at the time had yet to make it admissible in criminal cases.
Myrtle Marrett
Massachusetts did not pass a law authorizing creation of a database of DNA samples from crime scenes until 1997, and it wasn’t until 1999 that the state’s highest court rule the law was constitutional.
According to court documents, the state police crime lab in 2001 managed to isolate a DNA genetic fingerprint of a suspect amid evidence collected at the crime scene 10 years earlier but there was no matching record on file with either the state or national DNA database.
When Kennedy and Pioggia resumed the Marrett investigation in 2012 and learned of the existence of DNA evidence, they began tracking down men who used to work at the Wright facility for interviews and to ask for saliva samples.
From the earliest days of the investigation, detectives believed the killer either knew Marrett well enough to be let into her apartment, or that he was an employee who had access to a master key. The apartment showed no signs of forced entry.
Court documents show police interviewed Diaz originally on Jan. 21, 1991, roughly 30 hours after Marrett’s body was found.
In that statement, he said he had not been at work since the Wednesday before the murder, citing marital problems with his wife over his decision to join a reserve branch of the military.
When told Marrett had been killed, Diaz apparently began crying, recalling her as “a nice lady” and “I knew her from seeing and speaking to her at the community room in the Wright Town House.
At the time he denied having a master key to any of the Wright Town House apartments
because he worked primarily in the adjoining Mason Manor house.
It was during the follow-up interviews last fall that Diaz's name came up again. On Oct. 31, a Ludlow man who worked with Diaz mentioned him to Pioggia and Kennedy.The witness recalled that Diaz used to wear the same jacket and boots every day to work but “after the murder (the witness) never saw Diaz wearing either of those items again.”
The witness also said a short time later, Diaz quit. “(Diaz) had not be fired or let go, he just stopped coming to work.”
This witness directed police to talk with a woman who worked as an administrator at the complex and during a Nov. 15 interview the woman corroborated the first witness’s
recollections about the boots and jacket.
The woman said she had always been suspicious of Diaz, and vividly recalled seeing him outside on a freezing January day after the murder wearing sneakers and a blazer instead of his usual boots and army jacket, which she never saw again.
As Pioggia notes in his court statement “based on the amount of blood in the crime scene, it would be reasonable to believe blood evidence could be transferred from the scene to the suspect and/or their clothing,”
The woman also told detectives that prior to the murder, one Wright Town Hall resident complained that Diaz knocked on her door at 8 p.m. one night to ask if she had any work for him to do for money. The tenant refused and closed the door on him.
At the time, Diaz’s shift ended at noon.
Kennedy and Pioggia tracked down Diaz at his job at Savers Thrift Store in West Springfield on Nov. 27.
Pioggi writes that when they introduced themselves as Springfield police officers, Diaz appeared concerned as if they intended to deliver “bad news like a death notification.”
When they told him, they wanted to talk to him about something “from a long time ago,” Diaz calmed down and seemed to relax.
He admitted working at the apartment complex and that he “remembered the lady that was killed.”
When they asked him for a DNA sample, Diaz acknowledged that he knew what DNA was. He signed a form indicating he was voluntarily allowing the detectives to take a swab of his saliva.
According to records obtained with from the Massachusetts Department of Criminal Justice Information Services, Diaz has a prior record, having been arrested twice, but each incident happened years after the Marrett homicide.
He was arrested in 2006 on a charge of malicious destruction of property and threatening to commit a crime. He pleaded guilty and in July, 2007 was given an 18 month suspended sentence.
In Nov. 2004, he was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after hitting his wife in the head with a picture frame during a domestic argument in Springfield. He was sentenced to 120 day in the Hampden County Correctional Center and given a 1-year suspended sentence.