Bristol County DA re-investigating murders of three elderly SouthCoast women

NEW BEDFORD — Three SouthCoast women’s lives started in different circumstances and even countries over a century ago, but they all came to similarly tragic ends in the 1970s when they were brutally beaten and murdered in their own homes where they lived alone.

The murders, which were never solved and may or may not be connected, stunned the elderly women’s families and the communities of New Bedford and Fairhaven.

The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office is bringing renewed attention to the crimes because, along with the Massachusetts State Police and the Fairhaven and New Bedford police, it has announced it is re-investigating the cases.

A spokesperson for the DA’s office, Gregg Miliote, said the office has evidence that has never been tested using the latest technology/DNA analysis and it is hopeful the use of the latest modern technology can help solve the cases.

Investigators are also appealing to the public to come forward with any information they may have about the crimes, according to Miliote.

Mary Silveira

On January 15, 1976, Mary Silveira’s body was found in her Fairhaven home by a neighbor after she noticed Silveira’s shades were drawn during the middle of the day and her telephone line was busy, according to The Standard-Times archives.

An autopsy of 64 year-old Silveira's body revealed she died of internal injuries caused by strangulation and a beating that left her chest cavity and one side of her head crushed and two of her ribs broken with severe damage to her heart and liver.

Police at the time said there was evidence of a struggle and that Silveiras’s body was found on top of magazines that had been thrown around the second-floor bedroom where a telephone was also off the hook. Additionally, a window was broken at the front of the house on Green Street and a second window and lock were also broken on the front door.

Silveira had been married to Fairhaven Board of Health member Dr. Filbert Silveira, but they had divorced 15 years prior to her death, according to The Standard-Times archives, she was survived by a daughter, Mrs. Robert Glover, her husband and their five children.

At the time, Silveira’s neighbors, the Earlys, described Silveira as part of the family.

“We’re more than friends in this neighborhood. After a fashion it becomes almost like a family,” Richard Early said, “You read about this happening in other places to other people. When it’s you it doesn’t seem real.”

Beatrice Cunha

Over a year later on October 4, 1977, Beatrice Cunha’s body was found on her living room floor by her son-in-law and a neighbor after a Water Department meter reader discovered the back door of Cunha’s New Bedford home on Winterville Road was unlocked and alerted a neighbor.

An associate medical examiner, Dr. Manuel D. Sousa, and state pathologist, Dr. George Katsas, determined the 85 year-old woman’s cause of death was asphyxiation by manual strangulation.

New Bedford Police Lt. Henry N. Fernandes said the telephone wires in the house were cut and both floors were ransacked.

Cunha was found wearing a nightgown with a rug covering her body.

Phyllis Currier, Cunha’s granddaughter, told The Standard-Times Wednesday that the murder “created a sharp wound in the mind and hearts of her family.”

Currier lived in Ohio at the time and said she still recalls the waves of “increasing horror and absolute shock” she felt as she learned more details about her grandmother’s death.

“My little 4”11” grandmother to have been so brutally murdered and left to die alone in the middle of the night was beyond overwhelming,” she said.

Currier would later return to Massachusetts and was a professor at UMass Dartmouth’s College of Nursing for many years.

“The frightening horror at the time of her death changed all of us,” Currier said, “My mother, who continued to live in the neighborhood after her mother’s murder, never felt safe again. She slept with the outdoor lights on all night after my dad died. Her sense of happiness and well-being in her later years was diminished.”

Cunha was born in Portugal and was taken out of school when she was 12 years-old to help raise her younger brother and sisters after her mother died, according to Currier.

She immigrated to the US when she was 18, “with few resources, under-educated, but hopeful of a better life for herself and [her] family which she achieved through hard work and personal sacrifice,” Currier said.

Her grandparents scraped money together to purchase a large tract of land in the West End, and Currier says she can still remember her grandfather herding goats on it before the land was subdivided into house lots that spanned three streets.

“My last memory of [my grandmother] was she was rocking the cradle of my newborn daughter alone in the upstairs bedroom at my parents home,” Currier said, “She wore such an expression of peace and contentment as she patiently rocked my fussy baby for hours.”

When she heard the DA would be re-investigating her grandmother’s case, Currier said she had mixed feelings because it brought all the memories back again, but she was also very glad that they are looking into the unsolved cold cases.

“I am hopeful that, with all the new crime technology, someone will come forward to help her family hear,” Currier said.

Ivy Robinson

Days before Christmas in 1978 Ivy Robinson’s two brothers discovered her body in the living room of her New Bedford home after Robinson’s daughter had tried to call her several times, but kept getting a busy signal.

When her brothers entered her home, the television set was on, an end table and lamp had been knocked over, and the telephone was on the floor, off its hook, according to The Standard-Times archives.

According to the state pathologist’s report, Robinson had been struck 11 times across her forehead, nose and the back of her head.

The 76 year-old woman’s cause of death was “asphyxiation of blood” caused by the multiple wounds to her head.

Police said at the time they believed a broken garden edger, which they found pieces of in the house and in the backyard, was the murder weapon. Blood stains were found on the four-foot long handle.

Robinson’s daughter Elaine Ellms is now 90 years-old and said learning what happened to her mother was “horrifying.”

“She had a layer of friends and family and any anticipation of anything like this was the farthest from anybody’s mind,” Ellms said, “It was a terrible event, there’s been no other occurrence like it in the family.”

Robinson had immigrated to the US from England when she was a child, according to Ellms, and had acted as a housewife and later got a job working at Sears, Roebuck, and Company in downtown New Bedford and later at the Dartmouth Mall.

Ellms describes her mother as very outgoing, very family-oriented, and an absolutely fantastic pie-maker.

Ellm’s eldest son Scott Ellms also remembers his grandmother’s baking skills.

“She always asked what I wanted for my birthday and she always made me a Ritz Cracker pie with homemade whipped cream on top,” Scott said.

Robinson’s home on Teresa Street was also a central location for family gatherings, according to Scott.

“We had a lot of family things going on in her backyard and I think that’s where my love of cooking outside ... that’s where that all came from and that was at her house and that was the memory of that, a lot of family gathering and good times in the summer,” Scott said.

At the time of his grandmother’s death Scott was 25 years-old and living in St. Louis working as an operations manager at a hotel and finalizing wedding plans with his fiance.

“Things are rolling along in whatever manner and all of a sudden this completely new and unexpected situation comes up,” he said, “Someone in your family’s been murdered, that’s not something that happens to you, that’s something you see on TV, something you see in the movies.”

The news came as a surprise and a shock, Scott said, and it was also frustrating for him because he wasn’t able to go back to comfort his mother and younger brother.

Scott said, his mother took control because she had to and he described her as “a mountain of a woman.” Scott's father died when he was only a few months old and Elaine Ellm’s second husband died in an accident after they had divorced.

“I suppose it's in my nature to pack it down and put on a good face,” Elaine said, crediting her English roots for giving her a stiff upper lip, "So I went about what I had to do.”

After the murder, Elaine said rumors circulated about possible suspects, but nothing ever came of it.

She said she was shocked when the DA’s office reached out to tell her they’d be looking into the case again.

“I deal with it with mixed emotion,” Elaine said, “It should happen and I think the resolution will be good if it comes in my time.”

Her mixed emotions come from what could potentially happen to the perpetrator of the crime.

“If this has been a common thing, he should get his comeuppance; if it was his one mistake in the world I don’t know how I feel about it,” Elaine said of any potential punishment meted out against her mother’s killer.

Although there are similarities between the three cases, Miliote said they can’t say with certainty that they are connected at this time.

Robbery appeared to be the motive in all three murders, according to Miliote.

"These are very heinous crimes that have remained unsolved for a number of years. I implore anyone with any information about these cases to come forward and speak with investigators," District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said. "This is critical in our attempt to solve these cases. These were innocent elderly women who should have been safe in their own homes."

Lieutenant Ann Marie Robertson of the Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Crimes Unit is working with the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office’s State Police Detective Unit and is assigned full-time to investigate these cases, according to Miliote, as part of a cold case unit that includes two prosecutors as well as administrative staff and a victim witness advocate.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Miliote said the Bristol District Attorney’s Office Unsolved Unit has remained very active as it continues to review every unsolved homicide that has occurred in Bristol County since 1974 and in each case, a thorough examination of all reports, witness statements, and physical evidence is undertaken.

Anyone with any information on unsolved cases can leave a message Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Cases Unit:

Tip line: 855-MA-SOLVE (855-627-6583)

Email: mspunresolve

http://bristolda.com/prosecution/unsolved-cases/