Shocking small town killing

PRINCETON — Four years ago, searchers combed the route they believed Vanessa Marcotte took when she went out for an afternoon jog a few hours before she was scheduled to return to New York.

Hours later, as the light faded from the sky, her body was found a short distance into the woods and not far from her mother’s home.

She had been brutally killed, her body partially burned and her nose broken. Her clothing was never found.

In tiny Princeton with a population of fewer than 4,000 people, crimes like the killing of Vanessa Marcotte, 27, are very unusual. But when they happen, they turn the quaint New England town into a frightening setting and draw attention from across the country.

Slightly more than 261 years before Marcotte was slain, the woods of Princeton echoed with the cries of searchers looking for another missing person: 4-year-old Lucy Keyes.

The child had headed out with her siblings to collect sand from Wachusett Pond but was told by her sisters to turn back.

It was the last time she was seen, though ever since, people have reported hearing her mother’s haunting cries through the night and seeing a child’s footprints in the snow.

While the Keyes’ case remains unsolved, four years after Marcotte’s death, police believe they have her killer in custody and he’s been awaiting trial since April 14, 2017, after they allegedly matched his DNA to samples found on Marcotte’s hands.

It was an alert state trooper and, perhaps, a stroke of luck, that brought the arrest of Angelo Colon-Ortiz, 34, a delivery driver.

Police had been looking for a dark-colored sport-utility vehicle and an Hispanic or Latino man, based on DNA evidence and witness statements. So when a state trooper working in Worcester spotted someone matching the description in a vehicle like the one the suspect might have driven, he jotted down the license plate number.

Police then went to Colon-Ortiz’s Worcester home and requested a DNA sample which, investigators said, proved to be a match with the Marcotte case evidence.

Colon-Ortiz was indicted on a single count of murder. Since then, his initial team of lawyers withdrew from the case and new attorneys were appointed.

Most recently, Colon-Ortiz’s lawyers have asked the court to suppress the DNA evidence that led investigators to him.

Colon-Ortiz’s new lawyers, Eduardo A. Masferrer and John G. Swomley, filed the motion and said their client, a Spanish speaker, did not understand the police translator, nor did he consent to providing the sample.

A hearing on that motion is set for next month, court records show.

In the time since Marcotte’s death, the town of Princeton has rallied. There have been many events, including road races and self-defense classes, held in her memory.

Marcotte was working at Google and living in New York at the time, but visited her family in Central Massachusetts often and spent time with her mother at her home on Brooks Station Road.