After four days of deliberation, a Suffolk Superior Court jury on Monday found Michael McCarthy guilty of murdering Dorchester toddler Bella Bond, his girlfriend’s daughter, two years ago this month. The second degree murder conviction capped 24 months of investigation and prosecution by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office into the death of the girl whose body was found washed up on a Deer Island shore on June 24, 2015.
For months after the gruesome discovery by a woman walking her dog who came upon the dead child inside a trash bag on the beach, the two-year-old Bella was known only as “Baby Doe.” An acquaintance of her mother, Rachelle Bond, 41, and her boyfriend, McCarthy, 37, identified the child in September 2015 after an extensive identification campaign spread composite images around the Commonwealth and the country.
According to Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley’s office, “there was no evidence developed in the investigation or introduced through any witness at trial indicating that Rachelle Bond had played a part in Bella Bond’s homicide.” In the end, Bond pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact of murder, and to larceny over $250 by false purposes for collecting her daughter’s state benefits after she died.
McCarthy and Bond, have been incarcerated since Sept. 18, 2015. McCarthy was sentenced to life in prison, eligible for parole in 20 years on Wednesday by Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders. Bond’s sentencing is postponed until July 12 “to facilitate her direct placement with an inpatient treatment facility,” according to the district attorney’s office.
“I could not be more thankful for the work done by the Suffolk district attorney’s office and our State Police Detective Unit for Suffolk County in holding Bella Bond’s killer accountable,” Colonel Richard D. McKeon, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, said in a statement after the verdict. “They spoke for Bella in so many ways…The verdict cannot bring Bella back, and cannot change the fact that she was failed – colossally and tragically – by the adults in her life. But the verdict is right, and justice has been rightly served upon the person who took this beautiful child’s life.”
McCarthy lived with Bond and Bella in their Maxwell Street home for weeks leading up to June 2015, prosecutors said. Evidence showed that both adults were struggling with heroin addiction.
Testimony during the trial offered the following narrative: Bella was resisting going to sleep on an evening in early June 2015, so McCarthy went into her room to put her to bed. After some time had passed, Bond said she became concerned. She went to the room and saw McCarthy beating her daughter. “Bella’s face was discolored and she was not breathing,” the district attorney’s office said. “Rachelle Bond soon realized she was dead.”
McCarthy then put the body in a trash bag and, at some point in the following days, drove with Bond to a relative’s business, where he obtained several weights from a set stored there to weigh down a duffle bag containing Bella’s body in the trash bag. He then traveled to an area in South Boston near the Black Falcon Cruise Terminal and dumped the duffle bag into the water.
A Suffolk County Grand Jury later indicted McCarthy on a first-degree murder charge and Bond for being an accessory after the fact and for larceny.
Bond secured a plea deal with the district attorney’s office, which proved to be a controversial element in the case due to Bond’s changing of her story after the identification of her daughter. Bond “acted reprehensibly,” Conley said, but her testimony against McCarthy proved to be valuable.
“We faced many challenges in this case, from the weeks Bella’s body spent underwater to the months she spent unidentified,” Conley said in a statement. “But there was no shortage of people who cared deeply about this tiny and innocent child. In untold ways, through contributions large and small, they did not rest until her name was known and her voice was heard.”
