Three years after being arrested on a murder charge in the 1980 rape and killing of a young mother in Boston, an Alabama man has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Steven Fike, 65, admitted to strangling 19-year-old Wendy Dansereau at the Hotel Diplomat in Boston's South End 45 years ago, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday.
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Fike was indicted in 2019 on charges of rape and first-degree murder. Massachusetts prosecutors said at the time that DNA had led investigators to Fike, who was serving a life sentence after being convicted in a 1982 rape and murder in Alabama, but was eligible for parole.
He was extradited from Alabama in 2022 to face charges in Suffolk Superior Court, being arrested by Boston police. Last month, he was set to plead guilty to manslaughter — a lesser charge than first-degree murder — but the hearing was continued to Wednesday when a judge noted there were unresolved matters in the plea agreement.
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Fike pleaded guilty Wednesday to manslaughter and received a prison sentence of 13 to 15 years, to be served concurrently with his life sentence, prosecutors said. He will be sent back to a prison in Alabama.
"After 45 years, and thanks to advances in DNA science, the collection of evidence by Alabama authorities, and the perseverance of investigators here, Wendy Dansereau's family at last has an answer about who was responsible for her tragic death," Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement.
Boston police found Dansereau dead in Room 506 of the Hotel Diplomat on Chandler Street on March 18, 1980. She had given birth to a daughter just four months earlier.
Ligature marks were found under a red scarf tied around Dansereau's neck, and investigators determined she had been sexually assaulted.
Dansereau, a sex worker, was believed to have entered the hotel with a customer.
While DNA samples were collected, the case remained unsolved for decades.
A break came in 2011, when authorities matched a vaginal sperm sample and partially-smoked cigarettes from the scene with Fike's DNA, which was on file due to his Alabama conviction.
But it would be several more years before Fike would face charges in the case. Boston police homicide detectives interviewed him in 2018, and he denied ever having been in the city.
He said at the time of the killing, he was in Keene, New Hampshire, where police reports showed he had committed a petty larceny about 12 hours before Dansereau entered the hotel with a customer, according to prosecutors.
