Steven Fike in Suffolk Superior Court on Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, amid talks over a plea deal in a 1980 killing he’s accused of at a Boston hotel.
An Alabama man arrested in 2022 in a decades-old Boston murder investigation had been set to plead guilty Monday, but at a court hearing, the matter wasn't settled.
The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said had said Steven Fike, 65, was expected to plead guilty to manslaughter in the 1980 killing of Wendy Dansereau — a lesser charge than the one, murder, on which he was initially indicted in 2019.
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But the judge in Suffolk Superior Court noted at the start of Fike's hearing that there were unresolved matters in the plea agreement. After some discussion, the matter was continued until a hearing in March.
Fike was arrested three years later. He'd been behind bars in Alabama for a 1982 rape and murder but was eligible for parole, prosecutors said at the time.
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Dansereau had a 4-month-old daughter when she was killed, prosecutors have said. An employee of the Hotel Diplomat in Boston's South End discovered her body — she'd been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Dansereau, a sex worker, allegedly met Fike the night before she was found dead with a red blouse wrapped around her neck. When they checked into the hotel, Fike used a fake name, prosecutors said.
Fike was identified as Dansereau's killer with a sample of DNA collected during the early stages of the investigation that was entered into an FBI database and matched to his genetic profile, prosecutors said.
"Ms. Dansereau was 19 years old when she was murdered, and her family has waited nearly four decades to know what happened to her," Rachael Rollins, then the Suffolk County district attorney, said in a statement at the time of Fike's indictment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
