Michael Ferreira, who is now 57 years old, will be arraigned in juvenile court in Massachusetts for a murder he is charged with committing more than 40 years ago, when he was 16. He was arrested in New Hampshire and is awaiting extradition.

 

On the night of September 26, 1969, Ferreira and two acquaintances, Walter Shelley, now 60, and Edward Alan Brown, now 59, allegedly kidnapped 15-year-old John McCabe as he tried to hitchhike home from a dance in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Shelley was angry because his girlfriend had found McCabe attractive.

 

After beating up McCabe in the back of Shelley’s car, they drove him to a vacant lot. There Ferreira tied up McCabe with a rope and covered his mouth and eyes with tape. The trio left him in the lot “to teach him a lesson.” When they returned about two hours later, McCabe had died of asphyxia. Shelley, Brown and Ferreira took a vow of secrecy that would last four decades…but not a lifetime.

 

Shelley is charged with murder and Brown with manslaughter. Ferreira will also be charged—as an adult—with perjury for lying to a grand jury.

 

McCabe’s parents, Evelyn and William McCabe, did not know until the announcement of the arrests why their son had been killed.

-David Wallechinsky

 

NH Men Charged with 1969 Killing in Mass. (by Chelsey Pollock and James A. Kimble, New Hampshire Union Leader)

3 Arrests in Brutal Lowell Cold Case (by O’Ryan Johnson, Boston Herald)

'It was to be our puppy-love date': Woman who helped solve 41-year-old murder was to go dancing with the victim on night he died (Daily Mail)