More than four decades after the brutal 1980 cold case murder of Katharina Reitz Brow, authorities in Massachusetts have identified the true killer. Joseph Leo Boudreau, a now-deceased man with a history of violent crime was responsible for the murder.
The breakthrough comes after Kenneth Waters, a man wrongly convicted in 1983, spent 20 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence.
A Brutal Crime in Ayer
On May 21, 1980, 48-year-old Katharina Brow was found stabbed 30 times and beaten inside her Ayer, Massachusetts trailer home.
The attack occurred between 7:10 a.m. and 10:45 a.m., while her husband was away at work. Investigators noted signs of a struggle, a missing purse, and the theft of a large sum of cash she kept hidden in a linen closet. One of the murder weapons—a knife—was found discarded in a wastebasket.
“In 1980, the brutal murder of Katharina Reitz Brow shook the Town of Ayer to its core,” said Police Chief Brian Gill.
A Wrongful Conviction and Exoneration
In 1983, Kenneth Waters was convicted of Brow’s murder, largely due to a bloodstain that matched his blood type. But by 2001, advanced DNA testing proved Waters’ innocence, leading to his exoneration after two decades behind bars.
