More than 25 years after a young victim’s body was found at the Chelsea Soldier’s Home, she has finally been identified as a 16-year-old girl.
The cold case murder victim has been identified as Tiffany Bradley, a 16-year-old girl who was trafficked from Pennsylvania to Boston, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden announced Wednesday.
“Delivering justice is never just about holding offenders accountable. It’s also about who we get justice for,” Hayden said at a press conference, standing alongside members of law enforcement and Bradley’s family.
Hayden explained that Chelsea Police made the “horrifying discovery” of a body, cut in half, without a head or hands, in the back of the Soldier’s Home parking lot on Nov. 13, 2000. Investigators were able to determine that she was killed about 24 hours prior to being found.
She was young, light-skinned, Black, and estimated between 17 and 25 years old, with purple toe nail polish on her toes. Later, her head and her hands were discovered in a bag on Nahant Beach.
Eugene McCollum, the suspect who was later convicted of murdering the victim — then known as Chelsea Jane Doe — said her name might have been Lisa.
About five days before her death, back in Pennsylvania, Bradley’s family had reported her missing to police. She’d given them one phone call after leaving the state, where her voice trembled on the phone.
Her family searched in New York and Philly, but they never found her.
But in the last two years, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation working with the Mass State Police created a genealogical profile for Bradley and eventually matched it to one of her brother’s in Texas.
“Today we can finally say her name, Tiffany Bradley,” Special Agent in Charge of FBI Boston Ted Docks said. “She was a young teen who was trafficked across state lines, exploited by adults, and brutally murdered.”
Docks applauded the work of both his agents, as well as officers in the MSP and Chelsea Police Department for their perseverance.
State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble said Bradley was “never forgotten” and pointed out many of the police officers in the room, some retired, who were a part of solving the case and Chelsea Jane Doe’s identity.
Throughout the press conference, Bradley’s aunt Janet Bradley-Knight, of Florida, and niece, Shakirah Wiggins, of Mississippi, wept.
Bradley-Knight described her niece as an athletic tomboy with three older brothers, telling reporters, “She enjoyed bossing them around.”
“She drew extremely well,” Bradley-Knight said, recalling renderings of white sands beaches of Florida or the Colorado mountains she’d seen on trips to visit family.
She thanked the investigators in the room profusely.
“Thank you so much for letting us take her safely home,” Bradley-Knight said.
Wiggins said Bradley was a “joyful child” who she first remembered coming to visit in Colorado Springs when Bradley was just two.
“She was tiny but mighty,” Wiggins said, describing how Bradley was trying to keep up with her older brothers.
As a junior in high school, Bradley was in ROTC and played on the basketball team, “which is where this story ended,” Wiggins said.
Bradley’s one phone call to a cousin was the last they’d heard from her. In later years, Wiggins would make a Facebook page for Bradley, hoping someone might reach out with information.
She said the call from authorities telling her that Bradley’s body had been identified was bittersweet.
“Twenty-six years has a way of providing some closure, some peace,” Wiggins said. “I won’t say closure, but peace.”
“Honestly, it felt like her birthday,” she added, explaining that the day was an opportunity to celebrate her life.
Wiggins noted that her family is also praying for McCollum, who was sentenced to life behind bars with the opportunity for parole after 15 years, which was to be served consecutively with a 10-12 year sentence for a separate manslaughter case.
Wiggins said, “We pray that you are freed from the demons torturing you so that you, too, can experience peace.”