Global Courant 2023-05-20 07:42:27
Nine years after a 5-year-old was found dead in a trunk near a highway, a Massachusetts man was charged with the death.
Alberto L. Sierra Jr., 32, pleaded not guilty to a murder charge Thursday, That reported NBC Boston.
The Fitchburg man is accused of killing Jeremiah Oliver, who also lived in the town of about 42,000 about 20 miles north of Worcester.
Sierra was the boyfriend of the boy’s mother.
5-year-old Jeremiah Oliver.WBTS
Jeremiah was reported missing in late 2013, and his body was found on April 18, 2014, in a trunk off I-190 in Sterling, the Worcester County district attorney said.
The medical examiner’s office determined the cause of death as homicide and the cause as “homicidal violence of undetermined etiology,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Sierra was arrested Wednesday on charges of murder and exhuming a body NBC Boston. He is being held without bail and it was not clear from the available online records whether he has engaged a lawyer.
The press release from the district attorney’s office did not detail what led to the recent arrest and charges.
In 2017, Sierra pleaded guilty to assault charges against the mother and two of her three children, the district attorney’s office said at the time. He was sentenced to six to seven years in prison.
But at the time, he had not been charged with the boy’s death.
The boy’s mother, Elsa Oliver, also pleaded guilty in 2017 to assault and battery and two counts of recklessly endangering a child, and she was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Elsa Oliver and the children had been involved with the State Department for Children and Families before Jeremiah disappeared.
A social worker who did not regularly visit Oliver and her children, and two supervisors were fired in the wake of the disappearance and death, according to a report by the state office of the child advocate. The state has made changes to things like home visits and case assessments, it said.
