Search for serial killer continues 30 years after body found on highway

The search continues for a killer 30 years after a woman's body was found on the side of a New Bedford highway.

The murder investigation is the most expensive in state history, after authorities eventually found eight more women in the case.

The first woman, identified as Debra Medeiros, was found on Route 140 in North Freetown when a woman taking a traffic break found the partially decomposed body.

However, it took months for Medeiros to be identified.

Maureen Boyle, author of Shallow Graves, an account of the New Bedford highway killings case, was a reporter at the New Bedford Standard Times who extensively covered the case in 1988.

Boyle said Medeiros had gotten in an argument with her boyfriend, and left the house in New Bedford before disappearing.

"The deaths of these women really affected many, many people in the city," Boyle said. "It really touched a lot of families."

Soon after the first body was found in Freetown, the bodies of the other women were discovered. Then, it wasn't long before it became apparent that a serial killer was at work.

>>MORE: Tracking the New Bedford Highway Killer: The Murder of Debra DeMello

Jill Paiva was 16 years old when her mother, Nancy, became the second victim in the case.

"There is no justice," Paiva said. "There is no answers. I can't pick up the phone and call my mother and say 'How did you make this? What do I do?' Just talk to her about my day, that's not fair.

New Bedford attorney Kenneth Ponte was charged with one of the nine highway murders, but that charge was dropped for lack of evidence.

In 30 years, there's never been a conviction, but the demand for justice remains strong.

Just because there was  a passage of time, just because we are talking 3 decades later, it doesn't mean you forget the person, the people who have been killed," Boyle said.

Paiva called for her emotional pain, along with the pain of others, to end.

"There has to be somebody who saw something, heard something, knows something," Paiva said. "It's been so long, please stop our suffering."

Cox Media Group