Three elderly residents of a home in a Boston suburb — including two celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary — appear to have been stabbed and beaten to death during a break-in over the weekend, law enforcement officials said Sunday.
An acquaintance of the couple called 911 about 10:15 a.m. Sunday to report that the pair and a family member seemed to be dead inside their Newton, Mass., home, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan told reporters. The couple were expected at church Sunday morning.
Ryan said there were signs of forced entry at the home, and she urged people in the area to remain aware of their surroundings as the killer remained at large.
“This is the night to lock your doors and windows, even if you do not normally do that,” she said at a Sunday news conference.
Local news outlets, citing a message from their church, identified them as Jill and Bruno D’Amore and Jill D’Amore’s mother, Lucia Arpino.
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The report of the killings, about seven miles west of downtown Boston, came a few hours after police were alerted to an attempted break-in at a home about a half-mile away, Ryan told reporters. Officials are investigating whether the incidents are connected.
The triple killing is the first of its kind in Newton as far as local law enforcement is aware, Ryan told reporters. The city of about 87,000 had no murders in 2019, the latest year for which federal data is available. Homicide is down about 12 percent in more than 90 cities this year compared to the same time last year, according to a report from data-collection firm AH Datalytics.
Newton police dispatched additional officers to patrol the city Sunday night, Chief John Carmichael Jr. said. Ryan asked residents of surrounding neighborhoods to check footage from cameras on their homes and alert police to suspicious activity.
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