Between March 1988 and April 1989 eleven women vanished from the streets around Weld Square in New Bedford, an old whaling city on the Massachusetts coast then in the middle of a severe heroin and crack problem. Nine were found over the following year, dumped beside Interstate 195 and Route 140 and along the back roads out of town. Two have never been found.
All eleven were dependent on drugs and most worked as prostitutes. Most had been strangled. The bodies had lain outdoors for months in several cases, which destroyed most of the forensic possibilities.
The investigation was dogged by a public falling-out between the Bristol County district attorney's office and the state police. In 1990 a grand jury indicted Kenneth Ponte, a New Bedford lawyer who had known several of the women and had a record of drug offences and erratic behaviour, for one of the murders. The prosecution dropped the charge in 1991, saying the evidence was insufficient. Ponte maintained his innocence until his death in 2010, and always said the office had needed someone to charge.
The case was reviewed in 2019 and evidence was submitted for modern DNA testing. It remains open.