20/20 - After Show: The Salem Strangler

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Deborah Roberts unpacks the decades-long hunt for Claire Gravel's killer with a former detective whose pursuit of justice contributed to a DNA breakthrough. To get ad-free episodes, early access to new true crime podcasts, and exclusive bonus episodes, subscribe to 20/20 True Crime+ on Apple Podcasts. ⁠Click here⁠ to start your free trial today. Terms apply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says good luck. O-Doo brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's ODO.com. Hi, everybody. Welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Debra Roberts. And as always, it's so good to have you with us. We've got a really, really incredible story to bring to you. We're going to take you, as always, deeper inside our 2020 episode. Our most recent one was called the Salem Strangler. And it takes place in a picturesque New England town that has a history, as you might imagine, for some darkness, the Salem Witch Trials. Well, I went to Salem Mass to bring you this report.

And it is one that I am still thinking about, about a close-knit family, an Irish Catholic family whose lives were forever changed. summer day. The story revolves around a young woman, 20-year-old college sophomore Claire Gravel. She was one of six children, as I said in a proud Irish Catholic family, known to be fun and feisty and crazy about sports, according to her family. She had just begun her life, really. She had moved away from home to begin college, and it was on the cusp of living out her dreams. Well, everything seemed to be possible for Claire until one summer night in 1986 when After a softball game, she went out with friends to a popular local bar, and everything changed.

She was seen leaving the bar around 1 a.m. and never seen alive again. And the next day, sadly, Claire's body was found along the side of a road just a few miles from where she lived. Well, understandably, her family was absolutely shattered with no idea about who or why someone would do such a thing to her. Well, investigator, Elaine Gill was among those first officers on the scene asking the same questions, and she would spend years trying to solve this mysterious murder and hold someone accountable. If you saw her 2020 on Friday night, you met Elaine, and if you didn't, well, you're going to get a chance to meet her now, because what followed was a decades-long search for answers, twists and turns and heartbreak, and ultimately a DNA breakthrough, which we're going to talk to her about.

Questions that were haunting this family for so long. how did the killer manage to elude police for an unsolved murder for nearly 40 years? Well, Elaine Gill dedicated much of her life to answering these questions, and she is joining us now. Elaine, such a pleasure to meet you. Oh, pleasure to meet you as well. Thank you for having you. And I say meet you to see you again, I should say, because you were already in our 2020 story on Friday night. And you brought such heart and passion, of course, to this story.

but I want to start off by talking a little bit about you. I am always so intrigued when I have an opportunity to meet female detectives, because many of you started during a time where there weren't many of you in law enforcement, and you've been in law enforcement now for 40 years. You were commanding the investigative unit in Essex County before you retired. And I'm just really curious about you because at that time, you weren't that much older than Claire Gravel when you started this case. Yeah, that's true.

It is true. I came on to the state police in Massachusetts in 1982. And I was 20 years old when I went to the State Police Academy. And so when the homicide happened, when Claire was killed, I'd been on the job for about four years and had recently moved into the investigative unit that would oversee working on homicides in that county. Well, take me back to 1986 because the world was a very different place. Of course, you know, technology. We didn't have cell phones. And as I said, there weren't a lot of women in investigative units like this.

Was this your very first homicide or had you worked others before? This was my very first. I had investigated other sudden or unintended deaths that took place in the county while in the unit and investigated other cases as well and assisted in other homicide investigations. But this was the first where I ultimately ended up as the primary investigator. And take me back to you at that moment. So this young woman is found murdered, strangled, dishellinged, disheveled alongside a roadway. She's not much older than you, but of course you've got to go into

work mode. Where did you begin? And what emotions do you remember? So when we got the call, our office was in Salem as well, and we got the call, the report of the body found on the highway 128 in Beverly. When we first arrived at the scene, our objective was obviously to try to figure out figure out how she got to this location. And so we spoke to some individuals that were at the scene who actually found Claire's body and then made our observation, spent quite a while observing the scene of seeing what we could glean from any evidence there. And ultimately, once we had Claire's body removed to the medical examiner's office, we then wanted to backtrack and figure out, you know, how Claire got there in the first place. And through going to her address, we kind of,

have learned about what her activities were before she was last scene, playing softball, was with friends. And so we wanted to track down those friends and see if we could figure out Claire's last movements and what was going on in her life prior to her being killed. Yeah, which was so important and so shocking too in this area when you think about her family. What do you recall about that at the time? Because this was a very close-knit family, as I said, and then this horrible thing happens and also shakes up the community. Yeah, everybody was devastated when they heard the news. Claire was from a wonderful family.

I've had a lot of conversations with their family, and they're just amazing people. And to have to talk about, you know, the loss of a daughter, a sister, and then also to talk to her friends who, you know, were out celebrating and just having a good time with Claire and for them to learn that the person that they loved, that they had fun with, they socialized with, that in one moment that they had seen her and the next moment she was gone and ultimately gone from their lives. And then the investigation goes on and on with no arrest. How frustrating was that for you because as time goes on, I mean, literally years go on to the point that now you're thinking about retiring, but still nothing on this case.

Yeah, it was really frustrating. I worked with amazing investigators on the case and people from the district attorney's office. And we kept plugging along any time we'd get some new information, would try to follow that up, see if it would lead us anywhere. I kept in touch with Claire's mom on a fairly frequent basis. Calls died off after a while. But I tried to keep in touch with her and give her any updates if we had any. I felt like it was, you know, it was like my responsibility as an investigator. I was assigned to this case and my responsibility was obviously to try to solve it.

and get the truth. And so, yeah, it was getting worrisome to me and upsetting to me, knowing that I'd be retiring and possibly the case might never be solved. And that definitely haunted me. And I wanted to find a way to, you know, finally get some justice for Claire and for her family. Well, the mystery goes on until about 2007. We want to talk to you more about it because there was a major break. We need to sneak in a break, though, for ourselves first. But when we come back, we're going to talk to Elaine Gill about how an unusual type of DNA technology that you may not have heard of before this case, I certainly had not, but it helped lead to a person nobody would have expected. So you don't want to go anywhere. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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I'll drink to that. If you're going to rise up and rule the world, you better get yourself a damn sense of humor. FX's AHS 13, now streaming on Hulu. Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. Many of you are true crime followers, and you know that we've seen some extraordinary advances in forensic DNA technology over the years, leading to breaks in decades-old cases. Many of our reporting on 2020 has revolved around those stories, including last Friday show. So I'm here with retired Massachusetts State Police Detective Lieutenant Elaine Gill, who was in the thick of the Claire Gravel murder case, one that she spent decades. investigating when something finally did happen and she had retired, but she was able to actually see some of this through. So let's talk about what was available to you, Elaine, back in 86 when Claire was found murdered. I mean, you know, so much has changed now, but back then, science was still trying to catch up to what you needed, right? Sure. So, I mean, in 1986, so many of the things that

we sort of take for granted today did not exist. You know, obviously DNA testing was really just beginning, but also things like cell phone data and the widespread surveillance cameras we have everywhere that police rely on quite heavily today to try to solve homicide cases or databases, computer data, all those things didn't exist in 1986, but we were responsible to gather whatever evidence we could. And in this case, we felt that the evidence

some significant evidence was located on her shirt. And in Claire's case, it was very obvious that the murder weapon was her tank top, that she was strangled with her own tank top. At that time, we might be able to get blood typing from some samples, but we were not able to really do DNA. But our objective was to collect all the evidence and make sure we preserved it.

And so that any time, if new technology came along, we could take advantage of that and hopefully, gain something from the evidence we had. So in this case, we made sure that we preserved Claire's tank top and the rest of her garments that she had on and anything we found at the scene. Yeah, it's always fascinating to me when I cover these stories because, you know, these boxes of evidence are stored and every now and again from time to time, investigators, and maybe there's somebody new on the scene.

We'll pull out that evidence and run it, you know, through the system. And now they're using new technology to see maybe if there may be a hit. You stayed up on the advancements of technology. And then there was something that you had heard about called touch DNA, which I was not familiar with. Tell us a little bit about what that is and why you thought that would make a difference in this case. So typically people would look for blood or seminal fluid or saliva to gain DNA from. And then I started to read about the science and watch as it progressed and learned a little bit more about touch or handler DNA. Potentially, DNA might be able to be found as a result.

of somebody touching an object or piece of clothing and possibly leaving some tiny skin cells or material that's oils from their skin, if you will. And so as I followed that, I thought of Claire and I thought of her case and the fact that she was strangled with this tank top and remembering so clearly how the tank top was twisted and used to strangle her, I felt that there'd be a good chance that the person who so aggressively twisted that tank top had left their DNA possibly in the twist of the material. And so I spoke with the district attorney's office and they agreed that I should submit the evidence.

And then I contacted the state police crime lab. Yeah, when you first admitted it. And as I said, you were about to retire. You hadn't retired at that point. You were kind of getting close to it. But this was so fascinating to me because we are so accustomed to DNA that involves liquid, like you said, blood or saliva and things like that, but this is all about touch. So then in 2007, a man named John Kerry, unrelated to this case, at least as far as anybody knew,

was convicted of attempted murder against a woman named Rosemary Diskin, who happened to live not far from where Claire had been strangled. And I had a chance to meet Rosemary, who I have to tell you, is still very shaken up by this terrifying experience. Attacked in her own kitchen. Her son was upstairs. She told me she was cooking. It was just something that she just couldn't believe. It was a man that she knew kind of vaguely. She knew his wife. He golfed in the same circles as her husband. But he shows up at her door one night and then comes into her home basically and attacks her and tries to strangle her. Now, he's eventually convicted. He's tried and convicted and sent to prison. Nobody thinks much more about his involvement, really. But how did he land on the radar of those who

investigating Claire's murder. Yes, he was a convicted of strangling this woman. Claire had been strangled, but there was no real connection. How did he land on the radar of police? He landed on the radar thanks to DNA technology, basically. So the DNA goes into a system called the CODA system, and so it's stored there. So if somebody gives their DNA because they're a convicted felon, they're going to prison in Massachusetts. He was required to give his DNA. And And then evidence that's gathered from crime scenes, maybe unsolved cases, also if they locate DNA on that evidence, they submit it to that same database. And so that's what's happened in this case, that the DNA that was found on Claire's tank top

was put into the CODA's database along with John Carey's DNA. And the system runs an audit every so often, and it ran an audit, and it found a match. Yeah, like bingo. Wow. Well, I had an opportunity to meet Claire's brother, Jim, and this family was so devastated. And, you know, for 40 years, no answers, no answers. And sadly, Claire's mom died before, you know, there was able to be a conviction here. But you actually had spoken with her and you told her that, you know, you were going to, you were not going to give up and that you believe that you finally had actually found the person, the suspect you've been looking for. Do you remember the conversation of what it was like helping that family finally feel that maybe they were about to, you know, receive some justice?

I do. Yeah. So I would keep in touch with Mary, Claire's mom. Like I said, fairly frequently in the months and years after Claire was murdered. And then, you know, the calls slowed down at times. And it was discouraging for her when I talked to her and I really didn't have anything new to provide. But then in 2012, when I got that information, I was given the okay to call Mary Gravel. And I told her that after all this time, that it looks like they have a match, that there's been a DNA match to a particular person, the person that we believed had killed Claire with her tank top. At the time, I couldn't tell her a name, only that it looks like we finally, after all those years, have a match. So it was gratifying to tell her that. It was emotional and I think it was emotional for her, too.

In one way, I expect her to be very excited. But I think she still was a little skeptical after all the years of waiting, just wondering, is this really going to happen after all these years? But at least it was a step. And I was glad that I was able to tell her that before she had passed away, you know, just a few years later. Yeah, which was major. Well, Carrie, John Kerry was already in prison, as we said,

when this happened. Then in August 2022, a grand jury actually indicts him in this case. He pleaded not guilty, but everything was about to change, of course. It had to be a moment of relief for this family. And of course, Elaine, as you said, a big one for you. Well, we're going to get a quick break in, but we want to talk to you about what it was like to finally go to court, because you actually finally got that satisfaction of seeing this case come to fruition. So you stay put, Elaine, and don't you go anywhere because we're going to talk more about the trial when we come back. Feeling short on smiles? Does your frown need to be turned upside down?

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Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. We're taking a closer look at the murder case that took decades to solve. That is the one of Claire Gravel. It aired on Friday night's episode called The Salem Strangler. Elaine Gill was the detective on that case for so many years. Elaine, you spent years searching for this killer, only to find out that he was already behind bars. But John Kerry, the man who finally was a match when the department used touch DNA to try to solve this case. What went through your mind when finally you knew that this case was actually going to go to court?

And what was that like for you even because you were still involved, even though you had retired? There was a lot of emotions, really. I was very grateful to everybody that had worked together. Ultimately, it was a whole new investigation once we got the DNA match that meant a whole new investigation into John Kerry and learning about him and his life. And so I was so grateful that the district attorney's office in Essex County and the other members of the Massachusetts State Police and anybody else involved jumped in and really got on board with me and was so passionate about making sure this case went to the end. And yeah, it was gratifying. It was a relief. I felt like finally after all these years, after all the work that everybody did, we finally have an answer in the unknown.

person. We finally have a name, a face, and that, you know, the family hopefully would get some kind of justice at this point. Yeah, 40 years of waiting. Claire's brother, Jim, told me that he was there every day. He wanted to represent and be there for the family. What was that like? Take us inside that courtroom, because now it's also a big moment for you, too. You had begun this case. You were just a few years older than Claire when you started investigating. Now you're staring at this man who's accused of her murder. What was that like for you as you looked at him? You testified in the case. Tell me a little bit about what that was like in the courtroom. It was emotional. And the interesting thing is in all the years on the state police and testifying in many other homicide cases, I never felt the emotion that I

felt when I entered that courtroom really just in seeing him, finally seeing this person who had matched the DNA to Claire's murder weapon, finally seeing John Kerry and having a face now that fits with this person that we believe was in the bar that night and that murdered Claire. And his demeanor, Elaine? It was unusual at times. Sometimes, you know, he was serious, but at the times he would have a smirk when I testified, I could see him smirk at times, smile at times. And so watching him through that whole trial was interesting to see his behavior and his mannerisms and that kind of thing. but I knew he was sitting in the defendant's seat.

He's on trial. And he has to answer for what he did to clear. And so it was very emotional because we were very, it brought us even closer with her family. You know, we had conversations and supporting one another. And to see all of the investigators that was still involved that had taken over when I had retired, everybody come together and everybody be there. Portions of the trial, it was pretty amazing.

It was basically, you know, it sounds a little corny, but, you know, teamwork, really, to make this happen. Yeah, well, I'm sure it was a sense of satisfaction. He pleaded not guilty on March 3rd, 2026. A jury found him guilty, a first-degree murder, and he is indeed serving life in prison without parole. was there finally for you after carrying this case and being haunted by this case for 40 years? Was there a sense of justice finally for you? What did you feel when it was finally over? Her brother Jim said to me, interestingly, they had been fighting and fighting for so long.

It was almost like they didn't know what to feel after this. How about you? A huge sense of relief and accomplishment. But more importantly, I felt so happy for the family that finally, that finally this moment had come. And, you know, we embraced at the end and thanked each other, basically, for sticking with it all along. But I did. I felt like, you know, as I was saying before, I felt like it was my responsibility.

That's my job. That was my job to, I chose the job of being an investigator when I was on the state police. And that's that in that job, I had a responsibility to try to see cases to the end and to solve cases. and the fact that this case was unsolved for so long, I felt responsible for that, and I felt that I needed to do something to try to keep this case alive and keep it going and ultimately to find who killed Claire.

And so, yeah, I mean, hearing that the jury determined that he was guilty of Claire's murder, it was really gratifying. And I felt like all the steps that I took with the other investigator whether that was making sure we preserve the evidence correctly, you know, that was satisfying that we did it right. Well, you clearly had a big impact on this case. Your dog at determination and, you know, seeing this finally resolved must have been gratifying for you. You now work in college public safety at Merrimack University, actually working with young people about the same age

Claire was at that time. You're also a mom and a grandmom. What do you want people to take away from Claire's story or even any lessons, maybe? be for young women. We often talk about that in these stories. Maybe there's something that they can take away from our 2020 pieces, anybody that, you know, something that might be helpful. Any lessons from this that you think that women might be able to protect themselves and learning from you? Sure. I think, you know, I don't want women to be afraid, first of all, but I just want them to be aware, aware of their surroundings, aware of the people that they interact with. And I think, you know, when we're, as we grow up, we're taught to be polite to other people, right?

And so I think sometimes that tends to happen, that people, they might have a bad feeling in their stomach, that gut feeling that maybe this isn't okay, but they don't want to come across as rude so they think, oh, maybe I'm overreacting. But I want people to know that they need to trust their gut, trust their instinct. But also, as bystanders, if they see things, you know, their friends, you know, in the college setting, they want to have a good time and celebrate with each other similar to like Clear was doing with her friends. And so in those situations to just really keep an eye on each other and to intervene if they see something that's just not great or that's concerning to them. Yeah. Elaine, it's such a pleasure to not only speak with you,

but have you in our report and also to witness your dedication to the work that you do and what you did for this particular case. I mean, yours is really a message of hope, and we thank you so much for spending some time with us. Oh, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you for telling Claire's story. Of course, of course. Well, you can, of course, all of you out there can find 2020 on Friday nights on ABC, and you can stream episodes like this one anytime on Disney Plus and Hulu. Take good care, everybody. One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna, Luke. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation.

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