David Reed, accused of bludgeoning his half-sister Rose Marie Moniz to death with a conch shell, was arraigned in Fall River Superior Court Friday on murder and armed robbery charges.
The 53-year-old former Acushnet and New Bedford resident was ordered held without bail. A not guilty plea was entered by Reed’s attorney Frank Camera, the Herald News reported.
Reed is believed to have bludgeoned his half-sister with the shell, a fireplace poker and a cast-iron kettle at her New Bedford home in March of 2001, prosecutors said. The 41-year-old Moniz was found dead on her bathroom floor, with kitchen items strewn about the home, and her purse emptied on the living room floor with cash missing, the Bristol Country District Attorney’s office said.
For 18 years, the case was quiet. But in 2019, cold case investigators in the district attorney’s office speculated that in order for the killer to hold the shell firmly enough to use it as a deadly weapon, the person must have placed his or her fingers into the opening of the shell.
DNA testing of the inside of the shell revealed a full DNA profile — that of Reed, the victim’s half brother, officials said.
“[Moniz] was a mother who was brutally murdered inside the sanctity of her own home,” Quinn said in December 2021. “Thanks to the efforts of my Cold Case Unit, along with detectives from our state police unit and New Bedford Police, we were able to bring some sense of relief to the victim’s family, all of whom suffered for the past 20 years from not knowing what happened to Ms. Moniz.”
Reed had already been held without bail since October 2021 after he was arrested in Rhode Island in September following an indictment in connection with the 2003 beating and robbery of Maribel Martinez-Alegria in New Bedford.
Reed is due back in court March 7 for a pretrial conference and again on July 18 for a pretrial hearing, the Herald reported.
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