An Alabama man was acquitted by a jury on Tuesday of the murder of an 11-year-old girl from New Hampshire over 35 years ago.
The jury’s belief that the DNA discovered beneath Melissa Ann Tremblay’s fingernails belonged to Marvin “Skip” McClendon Jr. was one of the case’s factors.
The jury returned on Tuesday and, on the sixth day of deliberations, declared McClendon not guilty after informing a judge on Monday that they were at a standstill.
After being detained for two and a half years, McClendon’s attorney, Henry Fasoldt, told The Associated Press that his client was “extremely relieved by the verdict” and that he would be going back to his home state of Alabama. “We value the jury’s deliberate and thorough deliberations.”
“I recognize the work and dedication of the jury during their long deliberations in this case,” Tucker stated. “My thoughts are with the family of Melissa Ann Tremblay, who have suffered greatly due to the crime that took her life.”
A jury impasse in McClendon’s case last year led a judge to declare a mistrial. On September 12, 1988, the girl from Salem, New Hampshire, was reported missing and her body was discovered in a trainyard in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
According to officials last year, the girl went to a social club in Lawrence, which is close to the railyard, with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. While the parents remained inside, the child went outside to play. Later that night, S, he was reported missing.
According to her obituary, the girl’s mother, Janet Tremblay, passed away in 2015 at the age of 70. However, surviving family members have been showing up to the court to watch the most recent trial.
In a statement, the family claimed that although they respected the procedure, they still thought McClendon was responsible for the murder based on the DNA results.
“The DNA was Missy’s way of trying to tell us who killed her,” the family stated. “As she was being attacked she fought for her life and got his DNA under her fingernails so that we would be able to get a match and make the person killing her pay for his crime. While he was found not guilty in a court of law, he will ultimately pay for his crime on the final Judgement day before God.”
Early on, officials ruled out a number of suspects, including two drug addicts, before focusing on McClendon. In 2022, he was taken into custody at his residence in Alabama, partly due to DNA evidence.
Asserting that McClendon was “fixated on the fact that she was beaten, ladies and gentlemen, because he knew that she wasn’t just stabbed that day, that was she was beaten,” Essex County Assistant District Attorney Jessica Strasnick told the jury McClendon’s remarks during his arrest demonstrated that he was aware of specifics of the crime.
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According to Strasnick, Tremblay was stabbed by a left-handed individual like McClendon. She informed jurors that the former Massachusetts correctional officer and carpenter knew Lawrence, having gone to the city’s taverns and strip clubs.
Strasnick informed the jury that 99.8% of men are not included in the DNA evidence found beneath Tremblay’s fingernails. However, Fasoldt stated that there was no evidence that the DNA originated from McClendon or from beneath Tremblay’s fingernails.
Evidence, according to Fasoldt, also suggests that Tremblay could have been stabbed by a right-handed individual rather than a left-handed one.
Aside from the fact that he lived in Chelmsford, 16 miles away, he maintained that McClendon had “no meaningful connection” to Lawrence. In 2002, he relocated to a family-owned parcel of land in Alabama.
