Man gets life without parole in 1988 killing and sexual assault of woman in Boston

BOSTON — A man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of a woman whose body was found in the basement of a Boston building more than three decades ago.

DNA evidence linked Carl Vega, 61, to the 1988 murder of 21-year-old Judy Chamberlain, prosecutors said. A maintenance worker discovered her body in a basement drain. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

“She was beautiful, she was loved, she continues to be,” Chamberlain’s brother, John Olson, said Tuesday in Suffolk County Superior Court before Vega was sentenced. “Judy will be in our thoughts and hearts until we meet again.”

Vega was convicted of first-degree murder in June. His attorney, Timothy Bradl, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.

Vega, who went by several names, was identified as a suspect in 2011 after a federal database matched his DNA profile to evidence from Chamberlain’s murder, the district attorney’s office said. At the time, however, prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to file charges.

Vega was forced to submit a DNA sample in 1990 after being convicted of rape in a 1987 attack on an elderly woman in Revere. He was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison, and then prosecutors successfully filed a motion in 2008 to have him civilly imprisoned.

Investigators gathered new evidence in the Chamberlain case and a grand jury indicted Vega for her murder in 2021.