Police announced today that they connected a 39-year-old Mt. Vernon Street cold case murder to a serial rapist and killer.

DNA evidence connected Michael Sumpter to the unsolved rape and murder of 24-year-old Mary Lee McClain in her Beacon Hill apartment on Dec. 12, 1973. Sumpter died in 2001 of cancer while serving a prison term for the rape of a Beacon Street woman. 

In 2010, police used the DNA collected after that rape to connect him to the rape and murder of another Beacon Street woman. 

“This is a story about an old case and new technology, but it’s also a story about hope and perseverance,” District Attorney Daniel Conley said today. “Mary’s family never lost their faith that her murder would be solved.”