Michael Sumpter

Michael Eugene Sumpter (September 26, 1947 – August 10, 2001) was an American serial killer who raped and strangled three women in the Greater Boston area from 1969 to 1973. Because Sumpter died before his DNA was matched to the rapes and murders, he was never tried for or convicted of these crimes.

Crimes Sumpter's first recorded crime occurred at age 19, when he was arrested for a purse snatching on November 27, 1965, on Washington Street, Boston. For this incident, he received a short prison term, which he served at MCI-Concord.

After his release, Sumpter continued to commit criminal acts, which gradually escalated into rapes and murders. His first known serious crimes occurred on January 7, 1969, when he raped and murdered 23-year-old Harvard University graduate student Jane Britton in Cambridge. The daughter of the then-administrator of Radcliffe College, she was last seen in her apartment on 6 University Road after being visited by her 27-year-old friend, James Humphries. After she failed to attend classes the following day, Humphries and Britton's next door neighbors, Donald and Jill Mitchell, checked on her, eventually entering the apartment after she failed to answer the door. They then found Britton lying facedown on her blood-soaked mattress, clad only in her nightgown. Police were immediately called to investigate, with a forensic autopsy determining that Britton had been raped and killed with a sharp instrument; the exact murder weapon was never identified. On the night of January 5, 1972, Sumpter entered her apartment in Back Bay and attacked her, strangling Rutchick with a stereo speaker cord. He then removed some of her clothing and left the body on the sofa before leaving the apartment. Concerned co-workers went to the apartment, found the door slightly ajar, and Rutchick herself dead, wearing only a housecoat and her torn bra.

While evading police for his furlough violation, Sumpter wandered towards Beacon Hill, where, on December 12, 1973, he used the fire escape to enter the apartment of 24-year-old secretary Mary Lee McClain. Despite the fact that McClain had two roommates and a male friend present in the apartment, no one saw or heard anything suspicious. The following morning, McClain, wearing only a nightgown, was found asphyxiated to death in her bed. When the authorities were called and questioned the other residents of the apartment block, a female neighbor claimed that she had heard muffled screams coming from McClain's apartment, and moments later, what sounded like someone descending the fire escape.

For this, Sumpter was remanded to MCI-Walpole but was later transferred back to MCI-Norfolk. On August 2, 1975, Sumpter was granted work release, ostensibly to attend his job at Quincy Home Furnishings; however, unbeknownst to the authorities the store closed at noon on Saturdays. Using his temporary freedom, Sumpter began searching for a victim in the Back Bay area, eventually coming across a 19-year-old college student to whom he claimed he was the "new neighbor". The woman invited him to her apartment for a glass of water, after which Sumpter went into the bathroom. When he returned, he attacked the student while wearing a pair of rubber surgical gloves, tying up her hands and gagging her with tissue. She was then forced to perform a sexual act upon him before Sumpter raped her and then fled.

Two years later, on October 19, 2012, authorities announced another positive match, this time with the murder of McClain in 1973. In 2018, he was linked to the Britton murder after his brother provided a DNA sample which upon analysis excluded more than 99.92 percent of the male population. His identification dispelled most of the theories surrounding the case, as until then, it was thought that Britton had been killed by someone acquainted with her.