Posted on: Saturday, April 23, 2005
Four to serve life terms for slaying of former Maui woman
By Jay Lindsay
Associated Press
BOSTON — The nightmares about his daughter's death stay with Bernie Nachtwey well after he wakes up. He says he hears the voice of his "little Io" crying for help, even feels the stab wounds that killed her on a Boston railroad bridge.
"It's like a living death," he said. "It's like nothing anybody can ever know."
A judge yesterday ordered the four men convicted of Io Nachtwey's November 2001 murder to serve their mandatory life sentences at the state's maximum security prison in Walpole.
Ismael Vasquez, 27, his 23-year-old brother Luiz, Harold Parker, 31, and Scott Davenport, 31, were convicted Thursday of first-degree murder in the death of Nachtwey, 22, once a promising languages student from Hawai'i who dropped out of community college and ended up homeless in Boston.
Prosecutors said the Vasquez brothers and Parker planned Nachtwey's death to send a message to rebellious members of the gang they recruited from among the young drifters who hung around Harvard Square. Davenport testified he did the actual stabbing after his life was threatened.
"These people are a disease in the human population and they need to be excised from the population of humanity," Bernie Nachtwey said in an emotional victim impact statement delivered by audiotape in Suffolk Superior Court yesterday.
Nachtwey's parents live in Hawai'i and did not attend the trial because they said it would be too painful.
More than a dozen court officers were in the room for the sentencing and one stepped between Davenport and the others after Parker said several words in Davenport's direction. Davenport initially accused Parker of doing the stabbing.
Afterward, a relative of the Vasquez brothers who did not identify herself called the conviction an "injustice" and another criticized the brevity of jury deliberations, which defense attorneys also said was far too short to fairly decide the complicated case.
The jury deliberated about five hours after more than six weeks of testimony.
Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley said the state simply had a compelling case.
"To say the jury didn't do their job, they didn't understand the facts, is way off base, in my opinion," he said.
Attempts to reach several jurors yesterday for comment were not immediately successful.
Prosecutors said Nachtwey was slain because her boyfriend had led a revolt within the ranks of the gang.
Davenport, a heroin addict, hooked up with the group earlier in the day because he knew they could get him drugs. He testified that he stabbed Nachtwey after Parker and Ismael Vasquez threatened to also kill him if he didn't.
Prosecutors said Luiz Vasquez silenced Nachtwey's screams by striking her in the head with nunchucks.
Two 21-year-old women accused of subduing Nachtwey while Davenport stabbed her, Ana White and Lauren Alleyne, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified against the men. White will be sentenced to 12 years while Alleyne will receive 12 to 15 years.
Io Nachtwey grew up in Makawao, on the island of Maui, in a strict family where the girls weren't allowed to wear clothes that showed their legs. Io's father picked her name because the two vowels were believed to be a powerful combination in his native language.
She was conversant in Russian, German and Italian and received a certificate for excellence in conversational Spanish from high school. According to her resume, she hoped to use her language skills as a flight attendant.
After high school, she attended Maui Community College for a year before dropping out and heading to Maine, where she stayed briefly with her grandparents. She then drifted south to Cambridge, where friends remembered her as too innocent to live on the street. She panhandled with the cheery request of "spare change or a smile."
The night she was killed, Nachtwey knew she was in danger and tried to escape by jumping from a moving car. She then had sex with Luiz Vasquez in a tunnel leading to the bridge where she was killed in hopes that he would protect her, prosecutors said.
Yesterday, Nachtwey's mother, Pauline Bernier-Nachtwey, wept during a brief audio statement and said she hasn't stopped crying since her daughter was killed.
"It's like there's a hole in my heart," she said. "There's nothing I can do to make it better."
