Man pleads guilty in 1980 South End slaying of 19-year-old woman

An Alabama man pleaded guilty Wednesday to manslaughter in the 1980 slaying of a 19-year-old woman found dead in a South End hotel. 

Steven Fike, 65, will serve 13 to 15 years in prison for killing Wendy Dansereau, a sex worker whose body was discovered in a room at the Hotel Diplomat on March 18, 1980. He will now return to an Alabama prison, where he is already serving a concurrent life sentence in a 1982 rape and murder, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said.

“After 45 years, and thanks to advances in DNA science, the collection of evidence by Alabama authorities, and the perseverance of investigators here, Wendy Dansereau’s family at last has an answer about who was responsible for her tragic death,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said.

Fike was initially charged in 2019 with first-degree murder and rape in Dansereau’s strangling. Prosecutors said an investigation determined Dansereau had entered the hotel with a customer, and while the medical examiner collected oral, anal, and vaginal samples during the autopsy, the case went unsolved for decades. 

Dansereau’s daughter was just 4 weeks old when her mother was killed, prosecutors previously said.

A break in the case came in 2011, when investigators entered their evidence into the national Combined DNA Index System and found a match between a vaginal sperm sample and DNA obtained from Fike after his Alabama conviction, the DA’s office said. According to prosecutors, partially-smoked cigarettes from the hotel room also matched Fike’s DNA. 

Speaking to Boston homicide detectives in 2018, Fike denied ever having been in Boston, even when confronted with the DNA evidence, according to the DA’s office. Prosecutors said he placed himself in Keene, New Hampshire, around the time of Dansereau’s murder, and Keene police reports showed he committed a petty larceny about 12 hours before Dansereau walked into the Diplomat Hotel with a customer.

Abby Patkin

Staff Writer

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between.

Want to leave a comment?

Create an Account Or sign in to your account

To comment, please create a screen name in your profile

To comment, please verify your email address

Conversation

This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com