Mother of Bella Bond held on $1 million bail in toddler’s death
Rachelle Bond has been in jail since September, when her daughter Bella was identified as the little girl found dead on Deer Island in June.
The mother of slain 2-year-old Bella Bond was held on $1 million bond Wednesday on an accessory to murder charge for allegedly dumping her daughter’s body in Boston Harbor.
Rachelle Bond’s face was hidden by long red-brown hair as she was arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court. She didn’t look back at the courtroom full of reporters and observers.
Prosecutors say the toddler’s mother helped her boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, dispose of Bella’s battered body by leaving it in her apartment refrigerator, then dumping it in the waters off South Boston in a trash bag.
Her attorney, Janice Bassil, said Bond wouldn’t contest the bail, as she couldn’t afford to pay any amount of money anyway. She is also charged with theft for continuing to spend welfare checks after she knew her daughter was dead.
Investigators say McCarthy beat the child to death by repeatedly punching her in the stomach and allegedly told Rachelle Bond that “she was a demon anyway and it was her time to die.’’ McCarthy is scheduled to be arraigned on first-degree murder charges on Monday.
Bella Bond was found wrapped in a trash bag on Deer Island June 25. Rachelle Bond, 40, remained silent for months as people from around the world looked at the computer-generated image of Bella and wondered who she was and how she died.
Assistant District Attorney David Deakin told the court that during the months after the child’s body was found, Rachelle Bond continued to get high, kept texting with McCarthy, and spent nearly $1,400 in welfare benefits meant to help support her dead daughter.
Bond and McCarthy threw the child’s body in a duffle bag across from the Black Falcon ferry terminal and used weights from McCarthy’s father’s plumbing shop to weigh down the bag, Deakin said. On July 25, the pair attended a McCarthy family reunion and everything seemed fine, Deakin said.
Bassil said Bond was under psychological control by McCarthy, who she claimed threatened to kill her if she said anything about the murder.
Bassil objected to the prosecutor detailing the facts of the case in court, saying a drawn-out explanation of the case would only poison a potential jury pool.
But the magistrate let it proceed, and Deakin laid out the grim account of how investigators say Bella lived in her last moments, and how her caregivers acted in the months after her death.
Michael McCarthy attends a hearing in Dorchester District Court on Oct. 20.
For months, investigators sought clues about who the girl was, while Bond and McCarthy said nothing.
Bond lied to friends and Bella’s biological father about where the girl was, Deakin said. Most everyone thought she was in Department of Children and Families custody. Bond’s two older children had been taken by the state years ago.
It was only in September, when a friend of McCarthy’s commented on Bond’s attempt to get sober and the hope that she’d get her daughter back, that Bond broke down and told someone what really happened. That man told his sister, who called Boston police, and Baby Doe finally had a name.
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