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A 20-year-old was murdered in New Bedford in 1991. 32 years later, the killer has been identified.
The accused killer was himself shot and killed during a robbery in the Dominican Republic in 2006, the Bristol County DA said.
A 32-year-old cold case in New Bedford has been solved, but the man identified as the killer was shot and killed during a robbery in 2006, the Bristol County District Attorney announced Monday.
In 1991, 20-year-old Brent Davis was shot and killed at the Brickenwood Housing Project in New Bedford, DA Thomas M. Quinn said in a press release. He was from Newport, R.I., where his mother still lives.
At the time, investigators were able to create a sketch of their suspect, named “Bobby,” who had relatives in New Bedford. These relatives identified Bobby as Reynaldo Suriel from New York City, but all trails to the suspect ran cold, the DA said.
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About 30 years later, a Massachusetts State Police Trooper assigned to the Bristol County DA’s office continued the investigation and, in 2020, determined that Suriel was an alias. The trooper interviewed witnesses from the 1991 investigation again, who shared that the shooting was due to a drug dispute and that Bobby fled to the Dominican Republic after the murder, the DA said.
Another “key witness” told investigators that he was selling cocaine with Bobby at the time and confirmed that Bobby admitted to shooting and killing Davis, Quinn’s office said. Another witness corroborated. From there, Bobby’s relatives, who had previously lived in New Bedford and were interviewed at the time, told investigators that his true identity was Claudio Jorge.
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The trooper confirmed with photographs that Jorge matched the composite sketch from 1991, the DA said. Witnesses corroborated the photographs of Jorge as Bobby, and his relatives in the Dominican Republic provided investigators with proof of his death.
According to the DA, Jorge had “a lengthy criminal record with narcotics and weapons offenses.” He was imprisoned in New York twice in the 1980s, and after killing Davis, he was again arrested in 1992 in New York. He was deported to the Dominican Republic in 1998 and was shot and killed during a robbery in 2006. He was 40 years old.
Investigators shared the update with Davis’s mother and officially closed the case.
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