A look back: The case of Deanna Cremin

Deanna Cremin – pictured here on Somerville Cable TV in 1994 – was 17-years-old when she was murdered on her way home in March 1995. Her autopsy revealed that she had been strangled and sexually assaulted. Today, investigators and Deanna’s friends and family still ask: Who killed Deanna?

Cremin’s boyfriend at the time, Tommy LeBlanc, said that he walked Cremin from his house on Broadway halfway home on March 29, 1995. He said he turned around at the intersection of Heath Street and Bond Street, leaving her alone to make the journey to 48 Jacques St. Cremin’s body was found within 400 feet of the halfway point between their houses.

Friends and family, still without answers, remember Cremin as a lively teenager who planned to work with children as a career.

Pictured: Anna Levesque embraces Karen Sciarappa in 1995 as Somerville High School students came to leave flowers at the scene of the murder.

Around 8 a.m. on the morning of March 30, 1995, two school girls discovered Deanna’s body behind an elderly housing unit in Winter Hill. In the days following her murder, classmates, friends, and family covered the spot her body was found with flowers, notes, and mementos.

In the years since Cremin’s killing, her family has held vigils, offered a $20,000 reward for information, and created websites in an effort to get some answers and find peace. They no longer live in Deanna’s former home in Somerville [pictured], her destination the night she was killed.

“It’s still painful; we still miss her and that pain will never go away,’’ her father, Albert Rodgers said. “It’s hard for us. We deal with this on a daily basis, not a yearly basis.’’

Albert Rodgers, Cremin’s father, puts up a wreath every year on the pole that marks Deanna Cremin Square, the intersection of Jacques Street and Temple Street near Cremin’s former home.

This year, to mark 18 years after Cremin’s death, hundreds of friends and family gathered to symbolically walk her home. Deanna’s mother, Katherine Cremin, said she hopes the attention it got from neighbors will make someone recall details they have yet to report.