Investigators say they've solved a 32-year-old murder case in Massachusetts. The victim's son disagrees
CAMBRIDGE - A man whose mother was murdered 32 years ago in Massachusetts does not agree with prosecutors who say they've made a break in the cold case. He doesn't believe his father hired a hit man to kill his mother.
Michelle Miller died in 1992 at the age of 29. Her body was found sexually abused in a basement in Cambridge.
"Murder-for-hire plot"
On Monday, investigators at the Middlesex District Attorney's Office charged 65-year-old Edward Watson of Mattapan with her murder.
"Miss Miller was the victim of a murder-for-hire plot," said District Attorney Marian Ryan. "Mr. Watson had killed her in that basement at the request of the father of her children... Mr. Daniel Innis."
Daniel Irvin is the biological son of both Miller and Daniel Innis.
"I have strong feelings that my dad didn't ask this guy to do it," Irvin told WBZ-TV in an exclusive interview Tuesday. He says he was surprised by the district attorney's display of the facts of the case.
"It was kind of weird to see 'murder-for hire' plastered everywhere," Irvin said.
Irvin told WBZ that neither of his parents were perfect. Both struggled with addiction for years.
"They were both on pretty much everything under the sun, heroin, and [cocaine] being the main things," he said.
Irvin and his sister were in foster care from a young age, and at the time of his biological mother's murder, were already living with the woman who would soon become their adoptive mother.
"Not reality"
"Choices were made," he said. "I don't harbor any ill will against [my biological parents]. I'm happy the cold case team solved the murder and arrested somebody. But the way they're portraying everything is not reality."
In fact, Irvin told WBZ he believes that if his father wanted his mother killed, he would have done it himself.
"I asked him point-blank. I was like 'You know, this is what I've heard and what I was told that you might've been the one that did it,'" he explained. "And he was like 'no. I'll tell you everything I've done' and he did."
Irvin says he reconnected with his father a few years before his death in 2012. His father went to prison for an unrelated manslaughter, and, Irvin says, confessed his participation in other unsolved crimes.
"Me and your mom hit each other and all that stuff, but I would never hurt her in that way," Irvin says his father told him.
Son says motive "doesn't make any sense"
Plus, the alleged motive - a custody battle over Dan and his sister - "doesn't make any sense," Irvin said, especially since they were already living with their foster mother, and a 1991 note from his mother states that she is giving up her children to their new mother.
WBZ asked District Attorney Marian Ryan at an event Tuesday about the claims from the victim's family, and she stuck by the evidence in the case.
"We are confident at this point that we have sufficient evidence to have charged Mr. Watson and the evidence indicates that he committed this murder, allegedly at the behest of Mr. Innis," she said. "We always are transparent in terms of talking to family members or folks that are involved in our investigation... And that has taken place in this case as well."
Irvin says he won't believe his father's involvement in the case until he sees more evidence. So far, early court documents suggest the case against Mr. Watson - the man Irvin's father allegedly asked to kill the victim - consists of mostly social worker reports and interviews with Watson.
"I believe if [my father] wanted her to be dead, he would've just done it," Irvin said. "He would not have asked somebody to do it."
