Former Dartmouth resident indicted for 20-year-old murder

Twenty years after the murder of a New Bedford woman, her 53-year-old half-brother, a onetime Dartmouth resident, has been indicted on charges of murder and armed robbery, District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III has announced.

David Reed, who lived on Milton Street in Dartmouth before fleeing the area in an apparent effort to evade apprehension, was indicted last week by a Bristol County Grand Jury for the March 23, 2001 homicide of his half-sister, Rose Marie Moniz, 41.

The indictment follows an extensive reexamination of the evidence by the district attorney’s Cold Case Unit, according to information provided by Quinn’s office.

On the morning of March 23, 2001, Moniz’s father found her body at her home at 3448 Acushnet Ave. in New Bedford.

Ms. Moniz had been bludgeoned to death with a fireplace poker, a conch shell and a cast iron kettle. Her purse was emptied out on the floor and an undetermined amount of cash was stolen, the district attorney said.

The case went cold, but was revisited in 2019 by Quinn’s Cold Case Unit. Investigators decided to have the conch shell tested. Testing of the interior of the shell revealed a full DNA profile that matched Reed’s.

 In late August 2020 a Massachusetts State Police detective assigned to the district attorney’s office and a New Bedford Police Detective attempted to interview the defendant at his residence on Milton Street in Dartmouth. After the brief interview, the defendant initially fled to Alabama, California, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island before being apprehended September 2021 at a rescue mission in Providence.

 Reed was also indicted in September in connection to a 2003 attempted murder and robbery of another New Bedford woman, Maribel Martinez-Alegria. 

 Reed is being held in jail in connection to the alleged assault and robbery of Alegria. The Fall River Superior Court has yet to schedule an arraignment date for the new murder indictment.  The cases will be prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney William McCauley, who heads up District Attorney Quinn’s Cold Case Unit.

“This case highlights what we are doing in regards to Cold Case homicides and rapes in our effort to bring justice to the families of victims and the entire community,’’ Quinn said. “We will continue to utilize all available resources to review cold cases and seek out new evidence. We look forward to prosecuting this case in open court.”