In a long-awaited close to a case that had remained unsolved for more than four decades, an Alabama man has pleaded guilty to the 1980 murder of a sex worker in a Boston hotel. Steven Fike, 65, was sentenced to a 13-15 year term for the manslaughter of Wendy Dansereau, 19, found dead in the Diplomat Hotel over 45 years ago, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden announced. The sentence will run concurrently with Fike's existing life sentence for an unrelated rape and murder in Alabama in 1982.
Assistant District Attorney John Verner described the scene discovered by police on March 18, 1980, at the Diplomat Hotel on Chandler Street in Boston's Back Bay. According to the Suffolk District Attorney's office, Dansereau's body was found on the floor of room 506, with a red scarf tied around her neck and signs of a struggle evident in the disarray of the room. Despite the initial efforts of investigators, a match for an evidence remained elusive until technology caught up.
It was the advancements in DNA science that seemed to break open a case long-mired in dead ends. In 2011, samples from the autopsy were entered into the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), leading to a match with Fike's DNA, including evidence from partially-smoked cigarettes found at the scene. When Boston homicide detectives confronted Fike in Alabama in 2018, he denied having been in Boston but could not explain his DNA's presence in Dansereau's body or the hotel room.
Fike's story that he was in Keene, NH, at the time of the murder was undermined by police reports which placed him committing a petty larceny just 12 hours before Dansereau was last seen entering the hotel with a customer. "After 45 years, and thanks to advances in DNA science, the collection of evidence by Alabama authorities, and the perseverance of investigators here, Wendy Dansereau's family at last has an answer about who was responsible for her tragic death," Hayden told Suffolk District Attorney's office. Fike is set to return to the Alabama prison where is he currently serving a life sentence.
