BOSTON (WHDH) - A teenage girl found murdered and dismembered in Chelsea in 2000 was identified after a decades-long investigation, Suffolk Country District Attorney Kevin Hayden, Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks, and Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble announced Wednesday.
Tiffany Bradley has been identified as the 16-year-old whose body was found dismembered and dumped outside the Veterans Home at Chelsea 26 years ago. Investigators said her head and hands were missing when her body was discovered.
Bradley’s family initially reported her missing from her family’s home in Pennsylvania in 2000, prompting an international search with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Investigators believed she had been trafficked to New York and then Boston.
“Her last conversation with her favorite cousin was cut short with her voice trembling, saying ‘I’ll call you later I have to go.’ That call never came and was replaced with 26 years of waiting, wondering why,” said Shakirah Wiggins, Bradley’s niece.
In 2004, Bradley’s head and hands were found buried on a beach in Nahant. Investigators created a composite picture of her, but she still remained unidentified until the District Attorney and and FBI Cold Case Unit were able to use her DNA to find her family through national family ancestry databases.
“Over the past two year the FBI cold case team delivered a genealogical profile from Tiffany’s DNA. This Spring, that file led the FBI to a James Bradley, who lives in Texas,” Hayden said.
Investigators solved the murder when they received a confession from Eugene McCollum, of Lynn. McCollum admitted that he killed Bradley during an argument over money at his room at the Lynn YMCA. McCollum pleaded guilty to murder in 2005 and was sentenced to life in prison.
It took until 2026 to identify McCollum’s victim as Bradley.
“Identifying victims of violent crime matters. It matters even when the offender has already been caught, it matters even when the case has already been solved. Justice is not delivered until the victim is known, until families have answers,” Docks said.
Bradley’s family remembers their loved one as a girl who loved cheerleading and dancing. In her last year of high school, they said she was also involved in basketball and ROTC.
Her family members expressed their gratitude to investigators Wednesday.
“The fact that we are here today is a miracle,” Wiggins said. “It is totally amazing that after 26 years people care enough to give her a name and return her to her family.”
“I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart, not letting my baby be a box on a shelf,” Bradley-Knight said. “Thank you all for your tireless effort. I’ve worked with law enforcement in my 30 years of criminal justice, and I must say, thank you.”
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