BOSTON (WHDH) - A man is facing criminal charges after authorities say he disposed of a woman’s body in a trash bag and then dumped it in a park in Boston earlier this year.
Rinnyers Pena, 42, appeared in Boston Municipal Court Thursday to face a disinterring a body charge in connection with the death of 38-year-old Alenny Matos, according to the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors say a relative of Matos contacted the Boston Police Department on Jan. 27, 2020, to request a well-being check after repeatedly attempting to contact her over a period of two days without success. Officers were unable to locate her, prompting a missing person investigation.
During the investigation, detectives obtained phone records that showed calls between Pena and Matos on Jan. 25.
Security camera video and interviews suggest Pena picked Matos up at her Dorchester apartment in the early morning hours of Jan. 26, drove her to his Norton Street home, and then abandoned her body inside the Stony Brook Reservation, according to the district attorney’s office.
A person walking through the reservation found Matos’ remains in a trash bag in early May of 2020.
Prosecutors are awaiting the findings of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner regarding the cause and manner of Matos’ death. Officials said she did have fentanyl in her system.
“He went out of his way to throw her somewhere like she was garbage … like she didn’t have family or anyone to care for her,” said Matos’ sister, Maria Avalo. “It’s a lot because we know him … it’s sick.”
Avalo said the two knew each other while growing up in the Dominican Republic.
“It’s hard,” she said. “Like, he knew where she was this whole time, he knew we were looking for her.”
Pena has been held without bail under the state’s dangerousness statute since his arrest on June 7, 2021, in connection with a separate case charging him with kidnapping, rape, strangulation or suffocation, assault and battery on a household or family member, and photographing an unsuspecting person in the nude.
“Unfortunately that’s not the only case of a woman with fentanyl in her system in the company of the defendant,” the prosecutor said.
Pena’s defense attorney argues the case against him is circumstantial but, as for the victim’s family, they say nothing will make their loss any easier.
“He left a child without his mother. He left a mom and dad without a daughter. He left both of us without a sister,” Avalo said. “She was always so loving, so happy. She never saw the bad in people and I feel like that’s what really got her here.”
Anyone with information relevant to the investigation is urged to contact Boston police at 1-800-494-TIPS or state troopers assigned to the district attorney’s office at 617-727-8817.
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