Boston man sentenced to life in prison for woman’s 2013 slaying

By Elizabeth Barber

BOSTON (Reuters) – A Boston man was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday after he was convicted of snatching a 24-year-old woman from her apartment in 2013 and stabbing her to death.

Edwin Alemany, 30, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole a day after a jury convicted him of murdering Amy Lord during a spree in which he also attacked and tried to kill two other young women, according to court records.

“The reality is, for us, there will never be closure,” Cindy Lord, the victim’s mother, said at a sentencing hearing for her daughter’s killer. “There are no words to describe what we lost and how our lives have forever changed.”

In finding Alemany guilty of first-degree murder, jurors rejected his attorneys’ contention that he was insane when he kidnapped Lord from the vestibule of her South Boston apartment on July 23, 2013. Prosecutors say he ordered his victim into her car, forced her to make withdrawals from bank automated teller machines, and stabbed her to death in a wooded area.

Defense attorneys had argued that Alemany had been mentally ill since childhood, when he spent time in psychiatric institutions.

Lord was headed to a gym when she was kidnapped, said Kimberly Lord, her younger sister.

“Amy was picked off the street only because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Kimberly Lord said. “Now I find myself looking over my shoulder everywhere I go.”

Alemany, wearing a white T-shirt, appeared restless as his sentence was read, raising his eyebrows, shifting his weight, and looking at the ceiling.

Family and friends on Tuesday described Lord as a bright woman with a mischievous giggle and a wealth of strength and advice for her friends and sisters.

“Amy was the girl everyone wanted to be,” said Kimberly Lord.

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, whose office oversaw the prosecution, said: “I hope Ms. Lord’s family and the surviving victims can take some small measure of satisfaction that this defendant will never hurt another woman again.”

(Editing by Scott Malone and Mohammad Zargham)