NO BAIL FOR MAN ACCUSED IN DORCHESTER SLAYING March 28, 2008 After mental health professionals deemed him competent to stand trial, a Dorchester man was ordered held without bail for the March 8 slaying of a 29-year-old mother of two inside her own home, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley announced. JOSE A. TORRES, 26 (D.O.B. 11/13/81), was formally charged with the murder of 30-year-old Melissa Santiago at his arraignment this morning in Dorchester District Court. The arraignment followed an evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital, where clinicians found him capable of assisting in his own defense. Accommodating prosecutors’ requests, Judge Tracy-Lee Lyons ordered him held without bail. Assistant District Attorney David Deakin, the chief of Conley’s Family Protection and Sexual Assault Unit, told the court that the victim’s two sons went downstairs to a neighbor’s residence on the morning of March 9 and told the neighbor that their mother was dead. The boys further identified her assailant as “Jose.” The neighbor came upstairs, found the door unlocked, and went inside, Deakin said. There she found the victim face down on the ground in a large pool of blood. The neighbor called for help, and responding emergency medical technicians pronounced her dead of her injuries. Boston Police also responded and secured the scene pending the execution of a search warrant. The children were interviewed at the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office, where one boy gave a statement indicating that he had seen the defendant pull his mother’s hair, slap her, and throw her to the ground. Torres allegedly told the boy to go to bed and that his mother would be fine. Boston Police soon located Torres at another residence where his father was staying. Additional evidence was recovered at that residence, and he was taken into custody that evening. Torres was represented by attorney Jeffrey Karp. He will return to court on May 15. Return to the Press Releases page.