JURY CONVICTS ROXBURY MAN OF 1990 COLD-CASE MURDER April 3, 2009 Noemi Roman’s final act before being murdered by KURVIN RICHARDSON (D.O.B. 10/3/70) was to scratch at him, trapping a piece of his flesh beneath her fingernail. Almost 19 years later, a Suffolk Superior Court jury convicted him of first-degree murder. “Noemi Roman pointed out her killer from beyond the grave,” Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said. “It was a decade and a half before we had the technology to find the evidence, but the fight she put up in her last moments allowed us to solve her murder to a scientific certainty.” Forensic DNA analysts testified at Richardson’s four-day jury trial that the tissue recovered from beneath Roman’s nails matched the defendant’s DNA profile on 15 out of a possible 16 genetic marker locations during a 2005 laboratory test. The odds of a random match with anyone but Roman’s killer, experts said, was one in 7 billion. Assistant District Attorney Holly Broadbent, chief of Conley’s Domestic Violence Unit, introduced evidence and testimony that not only proved Richardson gained access to Roman’s Peterborough Street apartment and killed her, but also disproved allegations that the real killer could have been the father of her child, her boyfriend at the time, or a petty criminal who was arrested for trying to cash one of her checks after her death. “Those suspects were smokescreens,” Conley said. “They were distractions. Each was investigated in the 1990s and each was discarded as a possible suspect.” Roman’s killer beat the 18-year-old mother so badly that she bit through her own tongue before stabbing her in the throat and killing her. He also placed three aerosol cans in her stove and turned it up as high as it would go – perhaps to create an explosion – before leaving and locking the door from the outside. When Boston firefighters broke down the door to investigate the smell of smoke, they found Roman’s infant son next to her body and spattered in her blood. He is now a young man who attended each day of trial. Testimony ended March 31, at which time Judge Judith Fabricant took the unusual step of revoking Richardson’s bail. He has been held in a secure facility since that time. Richardson was represented by attorney Steven Sack. He faces a mandatory life term without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced at 9:00 Monday morning in courtroom 817. Return to the Press Releases page.