Amy Carnevale Murder: Trial, Steroid Defense, and Parole

The Amy Carnevale murder was the 1991 killing of a 14-year-old Beverly, Massachusetts cheerleader by her 16-year-old boyfriend, Jamie Fuller, who lured her into the woods, stabbed her, cut her throat, and dumped her body in a local pond with the help of a friend. Fuller was convicted of first-degree murder in 1992 and sentenced to life without parole. Decades later, changes in the law made him eligible for a parole hearing, and his request for release was denied.

What Happened on August 22, 1991

Amy Carnevale was dating Jamie Fuller, an aspiring bodybuilder, when she became pregnant. According to trial testimony, Fuller was consumed by jealousy. On the evening of August 22, 1991, he lured her into the woods in Beverly.¹

Witness Mark DeMeule testified that Fuller told him he placed his hand over Carnevale’s mouth, said “Amy, I love you,” and stabbed her in the stomach. When she tried to run, Fuller cut her throat. DeMeule said Fuller then stomped on her face as she continued to tell him she loved him.¹

Fuller enlisted 20-year-old friend Michael Maillet to help dispose of the body. They weighted it with cinder blocks and dumped it in Shoe Pond in Beverly. Another friend, 17-year-old Dominick Sciola, testified under immunity that he saw Fuller come out of the woods with blood on his hands, forearms, and shirt, carrying a knife with a broken, bent tip. Sciola said Fuller told him he and Maillet had laughed while getting rid of the body because they could hear “bones crunch.”¹

The Trial and the Steroid Defense

Fuller was tried in Essex County Superior Court in October 1992. Prosecutors called it a premeditated act of jealousy and pointed to what Fuller had said after the killing: “The bitch shouldn’t have messed with me.”²

Defense attorney Hugh Samson argued that Fuller’s heavy anabolic steroid use, combined with drinking reportedly as much as a case of beer a day, had rendered him insane and not criminally responsible. Samson described his client in closing as “a volcano burning” who “couldn’t control himself because he disappeared into an obsession of alcohol and steroids.”²

The jury rejected it. After a two-week trial and about six hours of deliberation across two days, Fuller was convicted of first-degree murder. Judge Patti Saris imposed the mandatory Massachusetts penalty at the time: life in prison without the possibility of parole. Fuller was 17.²

Maillet pleaded guilty shortly afterward to helping dispose of Carnevale’s body and, under a plea bargain, was sentenced to two years in prison.³

The Appeal

Fuller took his case to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In Commonwealth v. Fuller, 421 Mass. 400 (1995), he argued that the judge who transferred him to adult court had failed to consider a statute that would have capped his sentence at 15 to 20 years in the juvenile system, and he challenged the trial judge’s jury instructions on mental disease or defect, voluntary manslaughter, and malice.⁴

The SJC rejected every argument and affirmed the conviction. On the transfer issue, the court found the statute Fuller cited did not apply to him and that his lawyers had not raised it at the transfer hearing. The other claims, unraised at trial, were reviewed under the heightened miscarriage-of-justice standard, and none met it.⁴

How Fuller Became Parole-Eligible

For more than 20 years the sentence looked permanent. Then the law around juvenile life-without-parole sentences changed.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile homicide offenders violate the Eighth Amendment. The Court said children are “constitutionally different from adults for sentencing purposes” because of their immaturity, undeveloped sense of responsibility, and vulnerability to negative influences, and that sentencing courts must be able to treat youth as a mitigating factor.⁵

Massachusetts went further. In December 2014, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court held in Diatchenko v. District Attorney that all life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional under the state constitution, even when imposed at a judge’s discretion, reasoning that no judge can determine with certainty that a juvenile is “irretrievably depraved.” The ruling applied retroactively, making about 65 inmates who had served at least 15 years immediately eligible for parole hearings.⁶

The Massachusetts legislature also enacted a bill in July 2014 setting parole eligibility timelines for juveniles convicted of murder: 25 to 30 years for premeditated murder, 30 years for murder with extreme atrocity or cruelty, and 20 to 30 years for felony murder.⁶

Fuller, sentenced as a 17-year-old and by then well past 15 years served, qualified for a hearing.

The Parole Hearing

The possibility of Fuller’s release drew Carnevale’s family into a public campaign under the banner “Justice for Amy Carnevale,” which ran a website and Facebook page, circulated an online petition titled “Stop the Parole of Jamie Fuller,” organized letters to the Massachusetts Parole Board, and reached out to then-Governor Deval Patrick and to news outlets.⁷

At the hearing, an assistant district attorney from the Essex County District Attorney’s Office argued against release.⁸ Fuller’s parole request was denied.

The Case in Film

The murder reached a national audience through the 1996 NBC television movie No One Would Tell, directed by Noel Nosseck and written by Steven Loring. Fred Savage played the wrestling-star boyfriend inspired by Fuller, and Candace Cameron Bure played the girlfriend. The film tracked an abusive teenage relationship that ends with the boyfriend stabbing the girlfriend and dumping her body in a lake.⁹

Sally Jessy Raphael, cast as a judge, delivered an on-screen appeal to young viewers about recognizing abuse and asking for help, and the movie functioned partly as a public service message. A 2018 Lifetime remake starring Shannen Doherty retold the story for a new audience. Both versions took some liberties with the facts while following the basic timeline of the crime.⁹

1
UPI. Witnesses Tell of Girl’s Murder
2
UPI. Teen Body Builder Guilty in Cheerleader’s Death
3
Orlando Sentinel. Friend of Teen Killer Gets Term for Disposing of Body
4
vLex. Commonwealth v. Fuller, 421 Mass. 400
5
Justia. Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460
6
Boston Bar Association. Massachusetts Leads, SCOTUS Follows – Retroactivity in Juvenile Life Sentencing
7
Justice for Amy Carnevale. Justice for Amy Carnevale
8
Salem News. Family Speaks Out Against Parole for Convicted Killer
9
Substack (Rebecca Deniston). Crapshoot Cinema – No One Would Tell