Theresa Corley Case: DNA Breakthrough and a Sister’s Fight

Theresa Corley, a 19-year-old college student from Bellingham, Massachusetts, was raped and strangled in December 1978 after leaving a Franklin bar on foot, and the Theresa Corley murder remains unsolved more than four decades later. No one has ever been charged, though a full male DNA profile was recovered from her jeans in 2017 and the investigation is still active with the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, Massachusetts State Police, and Bellingham Police.¹

The Night She Disappeared

On December 5, 1978, Corley went out with her boyfriend Rick and a group of friends to celebrate his birthday. The night ended at The Train Stop, a bar on Depot Street in Franklin. She and Rick argued, and she left the bar wearing only jeans and a light jacket. A friend refused to give her a ride, so she started walking the roughly five and a half miles home to Bellingham.²

Three men who had also been at The Train Stop followed her, forced her into their car, and took her to an apartment in Franklin, where she was raped. She managed to escape sometime in the early morning hours. A Garelick Farms truck driver found her outside the company’s front gate; he later told police she smelled of alcohol, seemed “mad as fire,” and told him she had been sexually assaulted. He dropped her outside the Bellingham Police Department, but she apparently never went inside.²

The last confirmed sighting of her alive was outside a Dairy Queen, less than a mile from her home.²

How Her Body Was Found

Three days later, on December 8, 1978, Corley’s body was found in a ditch along I-495 North in Bellingham. She was naked, and her jeans and jacket had been discarded beside her. An autopsy determined she had been strangled to death. The discovery was reported by an anonymous caller who gave the name “John Burlington,” which turned out to be false. That caller has never been identified.³

Why No One Has Been Charged

The men accused of the sexual assault were questioned but were never charged in either the assault or the murder.³ Investigators have also never resolved what happened between the Dairy Queen sighting and the moment her body was left along the interstate. Witnesses reported that after Corley was dropped at the police station, she may have been picked up again by at least one additional truck driver and possibly by another car full of men.⁴

Bellingham Police Chief Ken Fitzgerald has said there are “many variations of who was in the car” that picked her up, and that it remains unclear whether everyone in the vehicle took part or whether the killing was the work of one person.⁴ Making the case harder still, several key pieces of evidence collected during the original investigation were lost or accidentally destroyed over the years.³

The 2017 DNA Breakthrough

After years of pressure from the Corley family, investigators exhumed Theresa’s body from St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Milford in May 2017. The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office had initially declined to fund the exhumation, estimated at up to $20,000, but the state stepped in at the last minute to pay for the forensic testing.⁵⁶

The fingernail samples did not yield enough male DNA to test.⁴ But by December 2017, investigators announced they had recovered a complete DNA profile from semen on the jeans Corley was wearing when she died. It was the most significant forensic lead the case had produced in nearly forty years.¹

Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey later said additional forensic work was planned using M-Vac technology, a surface sampling system that improves DNA recovery from porous materials and items with only trace touch DNA. As of 2022, the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab was still adopting the system, and Morrissey said the Corley case was “in line to get it done” once it became operational.⁷

The Sister Who Won’t Let Go

The reason the case has kept moving is Theresa’s younger sister, Gerri Houde, who was 17 when Theresa disappeared. For more than forty years, Houde has pressed investigators, contacted relatives of people who may have been with her sister that night, and asked potential witnesses to give DNA samples.⁴

In a 2016 Dateline interview, Houde said: “It’s senseless, truly senseless what happened and is still happening to my sister.” She has said openly that “the ball was dropped” early in the investigation.³ When the DNA profile came back in 2017, she told reporters: “I don’t know if I should be really jubilant about this, but just the fact that after 39 years they got a complete DNA profile off of an old sample, it gives hope not only to Theresa’s case, but to other cases.”¹ Later, she explained why she has kept going: “It’s about justice. I’ve tried to give up, believe me. It always seems like when I’m ready to be done with it, someone comes out and says, ‘No, don’t give up yet.’ That’s why I keep pushing.”⁴ The family also runs a Facebook page called “Justice for Theresa Corley.”

Where the Case Stands Now

The investigation remains open. The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, Massachusetts State Police, and Bellingham Police are all still working the case, and investigators have traveled to multiple states to interview witnesses and collect DNA samples.⁴ Morrissey has called it a “priority” for his office and said, “We’re spending a lot of time and resources. We’re going to re-interview people.”⁷

Chief Fitzgerald has said the case now depends on a witness finally breaking the silence. Anyone with information is asked to contact Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Jeffrey Kotkowski at 1-855-MA-SOLVE or by email at mspunresolved@pol.state.ma.us.⁴

1
Boston 25 News. Technology Advances Lead to Potential Break in Decades-Old Cold Case
2
Boston 25 News. New Push for Evidence on 40th Anniversary of Teen’s Murder
3
NBC News. Plea Answers Massachusetts Teen Theresa Corley’s Murder
4
WPRI. Woman Refuses to Give Up Searching for Sister’s Killer
5
CBS News Boston. Family of Theresa Corley Murder Victim Hold Fundraiser to Solve Case
6
Telegram & Gazette. Body Exhumed in 1978 Bellingham Murder Case
7
Milford Daily News. Theresa Corley Bellingham Cold Case Enhanced DNA Testing M-Vac