Between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on April 16, 1997, 34-year-old Getasetegn “Geta” Yalew, was fatally shot while working as a clerk in Christy’s Market at 121 Jersey Street in the Fenway section of Boston, Massachusetts. Yalew, an Ethiopian immigrant, was lying face down behind the counter when he was shot in the back of the head.
The shooting was reported by one of Yalew’s friends who came to the store, found him still alive and called police from a pay telephone. Yalew was taken to Beth Israel hospital where he died at about 11 a.m. that morning. Police believed the shooting occurred between 2:16 a.m., when the cash register showed a “no sale,” and 2:40 a.m., when the 911 call was made.
Missing were the plastic cash tray from the register containing less than $100, a coin compartment from the register, and food stamps. A few hours afterward, police found the cash tray, a single right-handed glove, and a coin in a wooded area behind 91 Kilmarnock Street, which was connected to Jersey Street by a private alley. Later that day, the owner of a truck that had been parked in a lot near the alley found the coin compartment in the bed of his truck.
No shell casings were found in the market, leading police to believe a revolver was used. Two bullet fragments recovered during the autopsy were turned over to Boston police Detective George Foley, a ballistician.
The shooting was unsettling to residents in the Fenway neighborhood. The owner of the chain of Christy’s markets offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killer.
On April 20, four days after the murder, Detective Sergeant Robert Harrington, the lead investigator, obtained a surveillance video from a White Hen Pantry convenience store on Boylston Street, about three blocks from Christy’s. The video showed 19-year-old Rickey “Fuquan” McGee and Natasha Hamilton in the White Hen Pantry at 2:47 a.m. on April 16 – close to the time of the murder. At the time, Hamilton was living with McGee, his mother, Marion, and McGee’s three sisters at 63 Kilmarnock Street, which was a block away from Christy's market and just a few doors away from where the items stolen from Christy’s had been recovered.
Police compared a fingerprint on the cash tray to McGee, but concluded McGee was not the source of the print. The print also was not left by Yalew, the police said.
In May, the Boston Police Department offered a $1,000 reward.
Police said that on July 1, 1997, Hamilton came forward and said that McGee had confessed to her just minutes after the shooting that he killed Yalew.
Hamilton had a troubled background. The mother of three children, Hamilton had been receiving assistance money through the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program because the children’s father, Cecil McKnight, had been sentenced to prison for a federal drug conviction. In 1996, Hamilton had needed housing. For a while, she and the children stayed with a friend, Jocelyn House. In late 1996, Hamilton and the children moved in with McGee, who was a friend of House.
With the addition of Hamilton and her three children, nine people were living in a three-bedroom apartment. Not long after, Hamilton’s children began to live with their grandmother. As a result, the AFDC benefits were transferred to the grandmother.
The day after Yalew was murdered, Hamilton was in court admitting that she had tried to obtain a television by passing a bad check. She received a continuance without a finding and probationary conditions for one year. Violation would mean she would have to serve 10 days in jail.
In March 1997, two months before Hamilton came forward, she had two cents in her bank account. For the next several weeks, Hamilton and Marion McGee engaged in a check-kiting scheme. Between April 15, 1997 and May 19, 1997, Hamilton deposited upwards of
$35,000 worth of fake checks into her bank account. In mid-May, Hamilton moved out of the McGee apartment and was able to regain custody of her children.
On July 1, 1997, Hamilton reached out to police saying she had information about the murder. On July 2, 1997, she gave a statement to police that was recorded. She said she had been watching “Gunsmoke” on television when McGee left the apartment. She said he was wearing a ski mask and had gloves.
She said he returned minutes later and admitted killing Yalew. She said he told her he shot the clerk because he believed the clerk had seen his face. Hamilton said they then walked to the White Hen convenience store where he bought cigarettes. She said McGee took the gun out of the apartment the following day.
The next day, police determined that Hamilton was not watching Gunsmoke when she said McGee left the apartment because the show did not come on until 3 a.m., which was after the murder occurred. And after reviewing the White Hen surveillance video, police realized that McGee was not wearing the clothing that Hamilton had reported and that she bought cigarettes, not McGee. Confronted with this, Hamilton changed her story, saying that she had not remembered correctly.
On July 11, 1997, based on Hamilton’s statement, police obtained a search warrant for the McGee apartment and an arrest warrant for McGee. After rousting him from bed and leading him out in handcuffs, police found a single spent shell casing, which was never connected to any weapon. They found a photograph of 15-year-old Earrie Fenderson, who was a friend of McGee. In his left hand, Fenderson was holding a black revolver. In his right hand, he was holding a silver semi-automatic pistol.
At the police station, McGee denied committing the crime, even though Detective Harrington suggested that McGee had been caught on the store’s video surveillance cameras. That was false because although the cameras were installed, none were operating at the time of the crime. McGee did say that he had not gone out that night, which was false since he had been seen on the White Hen video.
Four days later, detectives interviewed Fenderson, who was drunk at the time. The police later reported that after they first went over the investigation with Fenderson and confronted him with the photograph of him holding the guns, they turned on the tape recorder.
Fenderson said he first heard about the crime from someone whose name he could not recall who lived in the same building where McGee lived. Fenderson said he read about it in the Boston Globe on the day of the shooting. Fenderson said he went to McGee’s apartment and showed him the newspaper.
According to Fenderson, McGee said that he robbed the store because he needed money, that he walked in around 2 or 3 a.m., and that no one else was there. When the clerk told him there was no money, McGee thought he was lying, so he shot him as he was face down on the floor. Fenderson said McGee told him he went down the alley and tossed away the cash tray. Fenderson said McGee used the black gun, a 38-caliber revolver, that Fenderson was holding in the photograph. Fenderson said he saw the gun a few days later when McGee pulled it out from under a couch in his room, put it in his waistband, and said he was going to get rid of it.
Fenderson’s statement conflicted with Hamilton’s about why McGee shot Yalew and when he took the gun from the apartment. Fenderson was wrong about the newspaper article. The first article, in the Boston Globe , was published April 17, the day after the murder.
On July 23, 1997, a Suffolk County grand jury indicted McGee on charges of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and carrying a firearm without a license.
On October 5, 1998, McGee went to trial in Suffolk County Superior Court. The prosecution’s case rested primarily on the testimony of Hamilton and Fenderson. No murder weapon was presented, and no forensic evidence linked McGee to the crime.
Associate Judge Regina Quinlan barred the defense from questioning Hamilton about any illegal activity that she engaged in after she spoke to police for the first time on June 2, 1997. McGee’s defense attorney, Matthew Kamholtz, argued that Hamilton had engaged in bank and credit card fraud during that time period and was being protected by the police.
Hamilton testified that at about 1 a.m., prior to the shooting, she and McGee and McGee’s mother went to a pizza parlor across the street where they drank beer and talked to an employee there. She said they left at 1:45 a.m. and came back to the apartment. Marion McGee went to bed, while Hamilton turned on the television. She said that McGee left a few minutes later.
She said he returned after about 15 or 20 minutes. “He was really nervous and he said that he had shot the man in the store,” Hamilton said. She said she asked, “What man?” and McGee replied, “The short guy with the curly hair that’s always smiling.” She said McGee claimed that the clerk was reaching for something, so he shot him.
Hamilton said she watched McGee sort out stacks of money and food stamps. She said he took a black gun out. She said the gun looked like the gun that Fenderson was holding in the photograph police had gotten during the search of McGee’s bedroom.
Hamilton said McGee said he had dropped a glove and didn’t know where it fell. She said he wanted to go back out to see if the crime had been discovered, so they walked to the White Hen store. The store was quiet when they looked down the street on the way to the White Hen, but on the way back they heard sirens, she said.
According to Hamilton, the following day after watching the news about the murder, McGee said he was going to get rid of the gun in the Mission Hill neighborhood.
During cross-examination, she admitted that she had changed some of the details of her statement, but refused to say that she did so at the behest of the police. She denied that she had implicated McGee after she came to believe that her children had been taken away from her by social services based on a phone call from McGee’s mother, Marion. She also denied threatening to do to McGee’s children what she believed Marion had done to Hamilton’s children.
Hamilton admitted that her bank account prior to the day she went to police had been empty at one point, but over a few weeks in late April and May 1997, she had deposited about $35,000 in checks in the account, almost all of which were rejected as forgeries. She denied that she had forged the checks.
Hamilton admitted that the day after she gave her statement to police, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office arranged for her and her children to move into a Holiday Inn, where they stayed for three weeks until she had testified before the grand jury. She said she was given nearly $400 for expenses during that time, and that the prosecution expedited a request for approval of a federal housing certificate. Based on that approval, Hamilton and her children moved into an apartment. The prosecution paid the brokerage fee and deposits of first and last month’s rent, she said.
At the same time, Hamilton denied she was motivated by the $25,000 reward money or that she had ever mentioned seeking it. She said the police and prosecution had not mentioned it to her.
Fenderson testified that on the afternoon of the day of the shooting that McGee had admitted he shot Yalew. He denied that he ever told the defense prior to the trial that he had only told the police what he learned from the press accounts of the crime. He also denied that police had threatened to charge him with the crime unless he implicated McGee. At the time, Fenderson was still under supervision of the juvenile court after he admitted to receiving stolen property.
Prior to the trial, the prosecution had filed a motion to present evidence that McGee “had access” to a .38 revolver — arguing that because McGee had access to the gun shown in the photograph of Fenderson, McGee was more likely to be the murderer.
Detective George Foley, a “ballistician,” testified he was called to the scene of the murder and that he carefully searched the scene for weapons, bullets, shell casings, holes, or the penetration of “something.” He said he did not find any ballistics evidence. Because he was unable to locate any spent shells, Foley concluded that the murder weapon must have been a revolver.
He testified that he had examined the photograph found in McGee’s bedroom and concluded that the black revolver in Fenderson’s hand resembled a Rohm RG model 38-caliber revolver. He said that it had “class characteristics” consistent with the bullet fragments from the victim and that it was consistent with the shell casing that had been found in McGee’s bedroom.
Foley testified that he visually examined the bullet fragments and determined that the bullets had six lands and grooves with a right twist. He documented his findings in a report in July 1997.
However, in November 1997, he issued another report saying that he had re-examined the fragments under a microscope and determined there were eight lands and grooves with a right twist.
Detective Mark Vickers testified and attempted to draw a connection between the gun in the photograph of Fenderson and the bullet found in the victim, in order to further the prosecution’s theory that McGee had “access” to the type of weapon believed to be the murder weapon.
Vickers said he became involved in the investigation in November 1997, when he was shown the photograph of Fenderson. He said that he looked at an enlarged photograph of the bullet fragments with a magnifying glass. He concluded the firearm in Fenderson’s left hand was a “Saturday night special.” He said it was a .38 caliber revolver.
Vickers said that after he examined the photograph, he examined the bullet fragments recovered at autopsy, first with his naked eye and then with a comparison microscope, and “surmised” that it reflected 8 lands and grooves. In comparing the bullet fragments to the gun in the photograph, Vickers said he could not be “100% certain” that they were a match.
Nonetheless, Vickers testified that no one had reviewed Foley’s original report (stating that the bullet was 6 lands/grooves), but when he realized the error, he instructed Detective Foley to write a new report. Vickers said the gun held by Earrie Fenderson might be a Rohm RG or a Titan Tiger.
The defense presented testimony from Robin Gifford, a paralegal who worked with Kamholtz. She testified that she and Kamholtz had interviewed Hamilton prior to the trial. In that interview, Hamilton gave a different account, saying that McGee went out as she was starting to watch Gunsmoke, that he returned as the show was ending, and that he did not say where he had gone. He appeared “just normal, nothing unusual.”
One of McGee’s sisters, Shamika Studimire, testified that a few days after the murder, she was awakened around midnight by Hamilton pounding on the front door. She could not get in because she did not have a key. Studimire said she let Hamilton in and woke her mother, Marion. Studimire said that Hamilton was upset and scared. She said she heard Hamilton say she was going to call the Crime Stoppers tip line on a man whom she had been seeing.
Kamholtz’s private investigator, Richard Slowe, testified that he and Kamholtz interviewed Fenderson prior to the trial. He said Fenderson reported that police had first threatened to charge him with the murder based on the photograph of him holding the guns and their false claim that McGee had implicated Fenderson in the murder.
Fenderson was subject to probation in juvenile court and feared being taken into custody.
Slowe testified, “He stated he felt that he had been lied to by the police when they initially approached him and told him that Mr. McGee was saying that he committed the murder. And he felt that he was being lied to and, therefore, set up to provide information relative to Mr. McGee, basically, in retaliation for him thinking that Mr. McGee was going to point to him as the murderer.”
Slowe also testified, “He indicated that the information he provided to the police relative to Mr. McGee’s involvement came from his learning of that through newspaper and tv presentations, as well as he assumed some of the things he said.”
The defense planned to call Randy Farrell, a friend of McGee’s, to testify that the guns being held by Fenderson in the photograph did not belong to McGee. However, after Detective Daniel Keeler approached him in the courthouse hallway and suggested he might want to consult a lawyer about the possibility of incriminating himself, Farrell declined to testify.
Brian Nolan, a musician, testified that he and his girlfriend had moved her car to a parking space at about 2 a.m. and were walking back to their apartment when they saw someone walk out of Christy’s. The person was wearing a black hood and was about 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 6 inches tall, which was shorter than McGee. Nolan said the person was not carrying anything and was not running, but walking with a strut.
Kamholtz, in his closing argument, told the jury that the prosecution’s case was “built entirely on the say-so of two absolutely untrustworthy, unreliable witnesses.”
On Thursday, October 15, the jury began deliberating. The following day, the jury asked for a written definition of reasonable doubt. The trial recessed at the end of that Friday without reaching a verdict.
On Monday, October 19, the jury foreman reported the jury was at an “impasse and feel that further discussion won’t change the outcome.” During a voir dire of the jurors by the judge about the impasse, one of the jurors admitted she had visited the scene of the crime over the weekend. The juror said that when she left the courthouse on Friday, she was “in tears.” She said she cried “all night” and had been “upset for three days.”
She said she decided that the only way that she could “figure out the time span” was to walk from Christy’s to the McGee apartment building and to the White Hen.
The juror was excused and replaced with an alternate. The impasse was not addressed. Judge Quinlan instructed the jury to begin deliberating anew. The following day, October 20, 1998, the jury convicted McGee of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and unlawful possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Kamholtz filed a motion for a new trial, and, at a hearing, Farrell testified that he would have told the jury that the revolver in the photograph belonged to Fenderson, not McGee. He said he would have testified at the trial, but did not after Detective Keeler threatened to charge him with being the owner of the chrome semi-automatic pistol in Fenderson’s other hand. Keeler denied that claim, and the judge denied the motion for a new trial.
Years later, Sean Ellis (2018) and Shaun Jenkins (2021) were exonerated after they were wrongfully convicted based in part on misconduct by Detective Keeler.
In April 2014, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld McGee’s convictions and sentence.
On March 15, 2024, McGee’s attorneys, Jill Tessier, an attorney in the Innocence Program of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, and Jeffrey Harris, filed a 136-page motion seeking a new trial.
The motion outlined new evidence, much of which had been known, but not disclosed prior to trial by the police and prosecution. The evidence included:
Affidavits from a bank officer and a woman who said that the police knew that Hamilton had committed fraud. They said the police had told them to back off pressing charges against Hamilton because she was a critical witness against McGee.
Affidavits from investigators who interviewed Hamilton years after the trial, during which Hamilton admitted she had called Crime Stoppers hotline to report McGee and that she had collected the $25,000 reward from Christy’s.
A letter from Detective Harrington, written the day after McGee was convicted, saying that Hamilton should be given the $1,000 police reward.
Police reports showing that Damian Gray, a known drug dealer, had been arrested in the neighborhood where Christy’s market was on unrelated charges on the same night as the murder and that he committed an armed robbery of a different convenience store in the Fenway neighborhood a few weeks after the murder at Christy’s. Moreover, Gray had called police in January 1998 while in jail and reported that he believed he had at one time possessed the gun used to kill Yalew. Gray said he bought it from McGee.
Police reports showing that while investigating Gray’s claim, officers learned the gun had been recovered from the apartment building where Gray had been living at the time of the murder. The reports had been falsified to show the gun had been found outside in a bin, even though it had been turned in to a resident of the building. The resident was the sister-in-law of the building’s owner, who was a Boston police detective.
Police reports showing the gun had been recovered in June 1997. It was a Titan Tiger. Detective Foley test-fired it in January 1998 and issued a report on February 5, 1998, saying it was not a working firearm. Four days later, on February 9, 1998, Foley issued another report saying it actually was a working firearm. A police report by Sergeant James O’Shea dated that same day said that “All agree” that the bullet fragments were consistent with being fired by the Titan Tiger.
A report by Dr. Lucy Guarnera, a forensic psychologist, based on a review of Fenderson’s statements and testimony that identified 11 risk factors including intoxication, trauma, lack of a true “interested adult” at the questioning, a “false evidence ploy,” the detectives’ failure to record the entire interview, Fenderson’s recantations to a defense investigator, and the potential contamination of his statement by media accounts. All of these may have played a role in what the defense said was a false statement implicating McGee.
Evidence that following the 1993 murder of Boston Police Detective John Mulligan, Detective Foley “lost contact with reality and was in an adverse psychological condition in 1993.” He had been relieved of his duties due to false statements he made in the Mulligan investigation. The failure of the prosecution to reveal this evidence, which could have been used to impeach Foley, had contributed to the wrongful conviction of Ellis and James Lucien, who was exonerated in 2021.
Police reports showed that contrary to the prosecution narrative that McGee became a suspect only after Hamilton came forward, Detective Harrington had pulled the criminal record and mugshot of McGee the day after the shooting. Harrington’s notes showed that another officer, Sergeant Detective Mark Hayes, had reported that a third officer, John Gilardi, said that McGee “may have bragged about Christy’s.”
The motion for new trial stated, “Each of these errors, standing alone, could provide sufficient basis to vacate McGee’s murder conviction, but when considered as a group, there is little doubt that McGee’s trial did not comport with any sense of fairness. The police went to great strides to keep the defense, and by extension the Court and the jury in the dark about the true circumstances of the witnesses. By suppressing its own efforts to keep Hamilton from being charged with a crime, the Boston Police provided a promise, inducement or reward that should have been disclosed.”
On October 2, 2025, Assistant District Attorney Zachary Host filed a response requesting that the defense motion for a new trial be granted following the prosecution’s “comprehensive investigation” of the defense claims.
During the prosecution’s interview with Hamilton, she said that she contacted police to implicate McGee after talking to her husband, Cecil McKnight, who was in prison. She admitted that she had gotten into an altercation with one of McGee’s sisters, Dominika McGee, after he had been arrested for the murder. Hamilton said Dominika asked Hamilton to help them and she replied, “Your mother had my kids taken away but wait till you see what I do to her kid.”
During Hamilton’s interview, she admitted collecting the $25,000 Christy’s reward. Asked about getting the $1,000 police reward, Hamilton denied she got it and then asked if it was still available.
Retired Boston Police Superintendent Paul Joyce told the prosecution during an interview that, at the time of the trial, he was a detective who was a liaison to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston. In that role, he gathered information from incarcerated federal inmates about unsolved gang and drug-related crimes. Joyce recalled talking to McKnight at the time, and that McKnight said Hamilton had information about the Yalew murder. Joyce had been the detective whose report to Detective Harrington led to Hamilton being interviewed for the first time.
The prosecution interviewed McKnight, who recalled that during their conversation, Hamilton specifically mentioned the reward money.
The prosecution also interviewed the bank official and customer whose affidavits said the police had discouraged the prosecution of Hamilton for fraud because she was a key witness in the McGee case. The prosecution response said that Detectives Harrington and Joyce denied those claims.
The prosecution response said, “Here, there are three categories of evidence that when taken together support that a new trial is warranted: (1) evidence…about alleged interference with the fraud investigation; (2) evidence that Hamilton collected reward money after the trial; and (3) evidence about Hamilton’s motive to lie. Each was unknown at the time of the trial and each, taken together, could have been a factor in the jury’s deliberations...These three categories, had they been known at the time of the trial, would have supported the defendant’s overarching defense that the Commonwealth’s case was built on untrustworthy witnesses.”
On October 14, 2025, Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Michael Ricciuti ordered McGee released from prison pending a ruling on the motion for a new trial. McGee had spent more than 28 years in custody from the date of his arrest in 1997.
On October 27, 2025, Judge Ricciuti granted the motion and vacated McGee’s convictions. He said, in part, that “ one of the burdens of being a prosecutor is unearthing mistakes and errors and worse. It’s not a fun task, but the Commonwealth needs to speak with a clean, clear, honest voice. There’s now evidence that some officers, plural , committed what look to me to be crimes. It’s really the obligation of the Commonwealth to find out who they are. These cold cases are never cold. We see these cases all the time. If there’s an officer who did what they did here, and did it somewhere else, there are other defendants who have a right to know it. So, I think the Commonwealth has got to make double its efforts to figure out who these folks are.”
On November 3, 2025, the prosecution dismissed the case.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 11-23-2025
