Bella Nevaeh Bond Amarosa was born on June 8 2012 in Dorchester Massachusetts to parents Joseph Amoroso and Rochelle Bond her father was a Florida resident with a lengthy criminal history Joseph was never involved in his daughter’s life outside of a few telephone calls and never met her in person her mother Rochelle was a known Ivy drug user and sex worker who already had two other children removed from her custody much like Joseph Rochelle had been arrested multiple times in the past she was in the state correction facility’s no fewer
than 12 times and served time in County Corrections programs as well in fact Rochelle was incarcerated in the throes of addiction while carrying Bella before Joseph took off to Florida the couple met and began staying in a tent in Dewey Square during occupy Boston in November of 2011 Bella was conceived but unlike the others that squatted in the financial district with aims of trying to achieve something with their protests Joseph and Rochelle just wanted to do drugs inside their tent in downtown Boston Joseph’s drug of choice was quick
however after he realized that Rochelle had been sleeping with other men he headed down south Bella and her mother lived together in the city of Boston Massachusetts for the first 11 months of her life Bella and her mother resided in a family shelter with mandated support Supervision in place the Department of Children and Families had contact with Bella twice in 2012 and 2013 both times for neglect each time the case was closed within a few months after staying in another family shelter for three additional months Rochelle and
Bella moved into an apartment located at 115 Maxwell Street in Mattapan in October of 2013 with assistance from a state-funded rental Voucher Program now many sources claim they lived in Dorchester but that’s only partially correct Maxwell Street is on the line of the matapan neighborhood just south of harambe Park Zillow States the location is in Dorchester but official case files list the residents in Mattapan neighborhoodx.
com also seems to include Maxwell Street and Mattapan seen in this picture here Rochelle decorated Bella’s room with monkeys her favorite animal they went on to live in this apartment for the next 20 months neighbors described Rochelle as very loving and really nice to Bella who was always happy and playing other than weed and prescribed medications Rochelle wasn’t using any drugs in her own way Rochelle was trying to put her best foot forward to be a good mother to Bella not long after Rochelle met a man named Michael McCarthy who struck up a
conversation with her outside a pharmacy and persuaded her to give him some klonopin in February of 2015 he sent Rochelle a text message to buy drugs soon they developed a romantic relationship and he moved into her apartment some sources have referred to Michael Isabella’s stepfather but this is incorrect Rochelle and Michael never married and honestly he wasn’t in Bella’s life long enough to Garner such a title Rochelle was impressed by his intelligence particularly on subjects involving spirituality he told her he felt
negative energy around her and burned Sage to eliminate an evil presence as he called it in her apartment he said he could treat her abdominal pain with a Reiki technique by which he held his palms above her body while she thought of the color yellow and she believed that it worked soon after Michael moved in his childhood friend Michael sprinsky stayed at Rochelle’s apartment for two weeks as we have two different Michaels in the story we will refer to the friend as Mr sprinsky some reports have claimed that he was a friend of Rochelle’s but
this is incorrect Mr sprinsky grew up with Michael and the pair used drugs together on the streets of South Boston or Southie as some of the residents call it during that time Bella smiled laughed and played and the apartment was neatly kept Mr sprinsky became increasingly annoyed by Michael’s frequent talk about demons in his claimed that he was able to rid evil spirits he had been interested in those topics since his childhood but Mr sprinsky’s view he had now become obsessed with them that spring Rochelle relapsed and
together with Michael they began to use heroin again when Mr sprinsky visited the apartment was in total disarray little attention was being paid to Bella so sometimes he prepared food for her Michael and Rochelle both told Mr sprinsky that Bella was possessed Michael more often than Rochelle they both frequently Asked Bella if she was possessed by demons if she disagreed Rochelle sometimes spanked her Michael never intervened in the spankings and several times he locked Bella in a closet as punishment for her
demons in April and May of 2015 Michael’s Brother Joseph McCarthy not to be confused with Bella’s biological father Joseph saw Bella several times she was an average happy two-year-old child and was not disheveled or abused he last saw in the third week of May however those close to Rochelle started to see changes in the mother that were unlike her until now she kept her Facebook page updated with a constant stream of pictures of her and Bella shortly after Michael entered the picture she went silent on social media
there were no more pictures of Bella and Rochelle started to become reclusive around this time neighbors heard the cries of a young girl through the thin apartment walls in early June of 2015 Rochelle was having difficulty putting Bella to bed one night after she had tucked her in at 11 30 PM she ran out of her bedroom repeatedly and each time Rochelle put her back into her bed when Rochelle and Michael later heard her plane in her room in the dark he said he would put her to sleep and went into her room leaving the door jar
within five minutes Rochelle followed him Bella was lying across her bed on her back Michael punched the two-year-old girl in the stomach so hard that she bounced up Rochelle yelled what what Bella was not breathing her head looked swollen and gray so Rochelle tried to resuscitate her when it didn’t work she picked up Bella in her arms and tried to leave but Michael grab her shell by the throat with both hands and threatened to kill her allegedly Bella fell out of her mother’s arms and Rochelle lost Consciousness when
Rochelle regained Consciousness she was on the living room couch she was too afraid of Michael to try to flee she passed out again and awoke later when Michael injected heroin into her neck which allegedly she welcomed Rochelle said what the f did you do you often killed her Michael replied it was her time to die she was a demon after he injected Rochelle he guided her to his car on the back seat were weights and a green duffel bag containing Bella’s body when Rochelle saw it she screamed so Michael hit her on the head and she lost
Consciousness yet again when Rochelle again regained Consciousness the car was in an open area next to a wharf with pile Bonds in a body of water Michael the duffel bag and the weights were no longer in the car Michael came from the direction of the water got into the car and drove away as they left the area Rachelle recognized at a city point in South Boston following day Rochelle said you killed my kid and Michael replied she was a demon it was her time to die Rochelle did not report Bella’s death she was using IV drugs heavily and
wanted to as she put it be taken out of reality because her daughter was dead Michael repeatedly threatened to kill Rochelle which she believed he would do because he had killed Bella he told her that children always go missing and that no one would believe her if she reported Bella’s death for the next couple of weeks Michael stayed near Rochelle constantly even when she used the bathroom or took a shower eventually he started leaving the apartment occasionally and when he did he loaned Rochelle a cell phone that did
not have internet access so he could contact her they shot up four to seven times a day for the next several months on June 25th 2015 a woman walking on a beach on Deer Island found a knotted trash bag containing the dead body of a female toddler wrapped in two blankets the child was wearing white leggings with black polka dots inside the bag with her remains was a zebra print blanket she weighed just 30 pounds and was about three and a half feet tall her body was reasonably intact but had a modest amount of decomposition
initially police were unsure if additional bodies would be at the scene so they attempted unsuccessfully to use cadaver dogs to locate any other possible remains after the discovery of the little girl locals constructed a makeshift Memorial covered in dolls stuffed animals and plastic flowers within hours the discovery of the girl’s body received widespread media coverage because her identity was unknown she was called baby doe an autopsy was conducted on July 3rd but did not conclude what had caused the girl’s death there were
no drugs or alcohol in her system and her body tested negative for cleaners such as bleach or other contaminants however further examinations by Dr Henry nields reveal bruises on her arms abdomen and legs as well as hemorrhaging on her abdomen lower back and shoulder blade the medical examiner was of the opinion that she had died of either asphyxia which might have been caused by compression of her abdomen as shown by the bruising or a heart dysrhythmia caused by a sharp blow below the heart it was initially suspected that she had
likely been dead for at least a week however later developments in the case have suggested that the little girl’s body could have been hidden in a fridge for as long as one month before it was deposited on Deer Island although she appeared to have been deceased only a short time she had already begun to decompose and become bloated making it impossible to identify her visually decomposition had also made it impossible to collect fingerprints due to exposure to the water investigators concluded that she was a
young child but were initially unsure of her race and ethnicity but it was later deduced that she appeared white with possible Hispanic ancestry the clothing found on the toddler believed to be size 4T was determined to have been manufactured by the Circo company and was likely sold at a Target store the blanket was possibly made by the Canon Mills company and sold at Kmart a hairband made from elastic material was also recovered and yes there were Kmarts open in New England at the time she was determined to be
between three and five years old her hair was described as being Brown wavy and 14 inches in length presumably the child’s hair was left untrimmed for about two years judging by its length she had pierced ears but no distinct birthmarks or scars were observed overall the girl appeared well cared for during her life there were no signs of malnutrition or maltreatment an investigator stated the clothing also reinforced this Theory besides DNA testing authorities conducted efforts into forensic palinology and isotope examination of
water and pollen samples found at the scene the testing results indicated that the girl had spent time in the local urban area most likely in Boston as traces of Pine and soot were found throughout the tests eventually she was also determined to have possibly spent time in any of the six New England states and possibly others the hair and enamel test indicated that she could have moved across the country on the following day Michael made several calls from downtown Boston to the cell phone that he had loaned Rochelle
location information showed that he traveled to Mattapan at 9 47 am he then traveled to South Boston where at 9 53 a.m he was near the reserve Channel investigators continued to try to identify baby doe the national Center for missing and exploited children generated a computer image which approximated her appearance this was widely publicized after that image and photos of the leggings and blanket were posted on the Massachusetts State Police Facebook page investigators were astonished by the number of views and shares the posting
received within days more than 45.4 million people had viewed the image because the Reconstruction in the story had been so widely publicized and unexpectedly large amount of public interest in the case developed internationally several individuals offered to pay for the little girl’s funeral and burial if she could not be identified one Funeral Home stated that it would donate the means to bury the child under a headstone so she would not be buried in a Popper’s grave Peter Stefan the owner of Graham Putnam and Mahoney funeral parlors in Worcester
Massachusetts whose funeral home handled the controversial burial of Boston Marathon bomber tamerlin Tsarnaev said that after watching coverage of baby doe on the news he wanted to help the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority reported plans to donate a bench in memory of the little girl the Coast Guard analyzed currents in Boston Harbor to determine where her body had drifted but they could not locate a point of origin without information on how long she had been in the water as of mid-july and August authorities
believe the girl been placed at the scene rather than washing onto Deer Island from another location because her body was not in an advanced enough state of decomposition the shore of deer island is near a wastewater treatment facility one of the investigators thought a possibility existed that the disposal had been performed by an employee since the area had been regarded as a busy area for workers in the public the person who placed the bag at the scene possibly did so at night to avoid being seen investigators had received dozens and
dozens of tips from the public and those leads prompted police to check on the well-being of 20 girls the same age range all of those girls were found safe and sound in addition many missing persons were excluded as possible identities authorities checked into shoshana black holla Ramirez Figueroa afire Ben Heim Cassidy Gibbs and Ayla Reynolds when searching missing persons databases produce few cases matching her profile authorities began to believe that the child may never have been reported missing they explored and
guessed that her family could be unaware of her death another explanation as to why no matches were achieved was that she could have belonged to an undocumented family or perhaps her family had met the same fate and just hadn’t been recovered yet on July 10th CNN News hosts Anderson Cooper interviewed the national Center for missing exploited children’s co-founder and former host of America’s Most Wanted John Walsh about the case in the interview Walsh insisted that somebody knows the identity of baby doe and that
in many similar cases the living boyfriend or the child’s mother are often responsible sometimes the child is accidentally killed or starved to death when explaining a probable reason why the girl had remained unidentified John Walsh stated that people do not want to talk to cops possibly due to the fear of authorities investigating their own lives family evangelica Castillo who were undocumented immigrants and never reported the victim is missing due to fear of deportation we will have the full interview link for you in our show
notes if you want to check it out for yourself because the computer-generated image was so well done many people who viewed it thought it was an actual photograph this led to many bad leads as locals began calling in sightings of the girl as if it were a missing person’s flyer many leads were followed that appeared to match the circumstances of the case a woman who had been seen throwing a garbage bag over a bridge was later questioned by police but the contents of the bag were simply found to be spoiled fruit
other individuals stated they had seen toddlers resembling baby doe wanted a store and another at a playground with a woman clothed in a burqa investigators could not find any trace of the girl at the store through information gathered by security cameras and the subject at the playground has yet to be located a man stated he believed he had seen the toddler in November of 2014 at a laundromat with a heavy set and dirty blonde woman pushing the child in a stroller Michael’s friend Mr sprinsky asked him and Rochelle where Bella was
in June they both replied that she was with Rochelle’s sister in July Michael’s Brother Joseph asked the couple where Bella was to which they replied that she was with her father for the summer on July 16 2015 Rochelle went to housing court to oppose an eviction while there Michael repeatedly sent her text messages warning her not to claim that she needed housing for her child because the court might involve DCFS he demanded that she proved to him that she was in court Rochelle told her landlord’s attorney that her boyfriend
was keeping tabs on her and at her request the attorney wrote down his cell phone number and a notation that Rochelle had been in court until 2PM by July 20th 2015 a total of 84 Billboards of baby doe were put up in 50 locations across Massachusetts in an effort to try to identify the little girl as a DNA profile of baby doe was no match for anything registered to the National Center for missing exploited children’s database on July 25th dozens attended a candlelight vigil on Deer Island in honor of the little girl followed by a
memorial Mass held on Beacon Hill on July 29th on September 9th Bella’s Father Joseph Amoroso arrived at Rochelle’s apartment asking to see his daughter with Michael monitoring the conversation Rochelle told Joseph that Bella was visiting her godparents in Cape Cod at about 11 50 pm on September 15 2015. Joseph returned to Rochelle’s apartment and knocked at the door for a long time eventually Rochelle came outside and spoke to him while Michael watched from a window holding a baseball bat Rochelle again told Joseph that Bella was with
her godparents when Rochelle came back inside Michael berated her for about 10 minutes in Mr sprinsky’s presence screaming insults while wielding the bat the next day while Michael was treated for an abscess in the hospital Rochelle tearfully told Mr sprinsky that he had killed Bella Mr sprinsky searched the internet for information about baby doe and saw a photograph of a blanket that he recognized was Bella’s Mr sprinsky texted Michael stating she told me everything she said you killed Bella Mike lovingly replied and I quote you
were listening to a cracked-out hooker DCFS took Bella that’s what she told me end quote Mr sprinsky called Michael and asked how could you do that to a child Michael cut the conversation short saying why are you even talking about this on the phone Mr sprinsky called again Michael had shut off his phone on September 17 2015 Mr sprinsky told a probation officer that baby doe was bellabond interviewed by State Police he disclosed Rochelle’s address and shared with them the text messages between him and Michael
as such a warrant was issued for Rochelle’s apartment on Maxwell Street in Mattapan I was like wow I’m like these two I’m like these two sick the animals they brought me to the place right near where the Sprint skis and Michael McCarthy grew up this is significant as a teenager me Mike a lot of other people used to come down here and drink I spent a lot of time like coding teenage years down here when you heard this is where her body was dumped what went through your mind shock and disgust that day Rachelle heard a knock
at her apartment door she she looked out and saw the police so she left through a back window she met up with Joseph and told him that Bella was dead after using a bag of heroin together they decided to get a lawyer and go to the police but first they went to Joseph’s mother’s house in Lynn for the night the following day police found them and they were interviewed it was then that Rochelle came clean about the events leading up to and after Bella’s death which we described earlier on September 18 2015 police interviewed
Michael he admitted he had been staying at Rochelle’s home which he described as a two-bedroom apartment where she lived alone though sometimes other people spent the night when asked who occupied the bedrooms he volunteered that Rochelle’s daughter Bella had been taken by DCFS we asked what happened when DCFS took Bella he dodged the question and replied that Rochelle often complained about her daughter’s father who’d shown up the apartment several nights before yelling and screaming when asked again about when DCFS took Bella Michael said that
not long after Easter he came home one day and Bella was gone and Rochelle said the DCFS had taken her when asked if Rochelle ever worked with DCFS and or a caseworker or tried to get Bella back Michael replied that his girlfriend had told him that someone from DCFS had said we can either do this the nice way or the hard way and that DCFS took Bella because Rochelle had given her a little spank on the butt that once they take your kids you don’t get them back this is all his words Michael said no when asked if he ever saw Rochelle hit her
daughter when the police told him that Bella had been killed Michael acted surprised and said he did not know she was even dead he denied it when he asked if he had gone to South Boston or Boston Harbor I’m I’m not trying to put words in your mouth Mike I’m just trying to figure out I can’t comprehend how a child like that could get hurt killed killed right so you don’t know she’s dead no you don’t know Bella’s Dad no really no huh she’s not to my knowledge are you sure positive he didn’t drive over to East Boston
no Southie salty no Boston Harbor no no no Mike we’ve been handling this investigation for months been all over the news we’re here right now talking to you this this is not this is not some sort of we’re homicide detectives okay we’ve been doing this for a long time okay okay this is the real deal this is your chance to get out from under this okay we know what what went wrong we know what happened to Bella I don’t think you don’t know what happened with Alex he’s sitting there basically saying I did something so you
don’t know what happened to it then you tell me what happened to her I have no idea based on Rochelle’s description police went to City point where there was a wharf with direct access to the reserve Channel it was about 300 yards from where Michael had lived as a teenager and he and his friends used to drink there after about five minutes of searching in the water about five feet from The Wharf a state police diver found a duffel bag and some weights one of the weights was the same brand as a set police found in Michael’s father’s
plumbing shop in Quincy at trial a coast guard search and rescue controller claimed it was quite possible that Bella’s body had floated from the reserve channel to Deer Island that same day Michael McCarthy and Rochelle Bond were arrested and taken into custody Michael was charged with first degree homicide and Rochelle was charged as an accessory after the fact she was later charged with additional counts of larceny for continuing to accept public assistance from the Department of Transitional Assistance after she knew of Bella’s death
the couple was arraigned on September 21st 2015 where Michael was held without bail and Rochelle was held in lieu of one million dollars subsequently a second warrant was issued for 115 Maxwell Street where a cadaver dog allegedly alerted to the scent of human remains in the couple’s refrigerator on January 6 2016 Rochelle pled not guilty to charges related to her daughter’s death but changed her tune 13 months later on February 10th of 2017 Rochelle pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact exchange for her testimony against
Michael Rochelle who had been incarcerated since September of 2015. be credited with time served and received two years of probation during Michael’s trial in early June 2017 sprinsky took the state Warren Rochelle Bond about the potential dangers of entering a relationship with Bella’s killer he explained that this was due to Michael’s Dark Side including the fact that he heavily researched topics such as demons and Satanic rituals he also believed he had the ability to expunge demons from a residence and he was seriously deep into the dark
side of things and when you’ve been hearing that for so long over and over and over and over every single day for years daddy pretty much guessed you after she had told me what she initially told me I said you better run because he’s crazy Michael’s defense provided text messages and journal entries made by Rochelle that were written after Bella died the entry still referred to him affectionately which his attorneys believe suggested his innocence his defense also claimed that Rochelle was the individual in the relationship
with the dark interests although Michael had been charged with first degree homicide the judge allowed the jury to consider lesser charges of second-degree homicide and involuntary manslaughter on June 26 2017 the jury returned a guilty verdict of second-degree homicide two days later Michael McCarthy was sentenced to life imprisonment you’ll be eligible for parole in 2037 on June 10th 2021 Michael’s conviction was upheld after trying to appeal his case with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court before his hearing
Michael had a few things to say did you kill Bella never never I never harmed a hair on on her head you know she was a beautiful happy healthy little girl they were saying that you know uh I essentially believed that Bella Bond was inhabited by demons did you think Bella was a demon of course not she’s a beautiful little girl the state police swept the refrigerator and they said there was never a body in the refrigerator and they swept my car and they said there was never a body in his vehicle either on June 27 2017 Rochelle
chose to remain in jail after learning that a drug treatment center refused to take her in on July 12th she was placed on probation and wasn’t allowed to use drugs or alcohol among other conditions later Rochelle was released from the Suffolk County House of Correction where she’s now living was not publicly disclosed I mean she’s relieved it so in terms of her future she scared you know you all know that she could have walked out of this courtroom I don’t know about 10 days ago free and clear and she didn’t want to do that so she is
scared about her future she you know she is she has a future without her child and regardless of what people think about her involvement or not she Grieves the loss of that child every single day I mean she’s likely to stay here I think that she’d like to avoid locations where she was able to connect for drugs I think she really wants a fresh start so there are plenty of places in Massachusetts where she could do that that was until August 17 2018 when Rochelle now living in Worcester landed herself back in court for a probation
violation although the terms of her probation stated that she could not use drugs or alcohol Rochelle took it upon herself to indulge in Coke weed and Suboxone which she had not been prescribed in the wake of Bella’s death her paternal grandmother Patricia Quinn and Father Joseph Amoroso shared the following thoughts some sources have indicated that Patricia learned of Bella’s existence due to her death and subsequent investigation but that’s untrue she’d seen Bella two years prior to her death I just miss her so much I
really do it’s just ridiculous it’s horrible Patricia Quinn says she last saw her granddaughter more than two years ago Bella was only eight months old she says last week Bella’s mother Rochelle returned to her home without the toddler Patricia says she found out what happened on television the next day I was watching the breaking news and you know Bella came on and Rochelle was sitting there and said that’s my daughter Bella Bella’s father says he heard the confession the night prior you must have been completely
blindsided but you waited and you didn’t come forward you didn’t call authorities I didn’t have to the authorities were all over the investigation the warrants had already been sent out district attorney Dan Conley police certainly should have picked up the phone and done something earlier but from a criminal responsibility point of view there aren’t statutes that would um it’ll be applicable here of course I have regrets absolutely on November 28 2015 Bella was finally laid to rest at the Winthrop Cemetery in Winthrop Massachusetts her
headstone Bears the Engravings of a Sleeping Angel a kitten and a picture of Bella with a ponytail on the top of her head above the words our special Angel her name has also been added to the Senate family gravestone in addition a memorial honoring Bella stands on the shores of deer island where her tiny body washed up it’s copper plaque reads for reasons we may never know and angel came to our Shores causing us to shed a collective tier may she rest in peace and never be forgotten
