Baby Doe: “It Was Her Time to Die. She Was a Demon”

Baby Doe: “It Was Her Time to Die. She Was a Demon”

Bella Nevaeh Bond Amoroso 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 IV 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 facilities 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 crack; 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 (DCF) 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 Mattapan neighborhood just south of Harambee Park. Zillow states the location is in Dorchester, but official case files list the residence in the Mattapan neighborhood. NeighborhoodX.com also seems to include Maxwell Street in 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 as Bella’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 and his claim that he was able to rid evil spirits. He had been interested in those topics since his childhood, but in 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 her 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 playing in her room in the dark, he said he would put her to sleep and went into her room, leaving the door ajar. 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 grabbed Rochelle 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 effing 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 backseat 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 pilings and 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, Rochelle recognized it as City Point in South Boston.

The 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 25, 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 revealed 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 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 Cannon 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 palynology 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 tests 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 AM, he was near the Reserved 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 and the story had been so widely publicized, an 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 pauper’s grave. Peter Stefan, the owner of Graham, Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester, Massachusetts, whose funeral home handled the controversial burial of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan 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 believed the girl had 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 and 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 in 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, Aliyah Ramirez, Figueroa, Afire Ben-Haim, Cassidy Gibbs, and Ayla Reynolds.

When searching missing persons databases produced 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 host Anderson Cooper interviewed the National Center for Missing and 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 live-in 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. Families like Evangelica Castillo, who were undocumented immigrants and never reported the victim as missing due to fear of deportation. We will have the full interview linked 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: one at 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 heavyset 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 DCF. He demanded that she prove 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 2 PM.

By July 20, 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 and 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. DCF 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 Bella Bond. 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 animals. They brought me to the place right near where the Sprinsky’s 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, quoting, teenage years down here.”

“When you heard this is where her body was dumped, what went through your mind?”

“Shock and disgust.”

That day, Rochelle heard a knock at her apartment door. 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 DCF. When asked what happened when DCF took Bella, he dodged the question and replied that Rochelle often complained about her daughter’s father, who’d shown up at the apartment several nights before yelling and screaming.

When asked again about when DCF took Bella, Michael said that not long after Easter, he came home one day and Bella was gone, and Rochelle said that DCF had taken her. When asked if Rochelle ever worked with DCF and/or a caseworker or tried to get Bella back, Michael replied that his girlfriend had told him that someone from DCF had said, “We can either do this the nice way or the hard way,” and that DCF 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. These are 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 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 dead?” “No, really no, huh. She’s not, to my knowledge.” “Are you sure? Positive? You didn’t drive over to East Boston?” “No.” “Southie?” “Southie, 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 some sort of… we’re homicide detectives, okay? We’ve been doing this for a long time. Okay, this is the real deal. This is your chance to get out from under this. Okay, we know what went wrong, we know what happened to Bella.” “I don’t think… you don’t know what happened to Bella.” “He’s sitting there basically saying I did something. So you don’t know what happened to her? 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 Reserved 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 Reserved 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 21, 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 10, 2017, Rochelle pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact in exchange for her testimony against Michael. Rochelle, who had been incarcerated since September of 2015, was credited with time served and received two years of probation.

During Michael’s trial in early June 2017, Sprinsky took the stand. He warned 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, that’d pretty much guess 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 entries still referred to him affectionately, which his attorneys believed 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. He will be eligible for parole in 2037.

On June 10, 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 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 is now living was not publicly disclosed.

“I mean, she’s relieved. So in terms of her future, she’s 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 be applicable here.”

Joseph: “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. Its copper plaque reads: “For reasons we may never know, an angel came to our shores, causing us to shed a collective tear. May she rest in peace and never be forgotten.”