The New Bedford Highway Murders

Between 1988 and 1990, a serial killer targeted women — many of them sex workers with substance abuse problems — in the New Bedford, Massachusetts area, leaving their bodies along highways and rural roads in Bristol County. Nine women were found dead, all strangled, and two more disappeared and were never found. The murders were attributed to a single perpetrator given the similar victim profiles, body disposal patterns, and method of killing, though this was never definitively established forensically.

The investigation immediately focused on Kenneth Ponte, a local attorney, but prosecutors ultimately determined the evidence was insufficient to charge him. A second suspect, Tony DeGrazia, was investigated but never charged. The killings stopped abruptly in 1990 without any arrest, and the case went cold. The victims' families, many of whom came from marginalized communities, felt that law enforcement had not invested the same resources it would have for different victims — a criticism echoed in true crime scholarship examining cases involving sex workers and substance abusers.

Over the following decades, investigators periodically revisited the case, and various suspects were proposed by researchers and journalists. The absence of physical evidence tying any particular individual to the murders, combined with the passage of time and the deaths of potential witnesses, made prosecution increasingly difficult. DNA technology was applied to preserved evidence but did not produce a match to any known offender.

The New Bedford Highway Murders remain one of the most significant unsolved serial murder cases in New England history. The case is frequently discussed alongside the Long Island Serial Killer case as an example of the systemic vulnerabilities facing sex workers who become murder victims — the social marginalization that reduced urgency in their cases, the inadequacy of investigative resources devoted to victims from disadvantaged communities, and the near-impossibility of solving cases where witnesses live outside conventional civic structures. As of 2025, the murders are officially unsolved.