Killer from Craigslist
Grand jury to review evidence from killing at Marriott Copley
(Boston Police)
One of the four photos released by Boston police. To see all four, click here.
By Peter Schworm and Maria Cramer, Globe Staff
Boston police today identified the 26-year-old woman gunned down at the Marriott Copley as Julissa Brisman, a New York City resident who apparently met her killer through an ad for massage services she posted on Craigslist.
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PHOTO GALLERY 
Surveillance photos |
Police believe Brisman was struggling with her attacker on the 20th floor of the posh Back Bay hotel when he shot her multiple times in the torso on Tuesday night. She apparently was fighting the attacker as he tried to bind her hands with a plastic cord, according to law enforcement officials. A massage table was found in her room at the Marriott Copley.
A Suffolk County grand jury will begin reviewing evidence today in Brisman’s slaying, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Grand juries can be used as investigative tools, such as building probable cause for search warrants. It does not mean that police have identified a suspect.
The Marriott’s security cameras captured images of a young man who police have described as “a person of interest” in the slaying. He looks as if he just stepped from the pages of a fashion catalog, with a stylish, dark jacket, tousled hair, and cool nonchalance as he glides down an escalator to a marble landing, casually typing a message into a cellphone.
And as authorities launched a hunt for the man – also captured on surveillance cameras last week at the Westin Copley Hotel, where a 29-year-old Las Vegas woman was bound and robbed at gunpoint – the killing this week opened a window on a vast and elusive underworld of prostitutes who advertise online and do business at high-end hotels.
“What we believe is that there are a series of independent operations that are occurring, and it’s very difficult for the hotels to police them because they don’t know who it is that’s coming in to use their rooms,” said Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis. “We’ve been monitoring it very closely, but it’s very difficult to completely eliminate it.”
The man was captured on the Marriott’s security cameras around 10 p.m., police said. About that time, Jane Greenberg, a New York woman staying with her teenage son three doors down from the crime scene, heard two loud shrieks. Rushing into the hallway, she saw a small woman collapsed on the floor, halfway out the room door.
“I asked several times, ‘Are you OK,’” Greenberg told WCVB-TV. “‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ And no response whatsoever.”
Greenberg said she heard loud bangs before the shrieking but had not thought they were gunshots. Greenberg called hotel security, which arrived immediately.
Police said the crime appears linked to the robbery of the Las Vegas woman at the Westin on April 10. That woman, who was bound with a plastic cord and gagged, according to a police report, was also robbed of a debit card, $800 in cash, and $250 in American Express gift cards. She had also advertised massage services on Craigslist, police said.
“Everything about the crime leads us to believe they are connected,” Davis said. “The similarities between the method of operation but also the photos that we’ve taken from the scenes of both crimes show a very similar suspect.”
Yesterday, a witness to the Westin attack described another harrowing scene. The 47-year-old doctor from Tennessee, who asked that his name be withheld, said he was in his room working on his laptop when he heard a frantic banging on his door. He opened it to find a petite blond in a cocktail dress who told him she had just been robbed by a tall, blond muscular man who threatened her with a gun and a knife and left her bound and gagged.
“Her wrists had marks from zip ties,” said the man. She said she had wriggled out of the restraints after the robber fled the room. “She was remarkably calm for what had gone on,” he said.
She called security from his room phone and later told police she had initially met her assailant outside the hotel and he had later come to her room.
Police said neither woman was sexually assaulted, but investigators declined to say whether there was consensual sexual activity.
Police released enhanced photographs taken from security tapes at the Marriott and the Westin in the hope that someone would identify the man, who is believed to live in the Boston area. They described him as “a person of interest.”
Calling yesterday’s developments a “critical point” in the investigation, Davis appealed for help in identifying the man in the footage. “We are really looking for the public to help us,” Davis said. “We believe that someone would be able to see this photo and call us and tell us who he is.”
Davis, who said it was unclear whether Tuesday’s victim was a prostitute, said department officials have been working with security guards at hotels to curtail prostitution, advising them to look for guests who have people coming and going from their rooms frequently or at odd hours.
Davis said many escorts may not report crimes against them. In February, FBI agents arrested five women, ages 19 to 33, who allegedly showed up at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf after agreeing to provide sex for up to $300 an hour to undercover officers.
The officers had responded to advertisements posted on Craigslist, according to Boston police reports. At Choices Escorts & Dancers, an area escort agency, a woman said working independently through sites like Craigslist is highly dangerous.
“Agencies are more secure – these sites are not,” she said, declining to provide her name. “The people who prey on these girls, they target independent escorts. They know that if you’re on Craigslist, you are unprotected.”
She said the Marriott Copley was a “nice, secure hotel” that will not typically let a woman visit a room after midnight unescorted.
When told that in this case the man had apparently visited the woman, she said, “That’s another thing we don’t do.”
“You can’t screen guys that are coming to you” agreed a man who answered the phone at an escort service he did not want named. His service, he said, would not allow a client to approach one of its escorts in a hotel room unguarded, no matter how nice the room.
“We send these guys through a lot of screening before we let them near our girls,” he said.
Hotels said they are coordinating with authorities.
Lucy Slosser, a spokeswoman for the Marriott Copley, called the shooting an “isolated incident” but said the hotel works closely with police to deter prostitution. Michael Jorgensen, general manager at Westin Copley, said the hotel “acts swiftly and diligently to investigate any reports of illicit activity on our premises.”
