John Michael Irmer, a 68-year-old Oregon resident, has been charged in the 1979 murder and rape of Susan Marcia Rose in Boston’s Back Bay area, as per the statement of Massachusetts prosecutors. Rose, then 24, was a Pennsylvania native who had relocated to Boston. Irmer, apprehended without bail in Boston Municipal Court this Monday, was escorted from Portland, Oregon, by Boston police detectives, as reported by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
The arrest came about after Irmer voluntarily walked into the Portland FBI office last month, admitting to meeting a red-haired woman at a skating rink in Boston around Halloween in 1979. He confessed to leading her to a Beacon Street building under renovation, where he assaulted and subsequently murdered her with a hammer. Forensic analysis affirmed a match between Irmer’s DNA and samples preserved from the crime scene, where Rose was discovered with severe head injuries.
Moreover, during the arraignment, it emerged that Irmer had admitted to another murder in the southern U.S., having previously served a 30-year sentence in California for a different homicide. Following Rose’s murder, he reportedly escaped to New York City.
Suffolk County DA Kevin Hayden acknowledged the arrest, nearly 44 years later, as a significant step towards justice and closure for Rose’s family and friends. In 1981, another individual was acquitted of the crime.
