Boston homicide detectives are working a death investigation at a Mattapan rental property — and the deed on that property belongs to the husband of “Squad” Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
Officers were called to 25 Malta Street just before 2 p.m. Saturday on what police described as an “investigate person” call. They found a body. By evening, the seven-bedroom house was ringed in red crime scene tape with a Boston police cruiser parked out front, and the department’s homicide unit had taken over the case.
“When they arrived, they found the person deceased,” police spokesperson James Moccia told CBS News Boston, declining to offer further detail.
City of Boston property records list the owner as Conan Harris — Pressley’s husband. The 1910-built home is assessed at more than $919,000 and, according to a spokesperson for the congresswoman, is a rental property. Pressley and Harris live in Hyde Park, not at the Malta Street address. The house has been listed for sale for about a month, with an asking price of $1.15 million.
“The congresswoman extends her deepest condolences to the impacted family,” the spokesperson said.
Police have not released the identity of the person found dead. They have not stated a cause of death. And — this matters — authorities have not suggested that Harris or Pressley had anything to do with the circumstances. No one has accused them of a thing.
But the details coming out of the neighborhood are raising eyebrows all the same.
The realtor handling the sale told the Boston Globe she had no idea what happened Saturday. Neighbors said they heard nothing. One neighbor, though, told the Globe she remembered the home being raided roughly two months ago — back when there were tenants living on every floor, including high-school-aged teenagers.
A raid two months ago. Tenants stacked floor to floor. A house quietly listed for sale. And now a body and a homicide investigation.
Officers at the scene wouldn’t say whether anyone was living in the house at the time.
Here’s the part that ought to get some attention in Washington: Ayanna Pressley has built an entire political brand on lecturing the rest of us about policing, incarceration, and who deserves to be held accountable in this country. She came to Congress in 2018 by knocking off longtime Rep. Michael Capuano from the left, and she’s spent every year since as one of the loudest voices demanding that the system be torn down and rebuilt.
Now the system she loves to indict is doing exactly the work it exists to do — canvassing a crime scene, running down a decedent’s identity, building a homicide file — on real estate owned by her own household.
Somebody died in that house. Somebody’s family is getting a phone call. And the same detectives Pressley’s wing of the party spends its days demonizing are the only people on earth who are going to find out what happened.
The investigation is ongoing. Boston police have not said when they expect to release the victim’s name or a cause of death.