By Zack Sampson, News Staff
The man charged with murder for the 2008 shooting of Rebecca Payne, a Northeastern student, was ordered held without bail Monday, the Suffolk district attorney’s office said.
Cornell Smith, Payne’s suspected killer, was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge in Suffolk Superior Court, according to the office of Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.
Smith was indicted on the murder charge in April, but his arraignment was delayed because he is serving an unrelated federal prison sentence out of state, Conley’s office said.
A building manager found Payne, a 22-year-old athletic training student from New Milford, Conn., dead in her Parker Hill Avenue apartment with gunshot wounds to her legs and chest on May 20, 2008.
The Boston Globe reported that prosecutor Ian Polumbaum said Monday that Smith climbed up a balcony and entered Payne’s apartment before shooting her multiple times.
Several neighbors said they heard shots just hours before Payne was found, but no one called police.
One resident of Payne’s building told The News on the day of the shooting that he “heard four to five shots” but didn’t call police because it was not abnormal to hear gunshots in his neighborhood.
Prosecutors have said Rebecca Payne was a victim of mistaken identity. Polumbaum, according to the Globe, said in court Monday that Smith had been in a fistfight a few days before the slaying with someone who looked like Payne from a distance.
The Globe also reported that Smith’s lawyer, Jeffrey Karp, said his client did not kill Payne.
Another man, Michael Balba, was arraigned on April 30 on four counts of perjury in connection with the case. According to prosecutors, Balba allegedly brought crack-cocaine from Cornell Smith and drove to Payne’s building the night of the murder, sitting in his car smoking crack while Smith shot Payne and an unidentified third man stood guard.
Balba was granted immunity, but he allegedly lied to a Suffolk County grand jury during an investigation into Payne’s murder.
Conley’s office said Smith will return to court on July 10.
