MALDEN – Jessica Cormier was remembered today as the “best human being’’ just hours before a prosecutor alleged the Everett woman was murdered by a Chelsea man with whom she had an “ongoing relationship.’’
Cormier, 20, was killed by two stab wounds to the heart last Tuesday night on the porch of her home at 83 Pearl St., blows that Middlesex Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Keeley said were delivered by Clarence Earl Berry, 59.
Berry appeared in Malden District Court where he pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder. Berry, whom the prosecutor said has at least one prior drug arrest, was ordered held without bail by Judge Dominic J. Paratore.
Prior to Berry’s court appearance, hundreds attended a funeral service for the 20-year-old Cormier, a 2009 graduate of Everett High School who had been working at a party supply store in Saugus since her graduation.
The funeral service was held at the Smith Funeral Home in Chelsea.
“She was the best human being,’’ said mourner Danielle Connolly, who described herself as a lifelong friend of Cormier. “She was just perfect. She would see the good in every one.’’
Another friend and mourner, 22-year-old Heidi Callinan of Cambridge, described Cormier as a “fun-loving person’’ who “wouldn’t hurt a fly.’’
Both women declined to talk about Berry and his ties to Cormier.
During the funeral service, Cormier’s cousin Katelin McDonald said Cormier often made family and friends laugh with her wit.
Cormier had “an amazing sense of humor’’ who was also a “thoughtful, generous person.’’
McDonald added: “She will live forever in our hearts.’’
In court, prosecutor Keeley said Cormier and Berry were engaged in an “ongoing relationship’’ and that they exchanged “numerous” cellphone calls the day Cormier was killed.
Keeley said residents of the shelter where Berry had lived said they saw Cormier previously “in the company of the defendant.”
“That relationship came to an end on Jan. 3, at approximately 6:30 p.m. when the defendant went to her home on Pearl Street with the intent to kill her, with the intent to murder her,” Keeley said.
She added that the two began exchanging calls early in the afternoon and that the last call was at 6:26 p.m. Those calls were tracked to both Berry’s and Cormier’s cellphones as well as to a cellphone tower in Malden, a quarter of a mile from Cormier’s home, Keeley said.
The night of her death, the prosecutor said, Cormier told her mother she was going to visit a friend and then left the family’s second-floor apartment on Pearl Street.
Moments later, the prosecutor said, Cormier’s mother heard her daughter screaming and a loud thud, which the prosecutor said was the sound of Cormier’s body being slammed into the front door.
Cormier’s mother found her daughter in the foyer bleeding from multiple stab wounds. Cormier was pronounced dead at Massachusetts General Hospital shortly after the attack.
Keeley said that after Cormier’s killing, police searched Berry’s apartment and found clothes stained with human blood. She also said that surveillance videos put Berry in Cormier’s Everett neighborhood at the time of the murder.
Berry is a formerly homeless man who was one of 23 men staying at a lodging house in Chelsea. He had been enrolled in the Cardinal Medeiros Transitional Program and had been living there since September 2010 as a participant in the program, The Globe reported this weekend.
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com
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