With Few Leads, MA Community Rattled By Homicide | Patch PM

MASSACHUSETTS — It's Thursday, May 27. Here's what you should know this afternoon:

• Investigators on Thursday released new details about the apparent slaying of 28-year-old Jasmyn Beatty at her Framingham apartment, but they also said it's unclear if her death happened either in a random attack or by someone she knew.
• Some Massachusetts legislators want to restore the Logan Express bus routes suspended during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Danvers town officials are condemning what they call "hateful and discriminatory behavior" after they said an apparent noose was hung on the sign of a church.

Scroll down for more on those and other stories Patch has been covering in Massachusetts today.

Today's Top Story

Investigators on Thursday released new details about the apparent slaying of 28-year-old Jasmyn Beatty, but they also said it's unclear if her death happened either in a random attack or by someone she knew.

Beatty was found Tuesday morning at the Halstead Apartments in Framingham by a man who knew her, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said during a news conference Thursday. Police found Beatty with a "significant" slash wound to the back of her neck, but Ryan would not say if a weapon was found at the scene.

Ryan said the investigation is in the early stages, but did say there were no surveillance cameras at the Halstead complex, which is one of several large apartment buildings along Route 9 on the west end of Framingham.

Officials sought to calm fears among Halstead residents — and in the wider community — that the attack may have been random. Framingham Mayor Yvonne Spicer and Framingham police Deputy Chief Sean Riley said police have stepped up patrols in the area.

Read the full story.

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Thursday's Other Top Stories

Time to bring back Logan Express? State Rep. Richard Haggerty is leading a call by Massachusetts legislators to restore the Logan Express bus routes suspended during the coronavirus pandemic. The Woburn route was suspended in Jan. 2021 and the Peabody and Back Bay routes have been out since March 2020. Only the Braintree and Framingham routes remain in service. Haggerty sent a letter to Massport CEO Lisa Wieland, with the support of 23 other state representatives and two state senators from communities hit by the lack of transportation options to and from Logan.

Noose at North Shore church: Danvers town officials are condemning what they call "hateful and discriminatory behavior" after they said an apparent noose was hung on the sign of the Northshore Unitarian Universalist Church Wednesday night. Danvers police are investigating what they said was a possible hate crime after a volunteer reported a Black Lives Matter sign was missing at the Locust Street church and a "piece of rope fashioned as what appears to be a noose" was hung on the main sign.

Pressure mounts on Harvard, other colleges: Native American tribes, students and faculty are pushing the Ivy League institution and other colleges to do more for Indigenous communities to atone for past wrongs, much in the way states, municipalities and universities are weighing and, in some cases, already providing reparations for slavery and discrimination against Black people.

Eat fresh: Patch's 2021 Massachusetts Farmers Market Guide

Picture This

MA woman starts craft brewing's #metoo moment: Brienna Allan, the production manager at Notch Brewing of Salem, two weeks ago posted on her Instagram account about a comment she received and invited those who have had similar experiences to share their stories. Since then, she has filled 10 Instagram stories with responses that range from customers assuming a brewer is a bartender or other staff member because she is a woman to accusations of sexual abuse within the craft beer industry.

They Said It

"It's a human rights movement disguised as a coffee shop."

• Amy Wright, owner of Bitty & Beau's in Melrose. The coffee shop will employ people who are intellectually and developmentally delayed when it opens this summer.

In Case You Missed It

MA teacher had secret life: Star Academy, which has campuses in Watertown and Wellesley, fired an elementary school teacher this week just before Huffington Post published an article identifying him as a writer for white nationalist Websites and publications. Benjamin Welton, who is also a history PhD candidate at Boston University, wrote under the several pen names, including Sinclair Jenkins. In 2017 he published an essay on the white supremacist Website American Renaissance where, Huffington Post reported, he complained about Black seamen he served with in the Navy and an "ingrained culture of anti-white hatred" in academia.

By The Numbers

40 million: The approximate number of copies of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" sold since it was first published in 1969. The book's author, Eric Carle, died Sunday at his summer studio in Northampton. He was 91.