News

Murder suspect has long criminal history

by Adam  Gaffin
Friday May 7, 2021

When Boston Police Department detectives went to arrest Liquarry Jefferson for the fatal stabbing on Southampton Street of Jamaal Chin-Clark on Feb. 27, they knew right where to go—Jefferson was already being held on a probation violation related to his 2015 conviction for the armed robbery of a Roxbury market.
That conviction—which brought a seven-year sentence and which came after he pleaded guilty in the middle of his trial—came after his 2008 arrest for a pair of armed convenience store robberies.
And that was one year after his 8-year-old son, also named Liquarry Jefferson, was fatally, and accidentally, shot in his Grove Hall apartment by his cousin, who found a loaded gun in a dresser drawer, possibly left by Liquarry's half brother.
The brother pleaded guilty to involuntary slaughter, the mother was acquitted on the same charge when she came to trial.
Jefferson had nothing to do with that incident; in fact, he had been charged with beating the boy's mother in the face with a barbell and belt when she was two months' pregnant with him—a couple months after she allegedly stabbed Jefferson in the stomach and attacked his former girlfriend when she found the two in Jefferson's apartment.
Jefferson, who grew up in Dorchester but whose last address was in Taunton, also has a manslaughter conviction for a 1997 incident in which he and another man broke into a Castlegate Road apartment and beat and stabbed the occupant to death.
The DA's office provide this account of Jefferson's alleged fatal stabbing of Jamaal Chin-Clarke early on Feb. 27—which says the stabbing actually happened on Southampton Street, rather than at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard:
"Assistant District Attorney David McGowan told the court that surveillance camera footage captured the victim and a second individual walking on foot to a Southampton Street parking lot on the morning of February 27, 2021. Approximately 20 minutes later, a vehicle driven by an individual later identified as Mr. Jefferson arrived at the location. Mr. Jefferson, the victim and the second individual are seen on camera in what is believed to be a hand-to-hand drug transaction. During the interaction, Mr. Jefferson allegedly punched the victim in the face, knocked the second individual to the ground, and stabbed the victim in the chest and torso. Mr. Jefferson then returned to his vehicle and drove away.
Mr. Chin-Clarke walked toward the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, where he collapsed in the street. He was transported to Boston Medical Center, where he died of his injuries."