No bail for man charged with killing ex-girlfriend in West Roxbury in 1988

A former Hyde Park man was ordered held without bail on murder charges today after prosecutors said DNA evidence linked him to the strangulation death of a woman in the Grove section of West Roxbury 23 years ago.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's office says Michael Coker, 48, killed Janet Phinney, then 20, in a rage after she broke off their relationship, then buried her body under leaves in woods behind her parents' home on Cedar Road.

DNA on swabs taken of Phinney's body during an autopsy "showed the presence of biological evidence," but were then put into storage, the DA's office says. In 2004, DNA on the swabs matched that taken from Coker and entered into a national DNA database. However, it wasn't until last year that the Boston Police crime lab, at the request of the BPD cold-case squad, used new forensics techniques "to determine that the biological evidence had been deposited into the victim's body within 24 hours of her death," the DA's office says.

Prosecutors say Phinney broke up with Coker in early 1988 because he'd become too possessive of her. Shortly after noon on March 18, a witness spotted him yelling at her at the corner of Washington and Grove streets. She went back home. A relative saw her around 12:45, then left for work. That was the last time anybody besides Coker saw her alive, prosecutors say. A neighbor found her body face down in leaves three days later.

Innocent, etc.