Crime
One man will serve life in prison without parole, while another was released and will serve five years of probation.
Two men involved in a 2015 home invasion and killing in Dorchester were sentenced this week after one was convicted and another pleaded guilty, according to prosecutors.
Victor Arrington, 40, was found guilty June 25 of first-degree murder, home invasion, armed assault with intent to murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, and two counts of kidnapping. He was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole for the murder charge, along with 42 to 45 additional years for the kidnapping, assault, and possession charges, court records show.
James Boyd, 33, pleaded guilty Wednesday to home invasion, assault with a dangerous weapon, and two counts of kidnapping. He was sentenced to five years of probation for home invasion, nine to 10 years each for the kidnapping charges, and four to five years for the assault charge, according to court filings.
Boyd’s prison time effectively ended that same day because the sentences were ordered to run concurrently. Since Boyd has been in prison since his 2016 arrest, he has already served 10 years, meaning he will be released and begin his probation term, records show.
Planned assault and robbery ended in murder
On March 31, 2015, Arrington, Boyd, and a third man planned to assault and rob a man who lived on Harvard Street in Dorchester, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release. However, they went to the wrong home and broke into the apartment of Richard Long, a 37-year-old ironworker who had no connection to the intended target.
The intruders bound Long and his fiancée with electrical cords, and when they realized they were in the wrong home, they decided to kill the couple to cover their tracks. The men stabbed Long, shot both him and his fiancée in the head, and poured bleach on them before lighting the kitchen on fire and fleeing, according to prosecutors.
Long died at the scene, but his fiancée regained consciousness and managed to escape to a neighbor’s home for help. In a victim impact statement, which one of his sisters read at Arrington’s sentencing, Long’s fiancée described the “psychological, emotional, and physical impact” of the incident on her.
“What happened that day changed every part of my life and devastated me to my core. Even now, years later, I continue to experience nightmares and moments where I relive the fear, helplessness, and terror of what happened,” the statement reads. “Home was once the place where I felt safest, but that sense of security was taken from me. Every day, I am fearful of being alone in my home and, at times, even fearful of being there with my family.”
Victim’s sons share impact statements
Long’s infant son was in the bedroom when the intruders broke in, and the fiancée rescued him before escaping. The son, now 12 years old, also gave an impact statement read by the lead prosecutor on the case.
“I was there as a baby the day my parents’ lives were ruined and mine was almost taken before I even made my own mark on the world. This traumatic event left me with significant breathing difficulties and other chronic health issues, a constant and painful reminder of a past I barely remembered but that impacted my present,” Long’s son wrote in the statement. “Together, these experiences — the loss of my father and the enduring physical consequences of the fire — created a unique and challenging path through life. My childhood was marked by a relentless effort to overcome these intertwined burdens.”
Long’s oldest son, Richard Long Jr., was 12 years old when he lost his father, according to prosecutors. During Tuesday’s sentencing, he described carrying on Long’s name as simultaneously “one of the greatest honors of my life” and “a daily reminder of the man who was taken from me.”
“As the oldest son, I have often thought about the life we should have had,” Long said in his statement. “I wonder what advice my father would have given me, what lessons he would have taught me, what conversations we would have shared as I became a man. Those questions will never be answered because one person’s decision permanently changed the future of an entire family.”
The prosecution’s case against Arrington was significant for the use of location information stored in the Frequent Location History feature on his iPhone, Hayden’s office said. After an extensive evidentiary hearing, the court allowed the Commonwealth to present this digital evidence to the jury despite the defendant’s objection, according to the DA.
Arrington’s first trial ended in a mistrial in May 2024 after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The third intruder with Arrington and Boyd was identified, but never charged because he was killed in an unrelated homicide in April 2015, prosecutors said.
Neither of Arrington’s attorneys, Michelle Menken and Edward Parker, immediately responded to a request for comment Wednesday night. Boyd’s attorney, Nicholas Howie, also did not respond to a request for comment.
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