The Unsolved Murder of Shana Price: Springfield, MA, 1990 — Murder, She Told: Maine & New England True Crime

Body Found in Blunt Park

In Springfield, Massachusetts, on the day after Christmas of 1990, a Parks Department Employee was checking the grounds at Blunt Park.

Blunt Park was a big gathering area for the community, and it was right next to neighborhood schools: it was bordered on the north by Springfield Central High School and on the south by Margaret Ells Elementary School. When the weather was good, it was filled with people of all ages—shooting hoops, swimming, jumping rope, and walking.

At 6:55AM the day after Christmas, the area was eerily quiet and desolate. As they made their way through the Roosevelt Avenue entrance, they noticed something out of place. Draped over the wooden fence next to the entrance, was the nude body of a woman covered in blood. It appeared unlikely the woman was still alive.

When police arrived, they searched the area and found a pair of sneakers, a pair of jumper cables, and some of the woman’s clothing scattered nearby. The amount of blood at the scene reminded them of the shootings they were all too familiar with, but they found no gun. They initially believed that she had suffered a single gunshot wound to the head.

Police identified the young woman right away—that very same morning. Her name was Shana Price, and she was just 17 years old.

Shana Renee Price

Shana was born in January of 1973, the second-oldest of five siblings. Her sister, LaQuana, came along in 1977, and they were very close. They spent much of their childhood with their paternal grandmother, Jean Price, who owned and lived in a big old Victorian house on Dartmouth St., built in the 1880s in the neighborhood of McKnight, a centrally-located historically-Black neighborhood.

Shana was outgoing, athletic, and enjoyed being outdoors.

LaQuana: “She was very vibrant, talented, friendly, adventurous, all of those things rolled into one. She could sing, she could dance, she could do hair. She was very friendly, she had lots of friends, but she was also the type of person that was very fair, so she didn't let other people get picked on. She was very helpful, like if you were in need of something, Shana was the person that would be there to help you.”

Shana was quite dark-skinned, and LaQuana said that kids would bully her about it. At first, she internalized that negativity, but she learned to snap back:

LaQuana: “We are dark skin chocolate girls, and it was something that growing up, we both got comments about and she learned how to deal with them a lot quicker than I did. So, she would just say, ‘Black is beautiful’ when people would say [mean things]. I don't think she came to that by herself. I think it really had a lot to do with our grandmother and how she raised us to have that self-love. So, one of her mottos was Black was beautiful.”

Shana was very protective—always keeping an eye out for her little sister.

LaQuana: “She taught me how to dance, she taught me how to do my own hair, how to match my clothes... how to jump Double Dutch... When I was younger, my uncles used to tell me all the time, between my brother and Shana, I was always on somebody's hip. They don't know how I ever learned to walk. One of them was always carrying me around.”

When Shana had just turned 16 years old, her life changed in a big way—she became pregnant. She gave birth to a son she named Mark Joseph in October of 1989. She wanted to give him names from the Bible.

Though LaQuana told us that she didn’t feel the presence of violence growing up in Springfield, the crime statistics at the time paint a different picture. 1990 was the pinnacle of the nation’s violent crime rate, and Springfield’s violent crime rate was one of the worst in the nation.

Shana brushes up against violent crime

Shana had two brushes with violent crime in 1990—once in June and second time in early December.

Sometime in late November or early December, Shana ended up in the nearby town of Ludlow after jumping from a moving vehicle. A Ludlow police officer took her to the station where she explained what had happened.

The unidentified man had trapped her in his car and Shana told police, “He wanted to kill me.”

Ludlow is 7 miles from Springfield. It is on the edge of Springfield’s urban sprawl. It’s on the other side of the Chicopee River, and the further reaches of Ludlow give way to farmland and nature preserves.

One police officer remembered that Shana said “she had jumped from the unidentified man’s car near LeClaire’s Farm by Ludlow Reservoir on Center Street.” She apparently did not know the man well, because, according to police, “she gave a vague description of the man and a vague description of his car.” Police did not say if Shana explained how she had ended up in the man’s car in the first place. We can only imagine that even if she had initially entered the car of her own free will, the situation had drastically changed. Without a clear description of the man or his car, police did not look for her attacker.

In the weeks following her attack, Shana was fearful of encountering the same man, whose identity was unknown to her, and remains a mystery to this day.

Christmas Day, 1990

On December 25th, 1990, the Price family spent the morning and afternoon together at Jean’s home. LaQuana was in the 8th grade at the time, and was on Christmas break. She saw Shana all Christmas morning and afternoon. They got up early in the morning, opened presents, and lounged around, watching TV and hanging out with the family. Shana’s baby, Mark, was just 14 months old.

Shana left that afternoon to visit her baby’s father’s family—she left around sundown to go spend time with Mark’s paternal grandparents. Mark, however, stayed with Grandma Jean and LaQuana.

What happened after that is a mystery. There were sightings of Shana in the Upper Hill and Bay Area neighborhoods Christmas evening. She was last seen sometime in the early morning hours in one of these two neighborhoods. The next concrete time is 6:55AM, when the Springfield Parks Department employee arrived at Blunt Park, and discovered her body. Police have never publicly stated whether they believe Shana was killed in the park, or if she was killed elsewhere and moved to the park.

Though the initial theory was that she had been shot in the head, an x-ray showed that there was no presence of a bullet. The autopsy revealed that she had been strangled and beaten about the face and head. She had also been raped, and police collected and stored a semen sample.

Springfield Detective Sergeant Michael Reid was tightlipped, saying only that “police were focusing on retracing her steps.”

More murders in Springfield

Between 1990 and 1996, 12 women were murdered in Springfield—sometimes within weeks of each other. Some were strangled, others stabbed.

The murders were so frequent that FBI profilers like Robert Ressler weighed in. Some of the theories put forth in the 90s turned out to be true. The group of profilers speculated that the killer was “probably a Black male in his 30s or 40s, who lived and worked near the locations where the bodies were found.” They thought it was possible that the women, including Shana, could have been killed by the same man.

As FBI profilers predicted, a Black man in his 30s who lived in the area was found guilty of several of the murders. Alfred Gaynor was arrested in 1998, and in 2000, was found guilty of four of the murders based on DNA evidence. With a combination of DNA and his own confessions, he was eventually linked to 9 murders, 6 of which were in Springfield—those were 6 of the twelve women whose names were listed on the memorial stone.

DNA evidence also identified 2 more killers, and closed another 2 cases on the memorial stone. But none of the men’s DNA matched the DNA from Shana’s killer.

Shana’s case was one of 4 similar unsolved cases. In April 1991, only 4 months after Shana’s death, 21-year-old Lisa DaSilva was found strangled to death in her apartment, which was within walking distance of Shana’s house. The following year, in May of 1992, 32-year-old Corine Lee was found strangled to death in a dumpster in another Springfield neighborhood, called South End. In June of 1995, 24-year-old Celestina Perez was found strangled and beaten in a Springfield Park. Serial killer Alfred Gaynor was considered a possible suspect in Celestina’s murder, but there was a lack of evidence, and it was not one he confessed to. But it is also possible that whoever killed Celestina, also killed Lisa, Corine, and Shana.

DNA Breakthrough

In 2003, the semen found on Shana’s body was tested for DNA. The results were entered into law enforcement databases, but there weren’t any hits to the suspect.

Since the DNA couldn’t be linked to any existing perpetrator profiles, and almost 20 years had passed with no progress in the case, investigators tried a difference approach. They shared a sample of the evidence with Parabon Nanolabs, one of the preeminent DNA labs used by law enforcement nationwide. Parabon created a profile that could be used for investigative genetic genealogy and uploaded it GEDMatch, but there weren’t enough close familial matches to immediately narrow the search.

Parabon also crafted a composite from the DNA—a prediction of what the man might look like based upon his genetic traits. Parabon calls “Snapshot DNA Analysis,” also known as a phenotype profile.

In 2022, the sketch was released to the public at a press conference. Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni presented the sketch and urged the public to come forward with any information they may have. Police had a tip line dedicated to Shana’s case.

The image generated by Parabon depicts a Black man with a round or oval face, medium-brown skin color, brown eyes, and black hair. His DNA points to West-African origin. His face was modeled at 25 years old and at 57 years old. His DNA has never been connected to another case, even though Springfield has cleared its rape kit backlog. It appears that he has not committed a violent felony since at least 1998, when Massachusetts mandated the collection of DNA for violent offenders, which suggests a few possibilities: one, that he is dead; two, that he has been incarcerated since 1998 for a crime committed prior to 1998; or three, that he is still alive and has not offended since 1998.

How you can help catch Shana’s killer

The Hampden County DA’s office is also offering free DNA ancestry kits for a limited time to expand the database of samples available for genealogy searches. Sign up to get your free DNA kit here.

The more people who make their DNA profile available to law enforcement databases like GEDMatch and Family Tree DNA, the easier it is to narrow down the search for suspects, rule people out, identify John and Jane does and solve cold cases like Shana’s with Investigative Genetic Genealogy.

If you want to learn more about IGG and how it works, check out the episode from November 2024 called Cracking Cold Cases Using Investigative Genetic Genealogy.

The Hampden DA’s website state that they believe if 1% of the population made their DNA available for comparison, almost any case with available DNA evidence could be solved.

If you have information on the murder of Shana Renee Price, please call or text her tip line at the Hampden County DA’s Office at (413) 432-9881.

If you are a current or former Hampden County resident, get a free DNA ancestry kit to help solve cold cases.

This portion of text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, The Unsolved Murder of Shana Price. To hear Shana’s full story, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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73 Dartmouth St., “Big Boy” the dog (courtesy of LaQuana Price)

Sightings of Shana Price, night of her death (hampdenda.com)

Kevin, LaQuana, and Mark (Hampden County DA, YouTube)

Sources For This Episode

Mentioned in this episode: Cracking Cold Cases Using Investigative Genetic Genealogy

Newspaper articles

Various articles from Boston Globe, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Hartford Courant, Springfield Union News, and The Republican, here.

Written by various authors including Arthur H. Zalkan, Buffy Spencer, Chris Hamel, Jack Flynn, Jeanette De Forge, Michael Bonin, Michael McAuliffe, Patrick Johnson, Peter Goonan, Rhonda Swan, Stephanie Barry, and Susannah Pugh.

Interview: LaQuana, Shana’s sister

Online written sources

'Springfield serial killer Alfred Gaynor admits killing total of 9 women' (Mass Live), 10/8/2010, by Buffy Spencer

'Shana Renee Price' (Find a Grave), 3/20/2015, by Tulsa90

'Unsolved Homicides' (Hampden District Attorney), 8/19/2017

'Slain Sisters of the Community - Springfield, MA' (Waymarking), 12/9/2017, by saopaulo1

'MA - Shana Price, 17, beaten, strangled & sexually assaulted, Springfield, 26 Dec 1990' (Web Sleuths), 7/23/2022, by BrownBear

'Hampden DA poised to announce development in 1990 Springfield murder investigation of 17-year-old Shana Price' (Mass Live), 12/6/2022, by Stephanie Barry

'Sketches of 1990 unresolved Springfield homicide suspect released' (WWLP), 12/6/2022, by Nick DeGray

'‘Justice is coming for you.’ DA releases sketch of suspect in 1990 slaying of girl, 17, in Springfield.' (Boston Globe), 12/7/2022, by Travis Andersen

'Composite picture of suspect in the homicide of Shana Price released' (Hampden District Attorney), 12/7/2022

'Composite sketches released for suspect in 1990 unsolved murder' (Western Mass News), 12/7/2022, by Paris Dunford