SAUGUS — It wasn’t unusual for Kathleen O’Neil to walk alone along Saugus’ Route 107, as she was doing in the early morning hours of June 19, 2011.
The 42-year-old Lynn resident had a seizure condition that prevented her from driving, said Kathleen’s sister, Mary Theo, so she regularly walked wherever she needed to go.
“She had two pets, a cat and a dog, and she’d go out randomly to get pet food at different times of the day,” Theo said. “She loved to walk.”
Theo never worried anything would happen to her independent younger sister, to whom she was exceptionally close. The baby of the family by five years, Theo described Kathleen as a “star athlete” and an artist with a “unique ability,” adding that she often acted as a parental figure to Kathleen when the two were growing up.
“My mom was an extremely hard worker and worked two to three jobs, so sometimes I was more the second mother than the sister. (I’d) try to keep her in line as a teenager — she was a wild one, but she was super funny,” Theo said. “The thing I remember most about her is her smile and her sense of humor, and when I reminisce with her friends — I’m still close to quite a few of them — they say, ‘God, she could make us laugh.’ She always had that ability to make people laugh, no matter the situation.”
Having spent her life as the protective older sibling, Theo said it was devastating when officers showed up at her doorstep that June morning to inform her that Kathleen had been struck and killed by an unknown vehicle hours earlier.
According to police reports at the time, a couple driving by the scene called 911 when they spotted Kathleen’s body in the median strip shortly after 1 a.m. After the couple turned their car around, they observed a black 1996 Nissan Pathfinder that had just crashed roughly 50 yards away.
Police reported speaking with the occupants of the Nissan and eventually ruled them out as suspects in the hit-and-run, with witnesses saying they were sure Kathleen’s body was in the median before the crash took place. However, Theo said she questions whether or not police reports of that morning are entirely accurate.
“I was told years ago there was no connection (between the two incidents) and that witnesses said my sister’s body was there first and then immediately after that they heard the crash,” Theo said. “I don’t believe that.”
A 2014 press release from the Saugus Police Department stated that immediately following the crash, the two male occupants of the Nissan ran into nearby woods, taking the car’s license plate with them.
Police searched the area and eventually found one of the men, who told them he was a passenger in the vehicle and had fallen asleep prior to the crash. He later told police he had spent the last few hours drinking at Lido nightclub and asked two of the bar’s regulars for a ride home to Lynn. As the driver turned too quickly on to Route 107, the car rolled over and the man said the next thing he knew, he was being pulled from the car by strangers who told him to run.
Saugus officers also questioned the registered owner of the vehicle, who stated he had sold it to another party. The other party, who was found to not have a valid driver’s license, turned himself in later that day, but both men inside the vehicle at the time of the accident have maintained they had nothing to do with Kathleen’s death.
Interim Saugus Police chief Ronald Giorgetti, who was the lead investigator on the case, said his department is confident the Nissan was not the car responsible.
“Witnesses indicated that prior to the crash with the black vehicle, Kathleen was already on the median,” Giorgetti said. “They witnessed the black car leave the roadway after they observed her on the median, which would indicate that the vehicle wasn’t directly involved.”
He added that evidence recovered at the scene did not indicate a connection between the two crashes.
“It’s my hope that somebody who may have witnessed or have knowledge of this crash will come forward,” Giorgetti said. “It’s been nine years since the death of Kathleen O’Neil. The family has gone through sorrow and loss in regards to her death, and they’d like something that would assist them with closure, or at least the facts of what happened that night.”
With no other leads pushing the case forward, however, Kathleen’s sister continues to look for answers.
“It’s always been my motivation to have this solved,” Theo said. “The media came to me when it happened, then a year later I went back (to the media), and three years later I went back out again. I reached out to Saugus Police a while after that and they said they got nothing to their tip lines from the big run of the story in the media.
“It’s just eaten away at me since the day she died that we don’t have the answers we need to move on as a family and bring peace to my sister.”
Anyone with information about Kathleen O’Neil’s case should contact the Saugus Police Department at (781) 941-1105.
