BEDFORD — A 76-year-old Salem man has been charged in connection with the murder of a Bedford woman who was brutally assaulted and killed in her home more than 50 years ago, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Bedford Chief of Police Ken Fong said Tuesday in a statement.
Arthur Louis Massei was arrested at his residence Tuesday and charged with the first-degree murder of Natalie Scheublin, who was 54 when she was killed on June 10, 1971. Massei had been indicted by a Middlesex Grand Jury earlier on Tuesday.
Massei is charged with allegedly tying up Scheublin, stabbing her multiple times, and then striking her in the head, which caused her death. He is expected to be arraigned on Wednesday in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, the statement said.
“I’m hopeful that the arrest, in this case, will provide some closure and sense of justice for Natalie Scheublin’s family, as well as assurance to all in our community who were shocked by this brutal crime,” Fong said. “I want to thank all the investigators, whose determination and perseverance made this moment possible, from those who responded to the Scheublin’s home that day more than 50 years ago, to everyone along the way who has pursued leads and ultimately identified the suspect we arrested today.”
On June 10, 1971, Raymond Scheublin, president of the Lexington Trust Bank, returned from work to find the body of his wife, Natalie Scheublin, in the basement of their Bedford home. She was face-down on the floor, her ankles bound and a makeshift gag tied around her neck, the DA’s office said.
Raymond Scheublin immediately contacted the Bedford Police Department and officers arrived within minutes, prosecutors said.
An autopsy determined that Natalie Scheublin had been stabbed with a knife multiple times and struck with an unidentified object, causing a massive blunt-force injury to her head, prosecutors said.
According to the DA’s office, Natalie Scheublin’s automobile, a blue-and-white 1969 Chevrolet Impala, had been taken, but the investigation revealed that nothing else of significant value was missing. Police immediately searched the area, interviewed neighbors and looked for the missing vehicle, prosecutors said.
At 8:42 p.m., police found the victim’s car in the parking lot of the nearby Veteran’s Administration Hospital, less than half a mile away from the murder scene. Although the car appeared to have been intentionally wiped down to remove fingerprints, police were able to observe and collect several latent fingerprints from it, including one from the right-rear window, prosecutors said.
Police at the time followed several leads, but a suspect was not identified.
In 1999, the case was given another look, when fingerprint examiners from the Massachusetts State Police used a new tool, the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), to attempt to identify the fingerprint found on the Impala and the other latent fingerprints found at the crime scene, prosecutors said.
Through AFIS, police were able to identify Massei as a candidate to review. Subsequent analysis of that print by a State Police fingerprint expert confirmed that the latent print recovered from the victim’s vehicle matched Massei’s left thumb, prosecutors said.
Police interviewed Massei, who denied ever having been in Bedford or having any knowledge of the murder, prosecutors said.
Throughout the investigation of the case, Massei was interviewed again, at which time he allegedly claimed that he had been solicited by an organized-crime associate to murder the wife of a banker and make it look like a break-in. He claimed that he had refused the solicitation, prosecutors said.
Investigators found no corroborating evidence that Raymond Scheublin was involved in a plot to kill his wife, prosecutors said.
In 2019, the Cold Case Unit created by the district attorney refocused on this case. Throughout 2020 and 2021, State Police troopers and Bedford Police detectives examined the case, gathering information about Massei’s past to identify new witnesses, prosecutors said.
During the investigation, police identified a woman, who admitted that she had been involved with Massei in schemes to defraud banks in the 1990s. This woman revealed that Massei habitually carried a knife and had bragged to her about having killed someone with a knife, prosecutors said.
That information, along with the other facts of the case, was presented to the Middlesex Grand Jury, which indicted Massei for first-degree murder on Tuesday, prosecutors said.
“In this case, our prosecutors, Massachusetts State Police troopers and Bedford Police detectives pored over old documents and developed information to reach this result,” Ryan said. “This indictment is the culmination of years of investigative work, and I am truly grateful to all of our law-enforcement partners who worked tirelessly to ensure that we could get to this day and provide some answers to Natalie’s grieving family.”
