Watertown’s first Black police officer was found murdered in her home in 2011; killer has never been found (2024)

Gail Miles made history in 1984 when she became the first Black police officer in the Watertown Police Department. She made headlines 16 years later when she sued the department for discrimination,alleging she was the target of racist jokes and insulting remarks about affirmative action.

In 2011, Miles was found slain inside her Roxbury home, where she lived alone. Her killing remains unsolved.

Shortly after 10 a.m. on Dec. 3, 2011,policewere dispatchedto her Wardman Road apartment to conduct a wellness check. According to media reports, her door was locked and police had to force their way inside, where they found a gruesome scene.

Miles had been “beaten and cut,” and died from “blunt force head trauma and sharp force neck injuries,” according to a copy of her death certificate obtained by the Globe.

Her family and friends said Miles must have known her killer.

“She was not going to open her door to anyone,” her friend Charlene Henry Woodstold the Globe in 2011.

Garrett Mitchell, a Boston police homicide detective, agreed in a2012 interview with Boston 25 News reporter Bob Ward, saying the violence appeared to be personal.

“From my experience, it tells me the person had a grudge or something,” Mitchell said. “And they were angry toward Gail.”

But who would want her dead? That’s the question investigators are still trying to answer.

“She was a wonderful girl,” her late mother, Marilyn Miles, said in2011. “She had a lot of friends and she loved to travel and socialize.”

Miles seemed bound for success at a young age. After attending David A. Ellis Elementary School in Roxbury, she graduated from Brighton High School in 1968 and enrolled in college.

That fall, Miles was one of 17 debutantes chosen to participate in the Snowflake Ball at the Sheraton hotel in Boston. Mayor Kevin White and Lady Sara Carter, the wife of Guyana’s ambassador to the United States, were among the guests.

Miles got the chance to meet Carter and a photo of them appeared in the Nov. 30, 1968, edition of the Boston Record American newspaper. Dressed in formal wear, Miles was wide-eyed and smiling broadly as she shook Carter’s hand. Her future looked bright.

Miles attended Lesley College in Cambridge and planned to pursue a career in teaching or dental hygiene until she decided to go into law enforcement instead.

She joined the Watertown Police Department in 1984 and worked on the night patrol division for 20 years.

Her career as a police officer was not easy. Milessaid sheendured all kinds of harassment at work, including being groped.

Miles said the sexual harassment began when she was hired and continued until she filed a complaint in 1997 with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which determined it had probable cause.

Three years later, Miles sued the department, alleging she had been the target of derogatory comments and remarks about affirmative action, suggesting the only reason she was hired was because she was a Black woman. She alleged she was locked out of the communications room by other officers, and that an officer grabbed her buttocks and later touched her breast.

The lawsuit was settled out of court. As part of the agreement, she received $150,000 and officers were ordered to complete a training program aimed at preventing sexual and racial harassment.

Miles retired from the department in 2004 and continued to live in Roxbury.

Miles was divorced and had no children, her mothersaid in 2011.

She loved animals, and filled her home with cats, dogs, ferrets, and birds. Those who knew her said she used to go on walks in Franklin Park with a pet parrot on her shoulder.

After her death, mourners gathered at Davis Funeral Home in Roxbury topay their respects.

At the funeral, Melonie Griffiths said she had worked with Miles on tenants rights issues for City Life/Vida Urbana, a grass-roots community organization.

“Gail had a strong passion for fighting back and being fearless,’’ Griffiths said.

Lieutenant Christopher M. Munger of the Watertown Police Department, who attended the police academy with Miles and worked with her for years, said Miles retired from the force after suffering an injury on the job.

“She’s just a very outgoing person,’’ Munger said in 2011. “If you met her, you would never forget her.’’

After the service, pallbearers carried her casket out of the funeral home, and a hearse took her body to Blue Hill Cemetery in Braintree, where she was laid to rest.

(Herobituaryand death certificate state that Miles was born in 1951. Buther tombstoneat the cemetery says she was born in 1953.)

In 2015, relativestold WBURthat Miles usually carried a small handgun, but detectives never found it at her home. Even more puzzling, police determined that nothing was stolen from the apartment and no fingerprints were left behind, relatives said.

“The only thing that was broken was a chair, and there was blood on it,” her sister, Gina Holloway, told WBUR. “But we went in there and we seen that chair, and I was shocked that they didn’t take it for evidence. They said they found no forensic, and I was wondering why they didn’t take that chair.”

Anyone with information about the murder of Gail Miles is urged to contact the Boston Police Homicide Unit at 617-343-4470. Those wishing to assist the investigation anonymously can call the CrimeStoppers Tip Line at 1-800-494-TIPS or text the word ‘TIP’ to CRIME (27463).