Prisoner charged in ’08 student killing

A federal prisoner has been charged with murder in the 2008 killing of a Northeastern University student in her Parker Hill Avenue home.

Rebecca Payne, a Connecticut native, was shot to death on May 20, 2008. Cornell Smith, 30, a former Boston resident now in a Wisconsin federal prison on unrelated drug charges, was recently charged with the killing. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said in a press statement that Payne did not know Smith and “did nothing to bring about her own death.”

A Billerica man is also facing charges of perjury in the case for allegedly lying to a grand jury investigating the case.

For more on this story, see the May 4 Gazette.

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