ON the Case

Everything is back to normal in the quiet tree-lined back streets off of Brattle Street. It's back here, on April 5, 1991 that Mary Joe Frug was stabbed to death.

Frug, who was a Bunting Fellow and law professor at New England Law School, was the wife of Harvard law professor Gerald Frug and mother of Stephen Frug 93.

All is quiet as far as the investigation as well. The two-person Cambridge police team in charge of the case has no leads, no suspects and essentially no clue about who may have committed the murder.

"That's why there's no statute of limitations on murder cases," explains Sergeant Fidele Centrella. "So far we've checked everything--family, students whom she may have flunked..."

Centrella certainly sounds casual about the case, possibly because this kind of pitch dark mystery is nothing new to him. He worked on the still-unsolved Boston Strangler Case and gets calls just about every day from police officers all over the country responding to his a.p.b.'s

No one made any predictions about the Frug incident and when it would be solved, but it's been long enough to classify this among Centrella's toughest.

A year and a half later, a lone car sits in the driveway at 45 Sparks Street, the next door neighbor's kid plays on the grass and the questions hang in the dusk air.