A Boston murder suspect has turned
himself over to police, but says he is not guilty of killing
20-year-old Daniel Yakovleff, a gay hair stylist that was found dead
from a brutal knife attack 11 months ago.
Boston Police say when members of their
Fugitive and Apprehension Unit made a forced entry into the
Dorchester Ave. residence of Steven Odengard and did not find him,
they feared he had fled the city to evade capture. Notes left in the
apartment instructed several people to pay bills and “have a merry
Christmas.”
Odegard, however, turned himself in at
the District 11 police station on Tuesday, reports Boston-based gay
weekly Bay Windows.
Odegard, 41, made the January 17 911
call that brought police to the third-floor Tuttle Street apartment
where he was living at the time claiming that he had found Yakovleff
in his bed dead.
In the intervening 11 months, Odegard
has remained silent, his attorney proclaimed his innocence and the
Boston Police would not even say he was a suspect.
But on December 14, a Suffolk Country
Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Odegard with the
first-degree murder of Yakovleff.
Yesterday, after pleading not guilty,
Odegard was held without bail for the murder of Daniel Yakovleff.
“Investigators never gave up on
bringing Mr. Yakovleff's killer to justice,” Suffolk County
District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
Yakovleff was pronounced dead on the
scene on the morning of January 17 after suffering multiple and
severe stab wounds. Investigators now believe Odegard inflicted
those wounds; the lack of a forced entry leads them to conclude that
the pair knew each other.
The hair stylist was popular with his
clients at the South End's Liquid Hair Studios where he worked and in
the gay community as evidenced by the overflowing crowd that attended
a January 22 memorial in Ashford, Connecticut, Yakovleff's hometown.