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.