Jury selection begins in trials of sex offender charged in 1988 South Boston strangling

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday in the trial of a 61-year-old convicted sex offender charged with strangling a woman and leaving her body in the basement of a South Boston building back in 1988.

Richard Vega is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing Judy Chamberlain, whose body was found in a large sump pump in the basement of the Fargo Building at 451 D St. on July 20, 1988.

Vega, who was also charged with raping an elderly woman in Revere in 1987, was identified through DNA evidence as a suspect in the South Boston strangling in 2011, but prosecutors felt they needed more evidence to bring charges. The investigation continued through District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ cold-case reinvestigation effort PUSH – the Project for Unsolved Suffolk Homicides – more evidence was uncovered and presented to a grand jury. Vega was civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person in 2008 when his prison sentence of up to 20 years for the 1987 rape in Revere was ending.