Few facts emerge from Yakovleff murder investigation

Two weeks after 20-year-old Daniel Yakovleff was found stabbed to death in a Dorchester apartment very little information has come to light about the circumstances behind his murder. It is unclear why Yakovleff, a popular hair stylist at the South End's Liquid Hair Studios who lived in Roxbury, traveled the evening of Jan. 16 from the South End's Boston Eagle bar to the Tuttle Street apartment of Steven Odegard or what connection, if any, Odegard had to Yakovleff's murder. Although Yakovleff is the second gay man in two years to have been murdered after leaving the Eagle bar (in April 2006 44-year-old David Hall was beaten to death in his South End Dover Lofts condominium after spending time at the Eagle), police said this week that there is no connection between the two crimes. Also this week, Odegard's attorney, John Swomley, told Bay Windows that his client is no longer a suspect and that Boston Police are searching for a third person who was at the apartment the night of Yakovleff's murder.

"I know the police have information about a third individual they're looking for, and I'm willing to let them continue their investigation without doing too much to provide details that would compromise the investigation," said Swomley.

Boston Police Department spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said it is premature to say whether or not Odegard himself is a suspect in the case.

"Mr. Odegard is a person of interest. The police department has spoken with him. We continue to actively investigate the facts and circumstances of this case," said Driscoll. "It is too soon to publicly discuss suspect or motive."

Driscoll declined to comment on whether police were searching for the third person described by Swomley.

Swomley, a prominent criminal defense attorney, offered few details about the relationship between Odegard, who according to Swomley is gay, Yakovleff and the alleged third party. He would not say whether Odegard had met Yakovleff at the Eagle, but he said Odegard was only moderately acquainted with Yakovleff and the alleged third person.

"I don't think [Yakovleff and Odegard] had a lot of prior knowledge, no, and I don't know whether the prior knowledge of the third person or how extensive Yakovleff's knowledge of the third person was. I think it predated his meeting with my client," said Swomley. When asked how well Odegard knew the third person, Swomley responded that the person was not someone Odegard knew "in any way more detailed than he knew the deceased."

Bay Windows asked Swomley if he knew why Yakovleff traveled from the Eagle to Odegard's apartment, to which he replied, "My only comment on that is my understanding is that he wanted to, and I don't really want to go any further than that."

The Boston Globe reported Jan. 26 that an unnamed police source said that Odegard told police he woke up to find Yakovleff's body in his back bedroom. Swomley said he would not deny the comments made by the Globe's police source, saying they were largely accurate, but he declined to elaborate on how Odegard slept through Yakovleff's murder. Odegard called the police on Jan. 17 to report the murder.

Driscoll said that police are still trying to answer key questions about the case, particularly how and why Yakovleff traveled from the Eagle to Odegard's apartment. She declined to discuss what police know about the relationship between Yakovleff and Odegard and whether they met at the Eagle on Jan. 16.

"Police are trying to determine at this time who Daniel left that bar with," said Driscoll. "And we are hoping that anyone who may have seen Daniel leave that bar will come forward and let us know who he was in the company of. ... It's unclear how Daniel got from the Eagle bar to the house in Dorchester, to Tuttle Street."

Jack Rapetti, owner and bartender of the Eagle, said that he does not remember seeing Yakovleff at the bar Jan. 16, though he said there was a small crowd at the bar that night.

"Not only that, but that was a cold fucking night and there was nobody around, so we were out of here at 2 o'clock. ... We had a total of 30 people here," said Rapetti.

He said Yakovleff frequently changed his hair styles, so he may not have recognized him if Yakovleff was at the bar that night. Rapetti said he did not know Yakovleff well.

"I never spoke to the kid personally myself, and if he came in here he came in with a group of people and went in a corner," said Rapetti.

Cary Mann, owner of Liquid, said Yakovleff was a frequent patron at the Eagle. "[The evening of Jan. 16] we only knew that he was going out to dinner, and usually he goes to the Eagle afterwards," said Mann. "That was one of his new and favorite hangouts. And that was the last anyone had seen of him, is Wednesday night."

The Eagle has long been known as one of Boston's cruisier gay bars, a frequent destination for men looking to hook up at the end of an evening, but it is unclear if Yakovleff left the Eagle with someone to hook up or for some other reason. Chris MacDonald, a South Ender and part of the group of Yakovleff's friends that regularly congregated at the Tremont 647 bar, said that he was not with Yakovleff at the Eagle that night, but he said if Yakovleff went there it was likely to have fun and blow off steam after a long day's work.

"At the end of a day, after a long day of work, which he was very passionate about, he liked to enjoy himself," said MacDonald.

When asked whether Yakovleff was conscious of his safety when going out to bars, MacDonald said his friend was trusting and generally assumed that Boston was a safe city.

"Dan was just a very trusting person, as many people are. ... But I do think him being such a trusting person, he was willing to talk to anybody and befriend anybody at any given time," said MacDonald.

Emily Pitt, who heads Fenway Community Health's Violence Recovery Program (VRP), which provides support to LGBT victims of violence, said that given the few details that have been made public about Yakovleff's murder it is unclear whether Yakovleff was the victim of a pick-up crime (committed by someone he met for sex) or of some other circumstance. She said pick-up crimes are not uncommon among Boston's gay male community.

"Subjectively, I can tell you we see a number of cases where someone met someone at a bar and went home with them and later was robbed, sexually assaulted or was physically assaulted," said Pitt.

She said the VRP has no contact with the perpetrators of pick-up crimes, but in conversations with the victims, Pitt said many believe that they were singled out either because the assailant wanted to rob them, rape them or attack them due to anti-gay animus. Because most pick-up crimes take place behind closed doors, with few witnesses to interrupt the assault, Pitt said they can often be extremely violent.

The VRP does not keep statistics on the number of pick-up crimes per year, but Pitt said the number of calls they receive from victims of such crimes has been relatively steady over the years. Yakovleff is not the first gay man in Boston to be murdered after disappearing from a bar. In April 2006 police found 44-year-old David Hall dead in his South End Dover Lofts condominium, apparently the victim of multiple blows to the head (see "Murder of gay man sparks grisly rumors," April 20, 2006). Like Yakovleff, Hall was last spotted at the Eagle, but beyond that there have been few details of his murder that have come to light, and it is unclear whether his murder was a pick-up crime. Friends told Bay Windows shortly after the murder that Hall may have been the victim of a robbery, based on items missing from his apartment.

Driscoll said Hall's murder remains unsolved, but detectives do not believe there is a connection between his murder and Yakovleff's murder.

Pitt said that while people should take precautions to protect themselves, there is no reason to panic.

"What we hear in the program here are the bad stories, so it's also important for people not to have such a heightened sense of alarm that they stop living their lives," said Pitt.

Commander William Evans of the Area D4 police station, which covers the South End, said Yakovleff's murder is not indicative of any trend in anti-gay crime in the neighborhood. D4 is working with the homicide division to investigate the case.

"We're doing all we can to sort of put down the fears of the gay population in our district," said Evans "It's not an everyday occurrence. We had some good witnesses out there so hopefully we'll solve this case."

Meanwhile, Yakovleff's friends and loved ones in Boston said they are still struggling to cope with his murder.

"It's been very rough for us. It's been an absolutely devastating event that has truly shaken us all," said Mann. He said Yakovleff worked at Liquid for two years, starting at the salon as Mann's assistant right out of hairdressing school and swiftly building his own clientele as one of the salon's stylists.

MacDonald said Yakovleff's friends hope police can uncover information about how Yakovleff died, but they understand that answers may be a long time in coming.

"We realize that that takes time, and they're hopefully doing what they need to do to give us, and especially his family, the answers that we need to move on and cope appropriately," said MacDonald.