While the victims were taken from New Bedford, they were all found in different surrounding towns, including Dartmouth, Freetown and Westport, along Massachusetts Route 140.
Medeiros describes her assailant as having a boxer like build with a flat nose, however, she never identified DeGrazia as a positive suspect, only stating to the detective that he looked like the man who tried to choke her.
Later, the District Attorney Ronald Pina asked the court judge for a warrant for DeGrazia's arrest accusing him of allegedly 17 attempted rapes and assaults on several other sex workers in the Weld Street area.
DeGrazia, not being able to make this bail, would spend the next 13 months in the county jail on these allegations brought against him by the District Attorney Ronald Pina.
Finally DeGrazia fired Harrington and hired a Boston Attorney by the name of Robert A. George Esq.
Immediately after DeGrazia was released on bail he was rearrested for allegedly uttering threats to the DA Ronald Pina for wrongful prosecution and imprisonment.
DeGrazia's death came immediately after a Special Prosecutor released Kenneth Ponte as the prime suspect in the serial murder investigation.
Authorities stated in a public broadcast that it was a timely thing that DeGrazia took his own life after being made aware that he was now being considered the number one prime suspect in connection to the New Bedford highway serial murders.
DeGrazia's mother files a federal lawsuit against the District Attorney's office naming Ronald Pina reference; https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-1st-circuit/1104350.html No evidence was ever found linking Anthony DeGrazia to any of the 17 rapes or assaults he was charged with by the District Attorney Ronald Pina.
Also, there has never been any evidences produced by the District Attorney's office connecting Anthony DeGrazia to any of the unsolved highway serial murders in New Bedford.
In August 1990, a grand jury indicted New Bedford attorney Kenneth Ponte, 40, in the murder of Rochelle Clifford Dopierala, who had been beaten to death.
Bristol County District Attorney Ronald Pina suggested that Ponte had murdered Dopierala because she was allegedly planning to expose his drug activities.
[4] On the morning of May 15, Ponte was arrested for shoplifting and was found with four cans of sardines and a block of cheese stolen from a PriceRite store in New Bedford.