Man Accused In 1988 Killing Of 11-Year-Old Girl To Be Arraigned

SALEM, MA — The former Massachusetts corrections worker accused in the stabbing death of 11-year-old Melissa Ann Tremblay 34 years ago will be arraigned on a murder charge Thursday.

The Essex County District Attorney's Office said on Wednesday that 75-year-old Marvin McClendon Jr., who was arrested in Berman, Alabama in April, will be arraigned in Salem Superior Court early in the afternoon.

McClendon was indicted on a first-degree murder charge on June 15 and has been held without bail.

McClendon, formerly of Chelmsford, is accused of the stabbing death of the Salem NH girl, whose body was found in a Lawrence rail yard in 1988 after she had gone missing while playing in the nearby neighborhood.

Tremblay's body was found between two freight trains in the Boston & Maine Rail Yard in Lawrence with her left leg severed under one of those trains.

Police reported there were signs of a struggle before her death.

"We never forgot about Melissa, nor did we give up on holding her killer accountable," Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said following McClendon's arrest.

The DA's Office said McClendon worked for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections on three separate occasions between 1970 and 2002 and that he was doing carpentry work at the time of the girl's killing.

Blodgett said at the time of the arrest that McClendon had been "a person of interest for a period of time."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)