1638
First settled in 1638, almost 400 years ago.
about 0:06:37The story
Wakefield, Massachusetts, is a town of about 27,000 people some fifteen minutes north of Boston in Middlesex County. In March 2006 it had not seen a murder for more than five years, since Michael McDermott shot seven workers at Edgewater Technology on 26 December 2000. The double killing that broke that run was treated at first as a professional hit and ended as a story about an affair between neighbours at a New Hampshire lake.
Michael Anthony Zamiti Jr. was born on 18 January 1967. He grew up in Wakefield, graduated from Wakefield High School in 1985 and went to work for his father's business, All State Concrete Pumping, at New Salem Street. Michael Zamiti Sr., known as Big Mike, was blunt and confrontational in business, but he was gentle with his son, and the two were said to be soul mates who did everything together. The firm pumped concrete on Boston's Big Dig, and Mike Jr. had been in the business since he was a boy, learning to drive the rigs before he was old enough for a learner's permit. Father and son restored antique fire engines and drove them in local parades, and each owned a house at Lake Ossipee in Freedom, New Hampshire.
Mike Jr. met Michelle at a job site at the airport. She drove trucks and rode a motorcycle to work, and he was, by his friend Dave Dalton's account, head over heels. They married and had three children, two daughters and a son, Michael III. The marriage was happy enough apart from the hours his business demanded, and Michelle and the children spent much of their time at the lake without him.
His vanities included a licence plate reading O2BME, 'oh to be me'. Michelle and Mike Jr. began marriage counselling. The affair, which had begun as an emotional connection earlier in 2005, continued.
In February 2006 she went to his house after repeated requests and found he had prepared what he thought was a romantic weekend. She told him she would not leave Michael and that the only way they could ever be together was if Michael left her or something happened to him.
On Monday, 13 March, Mike Jr. arrived at All State Concrete at about 7.40 a.m. Chester Roberts, a 51-year-old part-time handyman and driver, stopped to talk to friends and arrived a few minutes later. Michael Sr. was late because a telemarketer kept him on the phone. He pulled into the car park at about 8.03 and found Chester face down at the foot of the stairs, shot in the back. He called 911 at 8.04 and then went up to the office, where he found his son in a chair, shot twice in the face with a 16-gauge shotgun. He was 39. Michael Sr. was taken to hospital with what looked like a heart attack and told it was overwhelming stress.
There was no forced entry and no sign of robbery or struggle, and freezing rain that morning destroyed any tracks outside. The only witness, police said, was Chester, and he was dead. Michael Sr. repeated to officers, 'They killed my son.' A few days later a letter arrived at the Zamiti house made from words cut out of newspapers: 'Close business now or more family will die.' A palm print was found on the inside flap of the envelope. Investigators pursued the concrete business, the Big Dig, possible mob involvement and every employee who had ever left unhappy, including Ricky Calley, who had sued Michael Sr. over a labour dispute in 1995 and been threatened with a bulldozer. Nothing fitted.
At the lake, detectives learned about the affair. He claimed his neighbour Gertrude had seen him in his driveway at nine, which would have made it impossible to drive to Wakefield, commit two murders and return. Gertrude, an elderly woman who checked her watch before her daily walk, testified that she saw him at ten or five past, leaning on his truck with a mug of coffee, the first time in years she had seen him standing outside in March. His phone was switched off until 9.45. He told police he heard about the shooting at nine from his friend Paul Taylor, but the call was logged at 10.34. Two weeks after the murders, when the owners returned for the weekend, the break-ins were discovered. A 16-gauge shotgun and other guns were missing from Michael Sr.'s house. In Fred Martin's driveway stood his green Ford F-150 with a taped-up broken rear window, matching a truck seen on surveillance passing the concrete yard. Martin was in Florida and let police take it. His Easy Pass showed the vehicle going south through the Rochester, Dover and Hampton tolls between 6.40 and 7.04 on the morning of the murders, paying cash, and going north again between 8.29 and 8.51. The northbound passages registered only because a toll collector had mistakenly taken both the cash and the transponder.
A sympathy card he sent Michelle supplied his DNA. He admitted sending the threatening letter but denied the murders. Michael's family filed a wrongful death suit and won a $2.5 million attachment on his assets.
The defence was allowed to point at Ricky Calley. A retrial followed in February 2009. This time the judge excluded the Calley theory and the recorded call.
Michael Zamiti Jr. is buried in Forest Glade Cemetery in Wakefield. His daughter Maria wrote on his grave page of seventeen years of missed firsts, parties, holidays, graduations and milestones. The case was dramatised in 2016 in Nightmare Next Door and in 2024 by Investigation Discovery as A Concrete Motive.