The Boston Globe
Twenty-one years earlier, Jean Lampron’s son, Walter, was killed in South Boston, just blocks from where she was mugged.
On Oct. 13, 2005, Jean Lampron was walking to a bus stop in South Boston on her way to work at about 5:15 a.m. when she was attacked by a man on a bicycle.
The man wanted her pocketbook. But Lampron, 68, wasn’t giving it to him. Not without a fight.
Her attacker allegedly dragged her down the street and beat her before snatching her purse and running away.
Lampron flagged down a doctor in a passing car who stopped and administered CPR to her as she lay at the intersection of West 5th and D streets, the Globe reported at the time.
She died later that day. Twenty years later, her assailant has never been identified.
Her grandson, Jimmy Delaney, hopes someone will come forward to help solve his grandmother’s killing. “If they remember, if they remember anything,” he said in a recent interview.
Tragically, this was not Lampron’s first experience with violence. Twenty-one years earlier, her son, Walter, was killed in South Boston, just blocks from where she was mugged.
On Dec. 2, 1984, Walter L. Lampron was found shot to death at the Exxon gas station on West Broadway, the Globe reported. He was 24.
His murder also remains unsolved, according to police.
The man who attacked Jean Lampron was described as white and wearing a long black overcoat and tan baseball hat. The bicycle he left behind was a metallic-brown, 15-speed Magna Zanzibar model, according to Globe reports.
After the attack, he ran down West 5th Street toward E Street, the Globe reported.
Jean Lampron had suffered a heart attack, internal bleeding, and brain swelling.
She never made it to her job at MFS Service Center Inc. on Boylston Street, where she handled check imaging for the company’s document management office, the Globe reported.
Instead, she was taken to the hospital. That night, she was taken off life support.
On the day of her mother’s funeral, Lampron’s oldest daughter, Barbara Delaney, told the Globe she stopped carrying a purse when she was walking home from work out of fear.
“I want this person caught,” Delaney said as she sat in her living room on Oct. 18, 2005.
The Globe later reported that the attack on Lampron was featured on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted,” and the episode included quotes from Lampron as she spoke with the 911 operator.
“I fought him,” she said. “He even dragged me on the ground, but I couldn’t hold onto him and he ran up the street.”
Lampron always carried a photo of her deceased son, Walter, in her pocketbook, according to her grandson, Jimmy Delaney. It was very important to her, he said.
She was also a woman of principle and wouldn’t just hand something over to a thief, he said.
“She wouldn’t take [expletive] from anybody,” Delaney, 37, said. He recalled being bullied by kids in the neighborhood when he was very young, and how his grandmother quickly put a stop to their teasing.
“She would walk right up to them and start scolding them and stuff, not caring that they’d be swinging a stick at her,” he said.
Delaney hopes that someone with information about the attacker, or the bike he was riding, will be motivated to come forward to police, especially “if they remember who might have had that bike.”
Delaney also expressed gratitude to the doctor who helped his grandmother until the ambulance arrived.
“I owe him the greatest deal of gratitude that I could ever express, because if it wasn’t for him, she would just be lying there in the street with no one to help,” Delaney said.
The doctor tended to Lampron on the corner outside the James F. Condon School on D Street, Delaney said.
“It’s sad because I went to that school, my uncle went to that school, my sister went to that school,” Delaney said. “To see my grandmother dying on the corner of that elementary school … It’s so heartbreaking.”
Anyone with information about the attack on Jean Lampron or the fatal shooting of her son Walter is urged to contact the Boston Police Department’s Homicide Unit at 617-343-4470. Community members who wish to provide information anonymously may do so through the CrimeStoppers Tip Line at 1-800-494-TIPS or by texting “TIP” to CRIME (27463). Photos and videos related to the investigation can also be submitted anonymously through CrimeStoppers.
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Emily Sweeney can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.
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