Jail Threat Compels Woman to Name Man’s Killer

Threatened with jail Friday, a woman broke the “code of silence” in her tough Boston neighborhood and revealed the name uttered to her by a dying man as she cradled his bleeding head in her arms.

Saying she’s “not going to jail for anyone,” Eleanor Nelson testified that when she asked Patrick Nee who had stabbed him, he answered, “Jimma.”

James “Jimma” Houlihan, 22, is on trial in federal court in Nee’s slaying July 30.

On Thursday, a sobbing Nelson, 25, told the courtroom: “I picked up his head and started talking to him. He had blood coming out his nose, ears and mouth. He said, ‘Help me, Ellie, Ellie, I’m gonna die.’ ”

Nelson was asked if Nee, 24, told her who had stabbed him.

“Yes,” she said, but then refused to reveal the attacker’s identity, honoring the “code of silence” in her Charlestown neighborhood.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner then threatened Nelson with contempt, and on Friday the witness relented.

Prosecutors said Nee was stabbed in the neck after his sister and his mother, Veronica Boyden, provided testimony that helped send Houlihan’s cousin, John, and two others to prison for killing Boyden’s husband and other son.