The murder of Debra A. Stone
Johnston, Providence County, Rhode Island · 1984
Overview
Debra A. Stone, a 24-year-old Cranston woman, was strangled in a Johnston, Rhode Island apartment on the night of August 29, 1984, after taking a cab to the home of feared drug dealer Robert D. Geremia to buy narcotics. Her body was found on September 2, 1984, by teenagers boating on the Narrow River in Narragansett, wrapped in a floral sleeping bag, bound with clothesline, and weighted with a cinderblock. The case turned almost entirely on a criminal informant, a drug associate of Geremia who said he was summoned to help dispose of the body and who described details that matched the scene exactly. In the 1980s the informant failed a polygraph and the prosecution balked, and Geremia died of natural causes in 1995 before he was ever charged. In 2025, after the Rhode Island Attorney General's Cold Case Unit re-interviewed the informant and 31 other witnesses over eleven months, the office concluded the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Geremia murdered Stone and formally identified him as the killer.
How it was solved
This case was not solved by DNA or genetic genealogy; repeated testing of the sleeping bag, rope, glove, fingernail clippings, and a carpet stain over the decades never produced a usable profile. It was solved by a criminal informant, a fellow drug distributor of Geremia's who admitted he had helped move and dump Debra's body and whose account, given against his own penal interest, matched the physical evidence in detail. He described the floral sleeping bag, the clothesline taken from his own apartment, the cinderblock, the foggy night, the south-to-north current that left the body floating on the north side of the bridge, a glove that snagged in the rope, and a fluid stain left on Geremia's carpet, all details that were not public. His account was corroborated by his then-girlfriend (to whom Geremia later admitted he 'had to' kill Debra because she was stealing his drugs), by a man who drove him to Geremia's door the next morning, by a neighbor who saw Geremia's mother washing out the car trunk, and by the medical examiner's finding of a fractured hyoid bone indicating manual strangulation. The informant's 1980s polygraph failure, later judged unreliable, had stalled the case at the time. When the Cold Case Unit found him again in 2024 and re-interviewed him and 31 others, his story held, and the Attorney General closed the case as solved on October 29, 2025.
Sources
- Cold Case: Debra Stone, 1984
“In August of 1984, 24-year-old Debra A. Stone was murdered at Simmons Village, Building #351, Apartment #314 in Johnston, Rhode Island.”
- Attorney General Neronha's Cold Case Unit, local law enforcement resolve two homicides
“The Cold Case Unit and Narragansett Police interviewed 32 witnesses over 11 months and identified Robert D. Geremia, who died in 1995, as Debra Stone's killer.”
- RI Cold Case Unit closes two decades-old homicide cases
“A confidential informant present at Geremia's apartment on August 29-30 initially claimed a friend helped dispose of the body, then later admitted he had done it himself; the case reopened after a 2018 evidence audit.”
- Families of two cold case victims finally get answers. But police can't apprehend their killers.
“Detectives identified an informant who saw Stone at Geremia's apartment and helped move her body; Geremia told the informant he was responsible for Stone's death.”
- R.I. cold case team solves two murders, decades later
“Debra A. Stone was a 24-year-old Cranston woman whose body was found strangled and bound in a sleeping bag tied to a cinder block in the Narrow River; the informant had failed a polygraph, creating credibility issues that stalled the case.”
- Suspects ID'd in 2 Rhode Island cold case killings dating to 1984 and 2007
“Stone's body was found by youths boating in the Narrow River in Narragansett on September 2, 1984, wrapped in a floral sleeping bag, tied with rope, and anchored with a cement cinderblock.”
- 'A sense of closure': Cold Case Unit cracks two unsolved murders
“Detective James Wass noted that back in the '80s, polygraphs were relied upon much more, and the informant's failed polygraph prevented an arrest at the time.”
- The Murder of Debra Stone (Rhode Island)
“Debra A. Stone was 24 years old at the time of her death. She had grown up in Providence and Warwick, and by the early 1980s she became addicted to drugs.”