Boston man charged with murder of collector John P. Axelrod

A Boston man has been charged with murder for allegedly running down and killing prominent art collector John P. Axelrod while he was out walking his dog Saturday morning.

William Haney, 42, appeared in Boston Municipal Court on Monday where he was charged with first-degree murder and animal cruelty, according to a news release from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

He was ordered to be held without bail pending a mental health evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, prosecutors said.

Officers with the Boston Police Department responded to a call for a pedestrian hit by a Toyota SUV at the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and Hereford Street around 8:09 a.m. Saturday, the department said in a statement.

“The vehicle reportedly entered the Commonwealth Avenue Mall and struck a pedestrian who was walking his dog before fleeing the scene,” police officials said.

When responding officers arrived, paramedics were providing medical treatment to the 79-year-old Axelrod, who was transported to a local hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Authorities put an alert out for the suspect’s car, which was later located by police in Brookline, a town outside of Boston. Hanley was arrested after an investigation conducted by the Boston Police Department’s Homicide Unit and the Brookline Police Department.

Haney allegedly drove from his home in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, stopping to ask people along the way if they had seen a man in a red jacket and his dog, Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight said.

Some witnesses reported hearing a “bang” followed by the yelps of Axelrod’s dog, while another said they saw Haney drive slowly up Commonwealth Avenue before gunning it for Axelrod.

Prosecutors said that video footage from a Dunkin Donuts taken just minutes after the hit-and-run showed Haney removing the dog’s leash from the front of his car and throwing it in a trash can. The leash was fished out of the trash by police and bore Axelrod’s name and phone number.

Haney then allegedly drove to a service station in Brookline to get his car repaired at about 8:17 a.m., less than ten minutes after the hit-and-run.

“The station, not being an auto body shop, refused,” prosecutors said in the news release. “Haney then asked if he could store the car in one of the bays. The station again refused.”

Haney abandoned his car at the intersection of Thorndike and Harvard streets in Brookline and met up with his brother, who walked him into the Brookline Police Department headquarters at 9:10 a.m. and told police he had been in an accident.

Knight said the evidence shows that the fatal crash was not an accident, but a “deliberate and premeditated murder with the defendant using his Toyota SUV as the murder weapon.”

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, confirmed to WCVB that Axelrod was an honorary advisor and longtime donor to the museum with a gallery in its Americas wing named for him in 2009.

"We're deeply saddened by the passing of MFA Honorary Advisor John Axelrod. A generous supporter and passionate advocate for underrepresented artists, John had been a part of the MFA family since the 1980s,” the museum said in a statement.

“His legacy will live on at the Museum through the John Axelrod Collection—a transformative acquisition of nearly 70 works by Black artists, including Archibald Motley, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Alan Rohan Crite, Loïs Mailou Jones, and Kerry James Marshall.”

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