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Sex Offender Linked To Woman Found Dead In Burned Out Car

WORCESTER (CBS) – A convicted sex offender has been linked to a woman found dead in a burned out car in a Worcester cemetery last week.

Steven Foley, 56, of Northboro, hid behind a door at his arraignment Wednesday in Worcester District Court.

He pleaded not guilty to charges of burning a motor vehicle and malicious damage to a motor vehicle. He was ordered held on $250,000 bail. His bail in two separate cases in Westboro and Lynn was revoked.

Worcester cemetery
A burned car found in a Worcester cemetery with a body inside, Dec. 12, 2017. (WBZ-TV)

The body of 59-year-old Cynthia Webb of Sterling was found in the burned-out car December 12 inside Hope Cemetery. Foley has not been charged in connection with her death at this point in the investigation.

Prosecutors say she worked at a club outside the city as a dancer and had been seen with Foley there before she died.

"Multiple people identified the defendant as being with the victim on December 11 for that 35 minutes as well as being in the club for a remarkable amount of time that afternoon," said prosecutor Terry McLaughlin.

Investigators used surveillance video, phone and taxi records to map Foley's whereabouts leading up to the car fire.

The surveillance allegedly shows him meeting up with Webb in Worcester, then getting in her car and driving it.  The same car is later seen entering the cemetery and Foley is eventually seen walking out of the graveyard.

According to investigators, taxi and phone records show Foley then called a cab from outside the cemetery to his address in Northboro and then later called a taxi to take him to where he left his car when he met up with Webb hours earlier in Worcester.

Steven Foley
Steven Foley. (Photo credit: Sex Offender Registry Board)

Police arrested him in a Peabody hotel Tuesday. He allegedly had $34,000 on him.

Foley is a Level 3 sex offender who was convicted of rape three times in the 1980's.

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