BROCKTON, Mass. (AP) – A Stoughton native who’s serving a 15-year sentence in a Maine prison goes on trial Monday in the fatal stabbing and mutilation of a Massachusetts schoolteacher 26 years ago.

Eric Anderson Jr., 75, faces trial in Brockton Superior Court for the 1977 killing of Ruth Masters, who was snatched from a Plymouth bike path and stabbed to death in Myles Standish State Forest.

“It means a lot to the family that Ruthie hasn’t been forgotten,” said Linda Masters, wife of Ruth Masters’ widower, Wayne Masters.

Anderson was indicted in 1998 after he allegedly admitted to the murder in prison in Maine, where he was sentenced for aggravated assault and kidnapping in a December 1990 attack on a woman.

Anderson came to Maine after serving 11 years in Massachusetts state prison for attacking a Plymouth woman at knifepoint and tying her to a tree five months after Masters’ killing.

Two years his release in 1988, he was in prison in Maine after feigning trouble on a dirt road and then attacking a woman who stopped to help, cutting off a piece of her nose before she escaped.

Ann Morrison, Anderson’s ex-wife and a former nun, is among the witnesses expected to testify this week. In 1997, Morrison told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy that she believed her ex-husband murdered Masters.

The 33-year-old Masters had been riding with her husband and their then 9-year-old daughter on May 14, 1977, before a Memorial Day weekend bike trip in Vermont. After lunch, Ruth Masters rode off alone. Her nude, mutilated body was found the next day on the side of a bike trail.

In 1982, another man confessed to the killing, but his claim was proven false. Detectives have kept the case open, and now, the family hopes it finally can get some peace.

“We hope it has a good resolution,” Linda Masters said. “The fact that they have taken it this far was really more than the family ever expected.”

AP-ES-11-02-03 1830EST

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