LOWELL, Mass. – The family of a man killed nearly half a century ago has filed a wrongful death suit against three men charged in the murder.

Evelyn McCabe filed the suit in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, Mass., on Feb. 12 seeking damages for the death of 15-year-old John McCabe in September 1969. One of the men has been found guilty of murder last year and was due to be sentenced last week, according to the McCabe family’s attorneys.

“Neither of those two men have answered any questions about what happened or why. That’s a big part of why we’re doing this,” said attorney Sheryl Bourbeau, of Gallagher and Cavanaugh in Lowell.

A jury found Walter Shelley, of Tewksbury, Mass., guilty in September and he was scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday, Bourbeau said.

Michael Ferreira, of Salem, N.H., was found not guilty by a jury last July. A third man, Edward Alan Brown, of Londonderry, is set to plead guilty to a charge of manslaughter in exchange for a probation sentence, according to a release from the McCabe family’s attorneys.

John McCabe’s sister, Debbie McCabe-Atamanchuk, lives in Merrimack. She was not available for comment.

Bourbeau said Ferreira no longer has a right against self-incrimination because of his acquittal.

“We’re very hopeful we’ll be able to have them answer questions about what happened and why,” she said.

Bourbeau said it will ultimately be up to a jury to determine how much, if any, damages to award the family.

John McCabe was a 15-year-old student at Tewksbury Junior High School and was trying to hitch hike home from a dance at the town’s Knights of Columbus Hall on Sept. 26, 1969, when several boys, enraged about a dispute over a girl, picked him up, according to police records.

The teenagers allegedly drove McCabe to a nearby field on Maple Street in Lowell, tied him up and left him there.

Authorities found him there the next morning, dead of asphyxiation by strangulation, according to police records.

Ferreira and Shelley were identified as suspects early in the investigation. They were charged with the murder in 2011.

Grand jury testimony, taken recently from Ferreira, led officers to Brown, who then confessed to police, breaking a long-standing pact among the men never to speak on the matter, according to police records.

Brown testified against Ferreira at his trial.

John McCabe’s father, William McCabe, died shortly after Ferreira’s trial.

In an unfinished book, he wrote, “Perhaps as the killer gets older and watches his children or his friends’ children grown, and as he reaches out to touch them, he will think of our son and our loneliness and sadness,” according to the release from the family’s attorneys.

Shelley would be eligible for life in prison without parole at his sentencing except for a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that life without parole sentences for defendants who were minors at the time of their crimes are cruel and unusual.

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Cote on Twitter (@Telegraph_JoeC).