Rachelle Bond guilty of helping cover up daughter’s murder

Rachelle Bond, mother of Bella Bond, who’s decomposing body washed up on the Boston shore in 2015, pleaded guilty Friday to helping cover up her daughter’s murder.

Bond was charged as an accessory after the fact in the slaying of 2-year-old Bella Bond. She also faced larceny charges for continuing to collect state benefits for four months following the child’s death.

Prosecutors are expected to recommend a sentence of time served in exchange for the 41-year-old Dorchester mother’s testimony against her former boyfriend, Michael McCarthy, who is accused of killing the toddler.

McCarthy is charged with first-degree murder in the late May or early June 2015 homicide, but Bond is not accused of being involved in her daughter’s death. Prosecutors said she did however help McCarthy dispose of the body.

Bond concealed from friends, relatives, and the state that her daughter had been murdered and her body discarded in Boston Harbor. She lied about her daughter’s whereabouts and received more than $1,300 from the state Department of Transitional Assistance after the child’s death.

Bella Bond’s body washed ashore on Deer Island in Winthrop in a trash bag on June 24, 2016. She was known only as “Baby Doe” until September, when Rachelle Bond confided in a friend that her daughter had been murdered and investigators determined her identity.

McCarthy is set to go to trial this spring.