Suffolk County Police have solved the 1980 cold case of a 20-year-old secretary abducted from a train station and killed on the way home from her Manhattan job. It couldn't have happened without the victim's fiercest advocate, her little sister.
Irene Wilkowitz was 17 years old when police arrived at her home and informed her that her sister, Eve Wilkowitz, had been kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death after taking a late-night train home to Long Island from her publishing job in the city. In the aftermath, Suffolk County Police were unable to identify a suspect, and the case went cold.
It would have stayed that ways if Irene hadn't been diligent in contacting officers for updates over 42 years. She urged them to use new DNA technology that hadn't been available during the initial investigation. In March 2022, that technology finally yielded answers for Irene.
Eve's killer was Herbert Rice. He didn't catch the eye of investigators who canvassed dozens of streets and interviewed hundreds of people at the time of the attack. He did have a record of a few arrests, but because they were for nonviolent offenses, he was never required to submit DNA to a criminal database. Familial searches also yielded no hits in the database.
New technology known as genetic genealogy finally solved the puzzle. There will be no further action, however, as Rice died of cancer in 1991. Familial DNA, coupled with DNA extracted from his exhumed remains, confirmed the match. Rice left behind two sons, who were entirely unaware of what their father had done.
Irene is the last surviving member of her family. While she is happy to have gotten answers in her sister's death, it doesn't erase the pain of knowing how her sister's life came to an end 42 years ago.
