20-year-old New York woman's cold case homicide solved 42 years later
ABC News
DNA advances helped investigators solve the 42-year-old cold case of Eve Wilkowitz, who was killed in New York in 1980.
Eve Wilkowitz was 20 years old in 1980 when she was kidnapped, raped and strangled to death after she took a train home to Bay Shore, New York, from her secretarial job in Manhattan. Her body was found near her apartment on Long Island.
On Wednesday, Suffolk County police and prosecutors announced the killer was a man who died of cancer in 1991 and who had lived near the spot where Wilkowitz’s body was found three days after she never came home.
Investigators relied on advances in DNA technology to identify the suspect as Herbert Rice, who was 29 at the time.
"We’ve solved the 42 year old homicide case of Eve Wilkowitz," Suffolk District Attorney Raymond Tierney announced at a news conference. "This was a study in persistence, in determination to work the case no matter what."
