It’s the 1970s and a little girl is looking out at her backyard in queens new york but what she sees is far from ordinary about to be buried underneath the soil you see is a dismembered human corpse clods of dirt swirl in the air before the body suddenly disappears from view
This horrific image stays with the child so much so that 40 years later she’ll still remember the remains exact location and she’ll finally decide to confess the truth hello wonderful people i’m scott leffler for wonderbot and here is a woman told police that she’d seen a body being buried in her backyard 40
Years ago before we begin make sure to smash that like button subscribe to our channel and click the notification bell for more amazing videos it’s fair to say that new york has seen its fair share of bodies being buried with more residents packed into its five
Boroughs than in any other u.s city it’s hardly surprising that violence sometimes spills out onto its streets in the 1980s in fact misdemeanors reached an all-time high a phenomenon doubtlessly spurred on in part by the city’s cocaine craze since 1991 though the situation seems to have improved and in 2017 murder rates
Were the lowest that they’d been for approximately seven decades the economist categorized new york is among the globe’s top 10 safest large metropolises in 2015 however the city that never sleeps is by no means free of heinous crime in fact new york has been home to many
Atrocities some of which have never been solved and with about 9 000 open homicides dating back to 1985 on the books cops are still reaching for the answers to thousands of horrifying cases but imagine then how difficult it must be to solve a decades-old murder case where the body’s only just been
Uncovered harvesting evidence from decomposed remains is much more tricky than dealing with a recent corpse after all and any potential witnesses may well have forgotten crucial details too or indeed died themselves so trying to identify the culprit of such a crime must be a mammoth task and
The new york police have dealt with several of them take for instance the mysterious story of joanne nichols a 55-year-old woman who seemingly led an ordinary life she lived in the city of poughkeepsie with her husband james and she worked as an elementary teacher yet in the mid-80s joanne vanished
Without a trace then decades later her body was discovered in the basement of her old house and shockingly joanne’s remains had lain there undetected for close to 30 years the cops first learned of the case four days before christmas in 1985 when james nicholl dialed 9-1-1 to report joann’s disappearance
According to james you see his wife had never arrived for a scheduled appointment at the salon that day within 24 hours it seemed as though the police had come across a lead the nichols car was found abandoned at one of poughkeepsie’s shopping malls but joanne was nowhere to be seen
After the discovery of the car a thorough police investigation was mounted but their efforts were in vain in 2013 thomas morrow the town’s chief of police at the time of the disappearance told cnn that joanne still hadn’t been found although officers have been revisiting the case every year in a
Bid to shed new light on what had happened but the cops big break came that same year when an unsuspecting contractor uncovered something horrifying in the nichols basement yes a builder stumbled across joanne’s remains in the lower levels of the couple’s poughkeepsie abode according to the medical examiner of dutchess county
New york dr kerry rieber the skeleton’s hands were found bound together with a cord and the entire body was swathed in a layer of sheeting the corpse had been shoved into a plastic sack and then stuffed into a container before being hidden behind a fake wall in the cellar
As the body had lain in its hiding place for so long though it was difficult at first to tell whom it belonged to you see decomposition had stripped the cadaver down to the bone by the time that it was discovered with so little evidence to go on then
The medical examiner’s team had to resort to dental records and using these they subsequently identified the skeleton as joanne’s as well as identifying the body though the coroners were also able to determine how joanna died and it hadn’t been by accident yes according to rieber a large area of
The right side of the skull was missing and it’s this injury that’s likely to have caused her death the coroner’s reported that joanne succumbed to a hit on the head that seemingly caved in part of her skull but who had dealt the fatal blow well the cops apparently think that
James may have been involved they were unable to question joann’s husband however as he’d passed away before his wife’s remains were found indeed officers had discovered the widower’s body on december 27 2012 when they’d visited his home to follow up on neighbors worries about his well-being unlike his wife’s passing though there
Was no evidence of foul play police declared that the 82 year old had died naturally yet despite the fact that police’s main lead was now six feet under they still hope to find answers and in 2013 poughkeepsie authorities announced that the case was far from closed in fact they were planning on reviewing
Additional forensic evidence that investigators had uncovered at the crime scene james was still on their radar too it’s now safe to say james nichols as a suspect in this case police captain paul lecompte said according to cnn mysterious crimes of this kind have occurred in other parts of new york too
For instance in jericho a hamlet that lies almost 30 miles east of central manhattan a body was found under a similarly strange circumstance in the fall of 1999 rather than being concealed behind a false wall however these desiccated remains were hidden in a house’s crawl space and they’d been there for decades
The body was eventually identified as belonging to a female called reyna angelica morokin born in 1941 in el salvador she later left her central american homeland and moved to the united states and the young woman soon found herself in gainful employment too earning or living as a nanny it was merrick queen’s
Job as a factory worker however that would allegedly prove fatal for the 28 year old in 1969. you see mara queen worked on manhattan’s east 34th street producing artificial flowers for a business called melrose plastics and it was there that howard elkins one of the company’s owners
Seemingly took quite a liking to a salvadoran employee in fact one of mayor queen’s confidence a woman called kathy androd reported to police officers that her friend and elkins had been romantically involved knowledge of the pair’s affair seemed to be common knowledge among some of the employees of melrose plastics too
On one occasion for instance a woman who resembled marroquin supposedly entered the factory with an infant in tow and upon seeing the mother and child the workers reportedly quipped that alkins was the father to make matters complicated however the businessman already had a family of his own and andradd later notified police that
She had received a worrying call from mirrorqueen who was scared after apparently confessing about her relationship with alkins to his wife and maraquin’s lover seemingly hadn’t taken the admission lightly no doubt concerned android had visited her home to make sure that she was all right but marroquin was nowhere to be found
In fact it wasn’t until september 2nd 1999 30 years after marroquin had vanished the police finally discovered what had happened to her of course inspectors weren’t sure whose remains they were handling when they first opened a drum found in the crawl space of a jericho home inside they discovered the mummified
Body of a young woman who’d been killed by a blow to the skull and investigators realized that she’d been pregnant when she died luckily the body had been buried with a number of items and one provided a crucial lead intermingled with synthetic pellets and colored dye the inspectors uncovered
Several personal articles inside the container including jewelry and a worn address book and it was the latter that proved instrumental in identifying the cadaver so police got to work using infrared light they discovered that parts of the first page in the address book were still readable and there investigators
Were able to make out mirror queen’s green card number as well as discovering where the woman had worked they found android’s contact details and after conducting an interview with her cops began to form a picture having spoken with androd the police discovered mayor queen’s affair what’s more they learned that the house
Underneath which the body was found it actually belonged to alkins at the time of the murder not only that but the drum in which the young woman’s corpse had been kept was linked to the businessman’s company the container had originally contained a shipment of dye and had been delivered to melrose plastics
And so in the police’s eyes elkins apparently became a likely culprit but while the investigation was still in its preliminary stages the police faced an unforeseen difficulty you see the detectives who had questioned elkins about the grisly discovery revealed that they had been planning to secure a
Warrant that would allow them to compare his dna to maraq queen’s unborn child and shortly following this interview the businessman took his own life with a shotgun the test still went ahead though and the results concluded that elkin’s paternity was most likely legitimate although the police cannot conclusively
Prove it they’ve posited the idea that elkins was responsible for mayor queen’s death and authorities have come up with two theories as to where he might have murdered his lover the first holds that he visited the young woman and killed her in her home the second story goes meanwhile that
Elkins persuaded marroquin to come to the factory and disposed of her there then the investigators believed that elkins transported the corpse back to his home but it’s possible that he didn’t originally intend to keep merrick queen’s body in the crawl space instead the businessman might have planned on throwing it into the ocean
And that’s perhaps why he loaded the drum with pellets so it would be too heavy to float one theory goes though that the man found the barrel too weighty to lift afterwards so he simply kept it hidden underneath his house in another strange twist one of mara queen’s relatives claimed that she
Already knew what had befallen the young woman you see author oscar corle apparently visited marroquin’s elderly mother and discussed her missing daughter and during the conversation the 95 year old reportedly confessed that she had seen marroquin stuck inside a drum in a dream thankfully though the mom was eventually
Reunited with her child the skeleton was transported back to el salvador after it was discovered and buried there peculiar cases like these have also been documented in the city of new york itself in march 2019 for instance nypd officers found themselves dealing with a particularly strange crime
They received a bizarre tip from a woman who claimed that she had some information to share with the authorities and it was to do with a murder the caller told the police that she’d spent parts of her childhood living in the new york borough of queens while
Growing up in a townhouse on richmond hill in the 1970s she’d seen something that no child should ever have to witness and what’s more the gruesome incident it actually happened in her own backyard you see back when the tipper was a young girl she’d witnessed a chopped up corpse
Being disposed of in the garden behind her house on 115th street presumably frightened she kept the grizzly event to herself for so many years but more than 40 years later the woman finally felt that she had to unburden herself but why now well kenneth maines a consultant on cold
Cases who worked as a cop in pennsylvania shed some light on this in an interview with the new york times in march 2019. through the passage of time allegiances change and brotherhoods change he said people also underestimate the impact witnessing a murder has on the human conscience
And clearly the site had had a huge effect on the caller you see although the grim event had taken place over four decades ago it had no doubt imprinted himself on the individual’s mind so much so in fact that the caller told the police that she was certain she
Could still pinpoint the body’s exact location and amazingly her claim was proved to be correct in the next 24 hours the next day neighbors looked on as the cops began to methodically hunt the backyard which was choked with weeds and waste with the assistance of a police dog the german shepherd’s presence certainly
Proved invaluable as soon as the canine entered the lot it raced through the yard and started to dig in a particular spot and what the cop subsequently found there certainly shocked onlookers following the police dog’s lead over a dozen policemen quickly converged on the area and started to shovel dirt and debris
Then according to a neighbor one of the officers reportedly exclaimed hey and set down their tools looking down into the pit that they’d created in the backyard the cops knew that they’d found what they’d been searching for yes the police had uncovered the decomposing remains of a human exactly
Where the caller said it would be and remarkably although the body had been interred under the soil for over 40 years it had not totally skeletonized a substantial amount of tissue was still attached to the bones in fact so the cadaver was transported to a pathology expert for analysis
It seemed that the body had slowly rotted below the woman’s backyard since her childhood going completely unnoticed by any of the house’s subsequent residents but now that the cadaver had finally been discovered the mystery is far from solved that’s because the police are still at a loss as to whom the body
Belongs to all that’s known for sure in fact is that detectives are treating the perplexing case as a homicide you see due to the corpse’s decomposition it’s unlikely that experts will be able to quickly establish how the person was killed let alone their sex or how old they were when they died
Cold case consultant and forensic psychologist dr robert kunkel confirmed the difficulties of working with rotted remains speaking to the new york times in 2019 he explained the fuller the body the better they’re going to be able to determine age and sex and potential ethnicity nevertheless the police are keen to try
And discover what happened including who was responsible for the homicide the head of the nypd’s public information division patrick connery told the new york times we’d really like to put a collar on it and one of the neighborhood’s locals a john guido has shed some light on other dodgy dealings
That happened in the area in the 1970s guido is himself a long time richmond hill resident having settled in the area over four decades ago according to him a number of really bad guys spent time at the house where the body was found in the 1970s anguino knows firsthand what those
Undesirable persons were like since he claims that vandals repeatedly broke into his home back then the man said that the thievery only came to a halt in fact after he constructed a tall fence around his property however another richmond hill local bill corsa reported in the new york times
That he’d had a very different experience living in the area having moved there in 1980 course to describe the neighborhood is safe and having a strong community feel when asked about the ghastly discovery he said i can’t imagine how somebody buried a body and nobody noticed nobody that is apart from the caller
But although the police were no doubt grateful for the accurate and unexpected tip the residents of 115th street didn’t enjoy the experience a young local named jacob avelia told new york times for instance you don’t imagine it here plus he seemed to find the entire situation otherworldly describing the police search as
Something like you see in the movies indeed it’s difficult to imagine how you would feel if you wake up one day to find that a dead body has been rotting under a neighbor’s lawn for decades what about alternatively if the house that you drive past on your daily commute
Actually had human remains hidden in the basement or crawl space after all we have no idea where or when the next such gruesome discovery will be made