NEW YORK 1980 Cold Case Solved After 42 Years They Exhumed the Killer

In March 1980, 20-year-old Eve Wilkowitz boarded the last train from Penn Station heading home to Bay Shore, Long Island. She never made it to her apartment. Three days later, her body was found on a front lawn just four houses from where her killer had been staying. She had been held captive, bound, and strangled. Suffolk County police launched one of the largest investigations in the department's history. They canvassed every street, interviewed hundreds of people, and even knocked on the killer's mother's door. She said she hadn't noticed anything. Every lead went cold. For 42 years, the case sat unsolved. Eve's younger sister Irene refused to give up. She gave interviews, called detectives, lobbied state officials, and kept saying her sister's name when the rest of the world had moved on. Then, in 2022, genetic genealogy identified a suspect: Herbert Rice, a man who had lived on the same street where Eve's body was found. Rice died in 1991 and was never a suspect. To confirm the match, investigators obtained a court order, drove to Oakwood Cemetery in Bay Shore, and exhumed his remains. The DNA from his bones matched. The results came back on March 23, 2022, almost exactly 42 years to the day Eve disappeared. It was the oldest cold case ever solved in Suffolk County history. Confirmed not from a living suspect, but from a killer's own grave. This is the full story. From who Eve was, to the night she was taken, to the sister who never stopped fighting, to the science that finally caught up to the crime. 🔔 Subscribe to Cold Case Redemption for in-depth documentaries on the cases everyone thought would stay buried — and the breakthroughs that finally solved them. #ColdCase #TrueCrime #GeneticGenealogy #EveWilkowitz #ColdCaseSolved #SuffolkCounty #DNAForensics #UnsolveMurder #ColdCaseRedemption #TrueCrimeDocumentary #JusticeForEve #LongIsland #InvestigativeGenealogy ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 References ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ NBC News — "Eve Wilkowitz's sister waited 42 years to learn who killed her" https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/... NBC News — "Her sister was murdered in 1980. New DNA methods could crack the case" https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/... CBS News — "DNA technology helps solve 1980 murder of Eve Wilkowitz on Long Island" https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/... PIX11 — "Killer's body exhumed to solve 1980 murder of woman who took last train home" https://pix11.com/news/local-news/lon... PIX11 — "Sister of strangled LI woman sees killer's face for first time" https://pix11.com/news/local-news/lon... Fox 5 NY — "1980 cold case rape and murder finally solved, police say" https://www.fox5ny.com/news/1980-cold... Long Island Press — "Suffolk PD, FBI use new genealogy method to solve 42-year-old Bay Shore murder case" https://www.longislandpress.com/2022/... Daily Voice — "Detectives say they've solved case of 20-year-old Bay Shore woman killed decades ago" https://dailyvoice.com/ny/brentwood/n... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This video is dedicated to the memory of Eve Wilkowitz (1959–1980) and to her sister Irene, who never stopped fighting for the truth.