Shortly before noon on Valentine’s Day, 1988, police in Mount Vernon, New York, responded to a macabre scene near a junkyard at 22 Carlton Avenue. On the sidewalk, the body of a dead naked woman in her late teens was laid on top of a set of used garage door springs. The victim, a sandy haired blonde about 5 foot 3 inches tall and weighing between 100 to 120 pounds, was posed with her legs crossed at the ankles.
According to the autopsy, the young woman had bruises above her left eye, as well as ligature and binding marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck. She had been strangled to death about six to 12 hours before her body was discovered, and whoever killed her dumped her remains where she was found.
George Ossipo, a former Mount Vernon Police homicide detective who investigated the murder between 2004 and his retirement in 2010, told The Daily Beast that the victim’s killer neatly placed her head against an old washing machine and left her body in a spot where she would be discovered.
“He had placed her like a little flower,” Ossipo said. “He didn’t just dump her. That’s why I think there is remorse in him. This is weighing on him. I think if [police detectives] get him in a room, he will confess.”
For 33 years, the victim was known only as Mount Vernon Jane Doe. She was buried in an unmarked grave at Beechwoods Cemetery in New Rochelle, New York, about three miles from where her body had been dumped. Then, in late July, authorities finally confirmed her identity. She was Veronica Wiederhold, a 19-year-old from Queens, New York.
Investigators initially received credible information about Mount Vernon Jane Doe’s identity in October of last year, Laura Murphy, chief of the recently formed cold case bureau of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, told The Daily Beast. Shortly before Murphy began her new position on Jan. 21, colleagues and detectives from the Mount Vernon Police Department approached her about tackling the case. “Multiple people came to tell me that I had to look at Mount Vernon Jane Doe,” Murphy said. “It was one of the first cases on my plate.”
According to a 2013 Rockland/Westchester Journal News story, investigators believed the victim may have been an exotic dancer, and they visited strip clubs and underground sex dens in Westchester and New York City to conduct interviews and search for clues shortly after her body was found. Mount Vernon Police even consulted with Interpol and checked dozens of missing persons cases in an attempt to pinpoint the woman’s identity.
At one point, detectives suspected the victim may have been murdered by serial killer Francisco Acevedo. His victims, three women from Yonkers murdered between 1989 and 1996, had been posed in a similar manner as Mount Vernon Jane Doe, the Journal News reported. But his DNA did not match any samples found at the scene of her murder and investigators learned he was in a Connecticut jail on Feb. 14, 1988.
In 2004, when the captain of the homicide bureau assigned him to the case, the original case file did not contain anything of value, Ossipo recalled. So he called the forensic lab to find out what they had on file, Ossipo said.
“They had collected 10 body tissue samples, but everything had been lost except for a set of fingernails from her left hand,” he said. “They were able to extract her DNA, as well as that of a potential male suspect. This suggested she struggled or scratched the guy who assaulted her.”
Ossipo said he conducted shoe leather detective work as well. He interviewed the junkyard’s owner, whose name appeared on the original police report as the person who discovered the body. “The owner admitted to me that it was really his nephew who found her, but because he had previous trouble with the law wanted to leave him out of it,” Ossipo said. “The owner thought she was a mannequin but realized it was a dead person when his nephew asked, ‘didn’t you see that body?’”
Believing the nephew may have more information, Ossipo asked the owner for his full name and contact information. “That is when his wife intervened and told me that they didn’t want to get the nephew involved,” Ossipo said. “I didn’t want to push them.”
Yet, his detective instincts convinced him the nephew could be a key witness or person of interest, Ossipo said. “There was a huge Belgian Shepherd in the yard that belonged to the owner,” the ex-police investigator said. “If I am looking to dump a body, I don’t want a dog barking its head off unless the dog was familiar with the person who did it.”
Ossipo said he knew the nephew’s first name, but was unable to get any hits on his last name when he ran background checks on the junkyard owner and his wife. The nephew was never named as a suspect.
Ossipo and other detectives on the case then shifted their attention to Acevedo. He was a prime suspect until 2009, when they confirmed he had been incarcerated at the time of Weiderhold’s murder.
In late October 2010, about three months after his retirement, Ossipo said he received a call from a forensic lab biologist who got a hit on the suspect, a Massachusetts man who had been recently arrested for selling drugs in a school zone. The ex-Mount Vernon cop declined to provide the man’s name because the investigation remains open.
“I ran a check on him and I found out he was not in jail at the time of the murder,” Ossipo said. “Most importantly, you have the DNA hit.”
Yet Mount Vernon Police investigators haven’t interviewed the man, Ossipo said.
A composite of Jane Doe before she was identified.
National Center for Missing and Exploited ChildrenHowever, when it came to identifying the victim, Ossipo got it wrong. For years, including after his retirement when he was interviewed by the Journal News, he insisted Mount Vernon Jane Doe was Cathleen Marie Martin, who went missing from Cape May, New Jersey, in 1987.
“Martin looked completely identical to the victim to the point her ex-husband said that is definitely my wife,” Ossipo told The Daily Beast. “I based it on familial confirmation. Last year, I was at a party with a bunch of the guys when one of the detectives, a sergeant on the case, told me they knew who she was with DNA and through her brother. I didn’t ask who she was, but he confirmed it wasn’t Martin.”
Murphy, who was a rookie assistant district attorney the year Jane Doe was killed, said Mount Vernon Police detectives never quit the case. They received credible leads on who she might be over the last three decades, she added. The key to solving her identity was a DNA sample of Jane Doe that the Westchester Medical Examiner’s Office had preserved. “We were very fortunate to have it,” Murphy said. “The forensics lab had her DNA profile up and ready to [be tested] well before I arrived on the scene.”
Murphy said a Mount Vernon Police detective, whom she declined to identify, had heard about the use of genetic genealogy by law enforcement agencies to identify killers and unnamed victims in unsolved homicide cases. “He reached out to the FBI about the possibility of using genetic genealogy to identify Mount Vernon Jane Doe,” Murphy said. “Once the FBI was on board, we reached out to the forensics lab to make sure we had a sufficient amount of her DNA.”
Using advanced DNA analysis, the FBI provided Mount Vernon Police investigators with matches to possible surviving family members, who were very cooperative in providing DNA samples, Murphy said. In April, the tests confirmed Jane Doe was Veronica Wiederhold, a 19-year-old from Queens, Murphy said, and her office publicly revealed Wiederhold’s identity four months later. Her killer, however, has not been arrested or identified.
“Mount Vernon Police never put the case on a shelf,” Murphy said. “They kept following up on it and they had a number of leads about who she was, but not about how she came to be where she was found. Figuring out her identity became the top priority.”
A Mount Vernon Police spokesperson declined comment for this story due to the case being an active investigation. The Daily Beast was unable to contact any of Weiderhold’s relatives.
Figuring out Mount Vernon Jane Doe’s identity has been a fixation for Jessica Delano, a 36-year-old true crime buff who grew up and has lived most of her life in the small city north of the Bronx. Delano and two friends are the administrators for a Facebook page dedicated to the victim. “This was a group community effort to identify her,” Delano said. “I lived here for 25 years of my life and had never heard of this case until about 10 years ago.”
She was scrolling through a true crime website about unidentified murder victims in New York state when she landed on a profile of Mount Vernon Jane Doe. “It was very odd to me that no one had come forward with information,” Delano said. “The city is like four square miles and everybody knows everybody’s business.”
The Facebook page generated hundreds of tips that she passed along to a Mount Vernon Police detective named Christopher DiMase working on the case, Delano said. He picked up the investigation after Ossipo retired. “He looked into them and they went nowhere,” Delano said. “He worked tirelessly on this case for many years up until his retirement. He was the first person I called when the D.A. revealed Veronica’s identity. He was so happy.”
Delano said she recently got in touch with one of Weiderhold’s relatives, who informed her that the family had a difficult time reporting the victim was missing in 1988. “Because she was over the age of 18, some of the police districts they went to refused to do a missing persons report,” Delano said. “There was no way to get her into a missing persons database.”
Murphy, the cold case prosecutor, declined to comment about any leads into possible suspects and Weiderhold’s last hours alive now that investigators have confirmed her identity. But she is relieved that the cold case bureau was able to finally identify the victim.
“We are in the process of getting an amended death certificate that will be changed from Jane Doe to Veronica Weiderhold,” Murphy said. “Her grave stone will also be replaced and marked with her name. Regardless of what happens with the investigation, it’s a success story when you can finally know who the person in an unmarked grave really is.”
