Solved cold cases in New York

Eve Wilkowitz

Bay Shore, New York · 1980

Eve Wilkowitz, a 20-year-old publishing-company secretary, took a late train home to Bay Shore, Long Island, on the night of March 22, 1980 and was abducted while walking from the station. She was raped and strangled, and her body was found three days later on a Bay Shore lawn. The case stayed cold for 42 years until investigative genetic genealogy led the Suffolk County Police and the FBI to Herbert Rice, a neighbor who had lived a few houses from where the body was found and who died of cancer in 1991. Rice's body was exhumed in March 2022, and DNA from his remains matched evidence preserved from the crime, allowing the Suffolk County District Attorney to name him as the killer.