Do you know them? Suffolk police asks for help in identifying 3 homicide victims

Irene Wilkowitz fought for more than 40 years to learn who murdered her older sister in 1980, even as she struggled with loss and the fear that she would be the killer’s next target.

Her quest for information ended in March 2022, when Suffolk prosecutors and police identified the man who raped and strangled Eve Wilkowitz, thanks to advances in forensic techniques and genetic genealogy. During a recent interview, Irene Wilkowitz repeatedly said how much she appreciates the prosecutors, police, FBI agents and reporters who helped solve her sister’s murder. She is grateful, she said, that her dogged, decadeslong pursuit of her sister’s killer gave hope to other families seeking closure for unsolved murders.

September was National Cold Case Month, and Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney's office released previously undisclosed details earlier this month about three unsolved cases, including one that dates to the 1970s. Wilkowitz said she hopes the focus on cold cases inspires the families of unsolved murder victims to continue to push for answers, just as she did for Eve.

"I had to become her voice. It was my honor, it was my privilege, it was my responsibility," Irene Wilkowitz said. "It was the right thing to do, but I don’t know what closure means. ... I’m still kind of broken, but I hope I have helped other people. My purpose, by putting her story out, was to offer other people hope and keep Eve’s story alive."

Tierney said it’s important for law enforcement officials to pursue homicide investigations even if the trail went cold decades ago. He said family members have a need to know what happened to their loved ones, and the community needs to know that a killer is on the loose or incarcerated — or in the case of the suspect in Eve Wilkowitz’s murder, deceased.

"I think as a DA’s office, you owe that to the people of your county," Tierney said. "I don’t care whether it happened last week or 20 years ago, if you have the ability to solve the mystery and provide closure to the community as a whole and particularly to the victims, you have to do it."

Tierney’s office worked with Suffolk police forensic artist Danielle Gruttadaurio and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to create sketches of what those unidentified victims may have looked like before their deaths.

One victim, nicknamed Montauk Mary, was a white woman in her 60s when her remains were found in East Overlook Park in Montauk on March 22, 1978. Montauk Mary had been shot to death, the district attorney’s office said.

The second victim, known as Melville John Doe, was a Hispanic man whose bloodied and handcuffed remains were found on Chateau Drive in Melville on Aug. 8, 1990. Melville John Doe had been shot multiple times.

The skeletal remains of "Brentwood John Doe” were found near the Brentwood Freshman Center Elementary School on May 20, 1998. He was believed to be white and/or Hispanic, and between 15 and 17 years old.

The district attorney’s office is offering up to $2,000 for information leading to the identification of these and other unknown victims. Anyone with information is asked to email contactda@suffolkcountyny.gov or call 631-263-0526.

Determining who the victims were — where they lived, where they worked, who they associated with, who saw them last — would give investigators a huge advantage in determining who murdered them, Tierney said. Cold cases often require a huge expenditure of resources and manpower, but it’s important to pursue them because "number one, they are human lives, and number two, their families never stop," the district attorney said.

The district attorney’s office formed its first Cold Case Unit in 2024 to work with Suffolk police to review roughly 300 unsolved homicides dating to 1965. Tierney said at the time that the unit would use the same methodology as the Gilgo Beach Task Force, the multiagency group that brought murder charges in seven killings against Rex A. Heuermann, of Massapequa Park. Heuermann, arrested in 2023, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Suffolk police detectives worked to solve Eve Wilkowitz’s murder in the months and years after her body was found in Bay Shore in March 1980, but the investigation got on the fast track after then-Suffolk police Commissioner Geraldine Hart brought in the FBI to analyze DNA samples. Eve Wilkowitz’s murder was the first cold case Tierney’s office tackled after he was elected district attorney in 2021.

Eve Wilkowitz, 20, a secretary at a Manhattan publishing house, was last seen alive when she boarded a late-night Long Island Rail Road train in Penn Station on March 22, 1980, to head home to Bay Shore. Her body was found three days later, just four houses away from the residence of the man suspected of murdering her, Herbert Rice, shared with his mother. Authorities said she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

Rice died of cancer in 1991, but investigators were able to link him to the slaying when they found his son’s DNA on a genealogical website. The son voluntarily submitted a DNA sample to police, and after comparing his DNA with a sample found on Eve Wilkowitz’s body, police identified Herbert Rice as a suspect.

Tierney said it was expensive and time-consuming to pursue the exhumation, but it was the right thing to do. "We should close the loop," he said, remembering how he decided to move forward with the exhumation. "We should get finality. We should know for sure, so no one’s guessing."

Authorities secured a search warrant to retrieve Rice’s remains. The exhumation gave investigators an opportunity to collect genetic material, which confirmed Rice’s DNA matched the DNA found on the victim.

Rice had a criminal record, but it did not include violent offenses, and Irene Wilkowitz said his family had no idea that he was tied to her sister’s death. She is uncomfortable with the idea that this revelation brought pain to Rice’s relatives, she said.

But it also was important to discover the truth about her sister’s final hours. "I want Eve to represent hope," she said. Eve was not just a story. She was not a cold case. She was a person."

In the best-case scenario, Rice would have been indicted and the evidence against him would have been presented in court, subjected to the scrutiny of judges, juries and defense attorneys. But the DNA evidence is conclusive, Tierney said.

"If that person was still alive," he said of Rice, "we would have charged him."