NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – A woman has been identified through advanced DNA testing, 33 years after she was killed and her body was found in a grassy area near the border of Queens and Nassau County, prosecutors said Monday.
Four men were arrested and convicted in the 1990s in connection with her killing, but her name had remained elusive to investigators for all these years.
It can now be confirmed that she was Judy Rodriguez, a 30-year-old mother of three who had been reported missing by her family shortly after she was last seen on Jan. 23, 1991, at her daughter’s first birthday party.
On Aug. 25, 1991, her body was discovered in a grassy area near the intersection of the Cross Island and Southern State parkways in Queens. She had been bound at the ankles with a cord and covered with a wooden board.
“Three decades ago, four men were convicted for a gruesome killing of an unidentified woman,” Queens D.A. Melinda Katz said in a statement. “Though justice was served, the family went 33 long years without any answers about their loved one. Thanks to our partners at the NYPD and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, we have now provided those crucial details, which I hope brings a measure of solace.”