The family of a missing Queens woman waited more than three decades to find out she was the victim of a brutal killing. Now they’ll have to wait some more to finally receive her remains — which are buried alongside 1 million other people on Hart Island — New York City’s potter’s field.
Judy Rodriguez’s body was found Aug. 25, 1991, bound at the ankles under a large wooden board in a grassy area off two Queens parkways. Investigators quickly solved the mystery of who killed her but couldn’t answer the key question: Who was she?
And so she was buried on Hart Island in the Bronx, the city’s public cemetery where unclaimed bodies, including the unidentified and the indigent, are laid to rest in mass graves.
Now that genealogical DNA testing has finally put a name to her remains, Rodriguez’s family is hoping to hold a funeral and bury her next to her parents — but that sad final reunion will take time.
“It’s heartwarming to know that we have her back and that somebody paid a price,” Anna Salvadore, Rodriguez’s sister, told the Daily News.