In January 2025, a woman who had survived a brutal assault months earlier was found dead in an abandoned house on Cleveland Avenue in Niagara Falls. Authorities now believe she froze to death inside the unheated structure, unaware at the time that her death was linked to a high-profile arson attack from the previous summer.
On the morning of January 21st, a Niagara County Sheriff’s deputy, while transporting an inmate from Niagara Falls City Court back to Lockport, was flagged down near 1014 Cleveland Avenue. A visibly distressed man told the deputy that a woman inside the home wasn’t breathing.
Niagara Falls Police responded to the scene and identified the woman as 48-year-old Judith Lynn Lafler. The man, a 73-year-old squatter, told officers that he had found Lafler in the abandoned property the day before…