Police in New York believe they’ve found the remains of a woman missing since 1966 under the Long Island home of her then-boyfriend—a married policeman.
Louise Pietrewicz, 38, vanished without a trace in October 1966. The Cutchogue woman was raising an 11-year-old daughter at the time of her disappearance.
People reported that the remains were wrapped in burlap and buried under her boyfriend’s residence. Sources told the magazine that detectives began digging up soil in the basement of the Southold home last week but didn’t turn up human remains until Monday.
According to The Suffolk Times, Pietrewicz has been having an affair with William Boken. Boken died in 1982 and the officer’s wife, Judith Terry, sold the home in the late 1970s and it is now owned by people unconnected to the family.
This month, after interviews with police, Terry pointed investigators to where they might find the remains, confirming suspicions among Pietrewicz’s family members that the officer’s wife knew something about the disappearance.
“I said from the beginning Judy Boken Terry was the key,” Sandy Blampied, Louise’s daughter, told the newspaper.
“I said, ‘she knows.’ And she did.”
When Pietrewicz first disappeared, suspicion had fallen upon her estranged husband as somehow involved.
Meanwhile, Boken reportedly quit the force and left his family shortly after Pietrewicz vanished.
Additionally, a police report obtained by The Suffolk Times stated that Terry told investigators in 1967 that Boken had made an ominous threat during an argument.
“If you keep it up, you will end up in the basement with the other b***h,” he allegedly told her.
Despite this, the case wasn’t reopened until October of last year, after the local newspaper released a three-part documentary and an investigative series about the cold case.
After speaking with police, the cop’s ex-wife reportedly directed Seargent John Sinning and ex-detective Joseph Conway Jr. to the basement of her former home, where she said a burlap sack containing human remains was located and buried around the time Pietrewicz disappeared.
The New York Times reported that investigators used a sonar echolocating device to dig seven feet down and locate a jawbone. From there, investigators kept digging and located an entire skeleton, police said.
Police also said that the medical examiner is looking at the remains to confirm their identity and determine a cause of death. The missing woman’s daughter said police asked her for a DNA sample Monday afternoon.
“You want to bring her home, and when reality happens, it’s like, I can’t believe we finally found her,” Blampied told The New York Times in a phone interview Tuesday morning.
“It’s almost like a dream. After 51 years! Unbelievable! Thank God, thank God!”
[Featured Image: Louise Pietrewicz/National Missing and Unidentified Persons System]
