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A 40-year-old cold case murder of a Flushing teen in Bayside is being fired up anew by the NYPD.
Police are asking the public’s help in solving the murder of Leslie Zaret, 17, whose body was found on the PS 203 playground on Springfield Boulevard in Bayside on Aug. 17, 1974. Her body had been stripped and the cause of death was strangulation. Leslie’s clothing, a blue blouse with a flower print, jeans and beige platform shoes, were in a pile nearby...
Evidence showed that Zaret was not raped or had sex, but that she had been abused with a hairbrush. Police have partial DNA from the brush.
NYPD Det. Jim Osorio of Ronkonkoma said John Bowne High alumni who attended the school from 1970 to 1975 are of particular interest to police because Zaret's murder was a topic of discussion at a 2000 reunion. Some former classmates even pointed fingers at a possible suspect, police said.
Re-post of very lengthy and interesting article, no paywall.
Jan. 03, 2020 rbbm.
How This Cop’s Dream About a Murder Reopened a Cold Case
''part I: The Dream
In her dream, NYPD Chief Joanne Jaffe could hear the murdered girl calling to her for help.
“From the grave,” Jaffe would recall.
When Jaffe awoke, she figured she must have been dreaming of the teenager who had been raped and strangled just down the block from her childhood home in Queens.
Jaffe had only the haziest memory of the killing, but she did recall talk of one disturbing detail: a hairbrush up the girl’s vagina.
The dream haunted her, so Jaffe asked her mother and her sister whether they remembered the decades-old murder. Neither did. Jaffe phoned a friend who was a sex-crimes prosecutor at the Queens District Attorney’s office, suddenly doubting whether the girl had been real, or if the dream was just some craziness on her part. She guessed the slaying would have been around 1970, when she was 12.''
''At 8:20 a.m., a custodian found Leslie’s body six miles away, lying face up on the concrete schoolyard behind PS 203 on Springfield Blvd. She was completely naked save for a gold necklace, two gold earrings and two gold rings. Her only visible injuries were bruising and scratches on her throat. Her long-sleeved, blue, flower-print blouse, blue jeans and underthings had been folded and placed in a neat pile along with her beige platform shoes, just past her bare feet. Her legs were splayed. The handle of the hairbrush was visible where it had been inserted between them''.
''Remph subsequently told detectives that the gate to the fence surrounding the area was locked at off-hours. Only somebody familiar with the school or neighborhood would have known about the holes that vandals had cut into chain link at the far side of the yard, adjacent to a wooded patch that separates the school from Queensborough Community College beyond''.
''An autopsy confirmed that she had been strangled''.
''The woman told Valencia that she had encountered the suspect in Manhattan at Club 82. Once a mob-owned drag queen venue frequented by Hollywood stars ranging from Elizabeth Taylor to Judy Garland. It had since morphed into a rock music spot featuring artists like the New York Dolls and Debbie Harry.
By the woman’s account, the suspect bummed a ride with her when she left the club. She told Valencia that they stopped at the 24-hour Hilltop Diner in Queens. He asked her if she wanted to go buy some pot and maybe smoke a little.
She agreed and he directed her to Cunningham Park in Fresh Meadows. She was beginning to realize that the pot was just a ruse to get her to a dark and secluded spot when he knocked her down and pounced. He tore off her clothes and attempted to rape her, but was unable to achieve an erection.
At that moment, he suddenly turned her over face down. He grabbed her comb and inserted it into her rectum.
The suspect was fully aroused when he then rolled her over again. He proceeded to rape her while throttling her with both hands. She almost certainly would have been murdered, Valencia figures, had she not managed to knee him and break free. She escaped and reported the attack and went to a hospital, which confirmed there had been a rape.
The woman had been interviewed by detectives back then regarding both her case and the Zaret case, but she may have simply been too embarrassed to mention the comb. She was in tears as she now told Valencia that she was giving a full account of the attack for the first time.''
Very interesting..Also, see this 2014 Newsday article:
NYPD chief: 1974 killing can still be solved
Scroll down to the comment about LZ's high school reunion. Very interesting.