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I doubt Henry Gafforio would have been wearing a $600 gold watch.
NY NY - Plainview, Wht/HispMale 23-57, UP140, Members Only jacket, Bulova watch, hair pick, Mar'04
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AnnieOakley
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I may have missed this, but was there any mention of shoes?
Judging from his clothes, he sounds like the kind of guy who only bought apparel when he needed to, not to keep up with fashion. By the early 1980's, bell bottom pants were so over. Fashionable young men were wearing the Miami Vice baggy pants made famous by Don Johnson or the Michael Jackson/Beat It straight leg, tight pants/jeans. Members Only was a hot item for the trendy but if this were the victims' case, he should've also been sporting something along the lines of Jordache or Guess jeans. The reconstruction looks very much like Peter Winston but the presumed age and known height are way off.
I don't want to sound stupid, but I'm really kind of confused.
I went over the thread and the first link or so has died (they were posted a few years back). I was kind of confused about the timing speculated as 1977 was mentioned, along with some '80's dates. Also, some suggestions were white so I didn't know if they changed his race to Hispanic or if it changed. DoeNetwork says White/Hispanic. NamUs says Hispanic/Latino.
Is the basic time-frame for this guy's death somewhere in the early 1980's? And was he definitely Hispanic?
I ask about the time-frame not because of the various years debated earlier in the thread, but because NamUs says the postmortem interval is 6-mos. That can't be right. There is a "probable year of death" that is "0-to-2004" so I guess that means any time before then. DoeNet says 20+ yrs.
???
I went over the thread and the first link or so has died (they were posted a few years back). I was kind of confused about the timing speculated as 1977 was mentioned, along with some '80's dates. Also, some suggestions were white so I didn't know if they changed his race to Hispanic or if it changed. DoeNetwork says White/Hispanic. NamUs says Hispanic/Latino.
Is the basic time-frame for this guy's death somewhere in the early 1980's? And was he definitely Hispanic?
I ask about the time-frame not because of the various years debated earlier in the thread, but because NamUs says the postmortem interval is 6-mos. That can't be right. There is a "probable year of death" that is "0-to-2004" so I guess that means any time before then. DoeNet says 20+ yrs.
???
carbuff
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Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race, so technically I suppose there's no ambiguity. They think he's a white man of probable Hispanic ethnicity.
The stuff about the time of death is weird.
The stuff about the time of death is weird.
Ambercat
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I wonder if Frank Giarrizzo has ever been looked at as a possible match? https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/21810/12
carbuff
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Frank looks like a possibility.
I know that, but I'm used to it saying white/hispanic or black/hispanic, at least in terms of a UID.
I saw "Latino/Hispanic" (I'd seen another place calling him simply "white") and I thought those two terms were basically the same. Kind of like Irish/Caucasian or Thai/Asian or Nigerian/Black.
Like Giarrizzo. He may look a little "ethnic," but he isn't Hispanic or Latino. "Italian" isn't a category like Latino AND Hispanic are.
Hispanic usually refers to Latin Americans that speak Spanish and are mixed with Spanish and native. Even Dominicans, who have a significant amount of African blood are also Hispanic.
Latino is all encompassing from Mexico on southward and includes Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countries.
So while all Hispanics are Latinos, not all Latinos are Hispanic.
But I think the terms tend to get misused often and it is hard to determine. But in the context of forensics I imagine that they are referring to the significantly different skull shapes in Native South Americans that is prominent, even if they have some African, Spanish, or Portuguese mixed in here and there.
I assume they do by other DNA characteristics to determine native DNA as well. Where as someone with purely European ancestry would not have the same DNA markers.
carbuff
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I thought Latino meant Puerto Rican, especially NYC Puerto Ricans.
cvaldez1975
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maybe he was from another country, the bell bottoms were more 70's but sometimes other countries lag in fashions.
Ambercat
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In that line of thought, I was trying to track down this thread after reading about James Squillante who was reported to be about 5'2" 130lbs when he went missing in 1960 and believed to have met with foul play. After finally locating the thread, I can see the dates are way off. :facepalm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Squillante
pukasonqo2
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was any answer re: peter winston as a possible match to this UID?
lupus est *advertiser censored* homini, non *advertiser censored*, non quom qualis sit novit
lupus est *advertiser censored* homini, non *advertiser censored*, non quom qualis sit novit
carbuff
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That's too bad, Ambercat...except for the date, it would be a promising lead.
madamx
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Mandiedq great find with a lot of good info
Within hours, on that March day in 2004, investigators from the New York State Police were unearthing the fully clothed skeleton of an unknown male, partially stuffed into a plastic bag just inside the eastern border of Nassau County. Before long, however, they had to admit they were stumped. Who was this man and how did he die? And who dumped his body?
One of their best clues to his identity and how long he’d been lying under the leaves was an item of clothing, an iconic artifact from the era of Pac-Man and MTV – his 1980s Members Only jacket. The coat helped establish that the man had probably been hidden in the lonely strip of woods between the east and westbound lanes of a freeway more than two decades before Willis found him.
Almost ten years since the body’s discovery, however, detectives still haven’t identified the victim or figured out who might have killed him, and now they’re asking for the public’s help in solving a mystery they call the Members Only case.
No bullets or casings were found at the crime scene, and no identification was found on the body. But investigators have used his facial structure, his clothing and some of the items from his pockets to make educated guesses about who he was, when he died and where he lived.
A computer generated reconstruction of the victim shows a high-cheekboned face with dark hair and a slightly dark complexion. During the original investigation, the Medical Examiner believed the victim to be Caucasian, based on his cheekbones, but Hughes says that now he’s not so sure. A 1970s-style “Afro-pick” comb was found with the body, and police renderings of his possible appearance include both straight and curly hair.*
The victim was wearing a white button-down shirt, bellbottoms, tube socks and the Members Only jacket. Bellbottoms were popular in the 1970s, and the jacket had its heyday in the 1980s.
There were coins in the pocket of the bellbottoms, and the date on a dime, the newest coin, was 1974, meaning the crime couldn’t have happened any earlier.
After the jacket had been taken to a laboratory, some chemical cleaning and a microscope revealed a serial number. Hughes called the factory in Sri Lanka, where he learned that a coat with that number had been manufactured in 1982.
The man’s money clip was empty, but the clip was a promotional item emblazoned with the logo of a New York City heating oil company called Paragon Oil.
Despite his unglamorous clothing, he was also wearing a fancy Bulova watch. The timepiece had been manufactured by the Queens, N.Y., based company in 1960, when it had carried a retail price of $500.
The single most distinctive thing about the dead man, however, was his height. When his skeleton was first pulled from the leaves, police thought he might have been a child, because he was only 5 foot 1. But dental examination by a forensic anthropologist put his age at anywhere from 35 to 55.*
During the original investigation, the combination of a fancy watch and the unusually small stature gave one of the investigators an idea. Two major horseracing tracks, Aqueduct and Belmont, are within 30 miles of Plainview, where the body was found. Was the dead man a jockey?
But calls to racetracks in the New York and New Jersey came up empty. No jockeys had gone missing.
With the case getting new eyes, however, investigators still believe the man’s height is the key to his identity. They have decided to scrap the idea that he had to have died in 1982 or after, just in case the serial number on his jacket or the Sri Lankan factory records were wrong, and focus on identifying a missing person who was shorter than 99 percent of American adult males.
Hughes said he and his partner will also restart his probe in the New York City borough of Queens, because of the watch and the Paragon Oil money clip and because Queens lies at the western end of the Northern State Parkway. That means their next step is to head to Queens and get another taste of what life was like in the 1980s.
I was speaking to my husband and he grew up in long Island and mentioned that there was a racetrack called Roosevelt Racetrack in Westbury that was not mentioned in the article.. It closed in 1988 The dump site is approx. 11.5 miles from where the racetrack was if you traveled using the parkways.
Also he was looking at the photo of the map (in the article) of where the body was found and its a turnaround for police and emergency vehicles. The article mentions some clues as to Queens and if you are on the Northern State pkwy you can make the turn where the body was dumped and buried and it brings you back on the parkway going west which heads towards Queens and the city. You also could get on the LIE 495 which is about a mile west of the dump site.
Within hours, on that March day in 2004, investigators from the New York State Police were unearthing the fully clothed skeleton of an unknown male, partially stuffed into a plastic bag just inside the eastern border of Nassau County. Before long, however, they had to admit they were stumped. Who was this man and how did he die? And who dumped his body?
One of their best clues to his identity and how long he’d been lying under the leaves was an item of clothing, an iconic artifact from the era of Pac-Man and MTV – his 1980s Members Only jacket. The coat helped establish that the man had probably been hidden in the lonely strip of woods between the east and westbound lanes of a freeway more than two decades before Willis found him.
Almost ten years since the body’s discovery, however, detectives still haven’t identified the victim or figured out who might have killed him, and now they’re asking for the public’s help in solving a mystery they call the Members Only case.
No bullets or casings were found at the crime scene, and no identification was found on the body. But investigators have used his facial structure, his clothing and some of the items from his pockets to make educated guesses about who he was, when he died and where he lived.
A computer generated reconstruction of the victim shows a high-cheekboned face with dark hair and a slightly dark complexion. During the original investigation, the Medical Examiner believed the victim to be Caucasian, based on his cheekbones, but Hughes says that now he’s not so sure. A 1970s-style “Afro-pick” comb was found with the body, and police renderings of his possible appearance include both straight and curly hair.*
The victim was wearing a white button-down shirt, bellbottoms, tube socks and the Members Only jacket. Bellbottoms were popular in the 1970s, and the jacket had its heyday in the 1980s.
There were coins in the pocket of the bellbottoms, and the date on a dime, the newest coin, was 1974, meaning the crime couldn’t have happened any earlier.
After the jacket had been taken to a laboratory, some chemical cleaning and a microscope revealed a serial number. Hughes called the factory in Sri Lanka, where he learned that a coat with that number had been manufactured in 1982.
The man’s money clip was empty, but the clip was a promotional item emblazoned with the logo of a New York City heating oil company called Paragon Oil.
Despite his unglamorous clothing, he was also wearing a fancy Bulova watch. The timepiece had been manufactured by the Queens, N.Y., based company in 1960, when it had carried a retail price of $500.
The single most distinctive thing about the dead man, however, was his height. When his skeleton was first pulled from the leaves, police thought he might have been a child, because he was only 5 foot 1. But dental examination by a forensic anthropologist put his age at anywhere from 35 to 55.*
During the original investigation, the combination of a fancy watch and the unusually small stature gave one of the investigators an idea. Two major horseracing tracks, Aqueduct and Belmont, are within 30 miles of Plainview, where the body was found. Was the dead man a jockey?
But calls to racetracks in the New York and New Jersey came up empty. No jockeys had gone missing.
With the case getting new eyes, however, investigators still believe the man’s height is the key to his identity. They have decided to scrap the idea that he had to have died in 1982 or after, just in case the serial number on his jacket or the Sri Lankan factory records were wrong, and focus on identifying a missing person who was shorter than 99 percent of American adult males.
Hughes said he and his partner will also restart his probe in the New York City borough of Queens, because of the watch and the Paragon Oil money clip and because Queens lies at the western end of the Northern State Parkway. That means their next step is to head to Queens and get another taste of what life was like in the 1980s.
I was speaking to my husband and he grew up in long Island and mentioned that there was a racetrack called Roosevelt Racetrack in Westbury that was not mentioned in the article.. It closed in 1988 The dump site is approx. 11.5 miles from where the racetrack was if you traveled using the parkways.
Also he was looking at the photo of the map (in the article) of where the body was found and its a turnaround for police and emergency vehicles. The article mentions some clues as to Queens and if you are on the Northern State pkwy you can make the turn where the body was dumped and buried and it brings you back on the parkway going west which heads towards Queens and the city. You also could get on the LIE 495 which is about a mile west of the dump site.
madamx
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I came across NELSON ROMAN
Missing since May, 1981 from New York City, New York.
Age at Time of Disappearance: 29 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'4 – 5'6"; 145-155 lbs.
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/428dmny.html
http://voices4missing.ning.com/profiles/blogs/unexplained-disappearance-of
The photo of graduation reminds me of the reconstruction. and the other photos of him I noticed his frizzy hair that I can totally see him using a hair pick. I grew up in the Manhattan and Queens in the 1970s and 1980s. I know that bellbottoms were still around in 1981 which was the crossing over from the Disco to the more Hip Hop Breakdancing look.. I wish that there would be some information on if they found shoes on this guy.. The shoes could tell a lot if they were the platforms of the 1970s or the Capezios of the early 1980s.. jmo
also came across a FELIX TORRES who went missing in 1977 Last seen on Hazen Street in Queens He is 5'3 and has the hair that could use a hair pick.
https://www.facebook.com/MIssingFelixTorresMorales/
Missing since May, 1981 from New York City, New York.
Age at Time of Disappearance: 29 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'4 – 5'6"; 145-155 lbs.
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/428dmny.html
http://voices4missing.ning.com/profiles/blogs/unexplained-disappearance-of
The photo of graduation reminds me of the reconstruction. and the other photos of him I noticed his frizzy hair that I can totally see him using a hair pick. I grew up in the Manhattan and Queens in the 1970s and 1980s. I know that bellbottoms were still around in 1981 which was the crossing over from the Disco to the more Hip Hop Breakdancing look.. I wish that there would be some information on if they found shoes on this guy.. The shoes could tell a lot if they were the platforms of the 1970s or the Capezios of the early 1980s.. jmo
also came across a FELIX TORRES who went missing in 1977 Last seen on Hazen Street in Queens He is 5'3 and has the hair that could use a hair pick.
https://www.facebook.com/MIssingFelixTorresMorales/
madamx
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Doing some more research I also came across some information on Roosevelt Raceway having Mob Ties this info is from a trial in 1974
This is a blurb from the article where they mention bribing the jockeys or as they were called at this racetrack the Harness Race Drivers.
The attempt to eliminate one or more horses from consideration in the "superfecta" betting formed the basis of the conspiracy exposed at the trial. Bribery of harness race drivers was the means by which the conspiracy was implemented.
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/515/130/292891/
This is a blurb from the article where they mention bribing the jockeys or as they were called at this racetrack the Harness Race Drivers.
The attempt to eliminate one or more horses from consideration in the "superfecta" betting formed the basis of the conspiracy exposed at the trial. Bribery of harness race drivers was the means by which the conspiracy was implemented.
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/515/130/292891/
madamx
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More research into the Roosevelt Raceway and I found this article which really made me think...
http://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/18/a...s-santa-maria-mattucci-are-involved.html?_r=0
It was disclosed later that Santa Maria, who did not have a horse in the race, had collected $26,500 on the winning exacta. Mattucci was the trainer of Hopalong, who finished out of the money in the race. A co‐owner of Hopalong was Mrs. John A. Lombardo, whose husband was found murdered in Brooklyn a few weeks after the race.
http://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/18/a...s-santa-maria-mattucci-are-involved.html?_r=0
It was disclosed later that Santa Maria, who did not have a horse in the race, had collected $26,500 on the winning exacta. Mattucci was the trainer of Hopalong, who finished out of the money in the race. A co‐owner of Hopalong was Mrs. John A. Lombardo, whose husband was found murdered in Brooklyn a few weeks after the race.