Original subtitles

Narrator:

Narrator: In Long Island, New York,

a homeowner makes a gruesome discovery

in an old rusty barrel.

Man: It was just total disbelief.

Could not believe what we just found.

My wife said, "I'm not staying in this house another night."

I took a very quick look inside and I could see a human hand.

Narrator: The body of a young woman hidden for decades.

It was sad to think that she spent 30 years

in the bottom of a barrel under somebody's house.

Along with a very dark secret.

She said, "He's going to kill me."

I said, "Who?"

Why is this guy not being truthful with me?

It's not every day that a mummy is found in your backyard.

Narrator: 30 miles east of New York City

is the town of Jericho,

located on the north shore of Long Island.

In September of 1999, Ron Cohen had been a resident

for 10 years, but with his kids getting older,

Ron decided it was finally time to sell his home.

Cohen: In general, selling a house is a nightmare.

Ours turned out to be a horror story.

The morning of September 1st, 1999,

we were in the process of closing on our house

and I did a walk-through with a real estate broker

and the buyer of our house.

We came upon the crawl space underneath the porch,

and the buyer wanted us to clean everything out

and leave that crawl space broom clean.

We were a little bit annoyed,

but we understood why they were asking.

The crawl space was really just used for a storage.

You know, we put beach chairs, coolers, things like that.

And behind everything there was a 55 gallon drum,

all the way in the back corner.

It was the rusty old barrel

that had obviously been under the crawl space

for years, and years, and years.

When we moved in there, you know, the barrel

was in the same place as when we were going to move out.

My kids played hide and seek

underneath that screened-in porch.

We lived in this house for over ten years

and never gave it any other thought.

When it got to moving the barrel,

it was way too heavy for us to move.

So I had called the movers that I used to move the house

and they helped me get it out and roll it to the curb

and left for sanitation to pick up.

The next morning, the sanitation department came

and they did not pick up the barrel

because it was too heavy.

So they just left a note in my mailbox that said,

either I had to open it up and lighten it

or dispose of it in another way.

We went and we got a screwdriver

to crack open the seal.

When we opened the seal,

we got this horrific, awful smell,

nothing that I've never smelled before in my life.

That really made the two of us choke.

And then a boot popped up out of the barrel.

Just sprung up.

The two of us were horrified. We called the police.

I thought it was a body that was in the barrel,

but it was just total disbelief.

Could not believe what we just found.

You know, who would do something like that?

How could it be?

Narrator: Veteran homicide detective Brian Parpan

of the Nassau County police department

was assigned the case.

Parpan: Late in the afternoon, I received a call

about a possible dead body in the Jericho area.

When I spoke to the detective

who called me, I questioned him.

"What do you mean a possible dead body?

It should be dead? It's not dead?

What is the situation?"

( police sirens wailing, radio chatter )

Narrator: When Detective Parpan arrived at the scene,

he had no idea that what was inside the barrel

would send him on the most shocking

and unpredictable investigation of his career.

Parpan: I took a very quick look inside,

and I could see a human hand.

It was not bone. It was skin.

You were looking actually at a hand,

and what appeared to be a shoe.

Corral: Inside the barrel,

everything was kind of discolored

and had taken on the tint of dried old blood.

You knew that there was human remains in there.

You didn't know if it was just a limb or a whole body.

It was very macabre and frightening.

Jericho has, you know, tree-lined streets,

nicely built homes.

It's the kind of neighborhood

that you'd want to raise a family in,

and it's quiet.

It's a place where not much happens,

and people like it that way.

Parpan: I asked to speak with the owner of the house.

It was obvious that he was still upset about what happened.

I mean, he was shaken by what he had seen.

My interview of him, obviously,

was any knowledge of the barrel

and did he have any knowledge?

And with no uncertain terms,

he had no idea how long it had been there,

but certainly, as far as he knew,

had been there the entire time he was living in the house.

Realistically speaking,

if he were responsible for that,

he wouldn't be calling the police.

So he was not someone I thought was going to be

a person of interest.

We had a nanny who believed that the house was haunted.

One time, when my kids were in the swimming pool,

the electric transformer exploded in our backyard.

Another time, we had new garage doors put in.

One morning, my wife came outside to see a dead cat

with its neck stuck under the garage door.

So, upon discovering the body in the barrel,

things may have started to come together,

looking in retrospect, if you believe in spirits.

My wife said, "I'm not staying in this house another night."

And we did not stay in the house another night.

We stayed in a hotel.

Parpan: The barrel weighed in excess of 300 pounds.

So emergency services personnel came.

They were able to put it on a lift,

and it was transported to the medical examiner's office.

We laid down a huge white sheet.

It's the only time I've ever seen it.

Everyone in that room wore a gas mask.

That's how bad that odor was.

On tipping the barrel over,

a green fluid ran out of the barrel.

It was surprising, because decomposition fluid

and body fluid is generally clear.

So, samples of the fluid are taken.

Corral: Eventually police discovered that what was accompanying

the body inside the barrel,

were these plastic pellets that had been put in there,

either to disguise the body or to weigh down the barrel.

But it was filled with these pellets.

We collected as many as we could.

Some would be sent to a lab for test purposes

to find out exactly what they were.

Narrator: Investigators struggled to pull the body from the barrel,

and were unprepared for what came next.

The shocking thing to everyone was that

we were not dealing with a skeleton.

We were dealing with what was in fact a mummified body.

Corral: The skin had been turned to leather,

and all the internal organs and muscles had been dried out

and had been drained of their fluids.

But the skin, the leathered skin was still there.

Narrator: It was a sight that rattled

even the most seasoned homicide detectives,

a small-framed young woman between 25 and 30 years old

who had been brutally disposed of.

Who was she? And who had done this to her?

She had a leopard skin coat on.

It was a faux leopard.

Just didn't look like something

somebody would be wearing today.

Corral: When the clothes were examined,

it turns out that they played a pretty important role

in dating when she was killed,

because the clothes itself was a time capsule.

You had a fashion show straight out of the '60s.

You had this faux leopard-skin coat.

You had this, uh-- this kind of dress

that was very '60s style, the shoes.

Everything was very--

just very pointed to the late '60s.

Narrator: But if the young woman was murdered

three decades earlier,

was anyone still searching for her?

And due to the mummified state of the body,

would detectives be able to identify the victim?

Once the body was removed, the cause of death became very obvious.

Although all the hair on her head was still there,

on the back of her head,

where she had these incredible wounds,

that hair had fallen out.

So it was very obvious that she had suffered

blunt force trauma.

Edwards: This was the type of killing that you see

when there's a lot of frustration, a lot of hatred.

Probably, one or two blows would have killed this woman

and there was multiple blows to the head.

Narrator: After they inspected the young woman's face,

they found another well-preserved clue.

Parpan: Her front four teeth were outlined in a gold inlay.

And the medical examiner had indicated that

that's a type of dental work

you would see in Central America, not--

it would not be common to the United States.

Narrator: Was the young woman an immigrant?

If so, the detectives feared it would lead them

on a complicated and lengthy search

to find out who she was.

Then, to the horror of investigators,

there was another grisly discovery.

The medical examiner identifies what looks like human bones

inside of the mummified woman,

and as he peels back that skin layer,

discovered that this is a fetus,

9-months-old, inside this woman.

Now we have two victims.

At nine months, I mean,

a case could be made that

this fetus was murdered as well.

Edwards: That was a big turning point right there,

the fact that this woman was pregnant

has to have something to do with this homicide.

Edwards: And of all the phone numbers in that book,

for this one to be the one who actually knew

the victim from day one,

was just an incredible piece of luck.

We finally learned who this victim was.

Narrator:

Narrator: In Jericho, New York,

detectives found the body of a young pregnant woman

who was savagely murdered and stuffed inside a barrel

for more than 30 years.

Although they didn't know her identity

or who killed her, they believed they knew

the killer's motive.

These very seasoned homicide detectives

put two and two together,

and they suspected that maybe the reason

she had been killed was because she was pregnant,

and maybe the boyfriend or the father of the child

didn't want that pregnancy to be discovered.

Now that the woman's body had been removed,

investigators scoured the barrel,

hoping to piece together

how this horrible crime had occurred,

but some of the clues were surprising.

Parpan: A green plastic stem came out.

It was about six inches in length

with plastic green leaves on it.

When we look at the leaf and the stem,

we're thinking of something you would see

in an arrangement of plastic flowers

or something of that nature.

Narrator: But why were the leaves inside the barrel?

We're they just some random pieces of trash?

Or did they have some significance to the victim or killer?

Like anything else that's in the barrel,

it's potential evidence.

As it would be, the most important item in this case

is in the bottom of the barrel.

We find a pocketbook.

Inside the pocketbook are a number of beauty items,

an eyebrow pencil, rouge.

But the most important item that we find in there

is what appears to be is a phone book.

It was only a two by two inch telephone book,

but we were certainly hopeful it would help us identify her.

Narrator: But the detectives' excitement

over a promising new lead didn't last long.

Years of submersion inside the barrel

caused the phone book to become completely saturated.

And if you squeezed it, you could put your fingers right through it.

Parpan: We put it into an evidence bag

and turned that over to our documents section

to see if they could do anything with it.

They explained to me that they had a drying oven

that they could try to use on the book,

but that it would be a very meticulous process.

Edwards: My thoughts on the book was that it was unsalvageable.

I had very, very little hope that--

anything coming out of that book.

Narrator: By the next morning,

the story of the young woman's

horrifying death was on the front page

of the local papers.

Jericho residents were mystified.

It's not everyday that you read that a mummy

has been found in your backyard.

So, the discovery of the mummified body

from another era captured New York's imagination.

One of the great mysteries about this case

at the beginning was the identity of the woman.

Nobody knew who she was.

Edwards: It was extremely frustrating.

We felt that this person had to be missing from somewhere.

She was an adult, she was pregnant,

she had to have a family, we felt,

she had to be known to someone,

and we felt that she would be reported as a missing person.

Narrator: After searching the missing persons database,

investigators did not find any connections

to the female victim from 30 years ago.

But soon, they would.

Detectives finally got their first big break.

The forensics team was able to pull some information

from the victim's saturated phone book.

Parpan: It was basically being dried one page at a time,

and they were actually able to open the cover

of the book and the first page.

And the first thing that was there,

and it was readable, was an "A" number.

I thought that might be an alien number.

Narrator: An alien number is the number found on green cards

given to immigrants living in the United States.

This supported investigators' original theory

that the woman was an immigrant.

Parpan: We got a positive from Immigration

that, yes, that is an alien number.

It was dating back into the 1960s.

Eventually, Immigration provides us with a name

and a time that this individual

came into the United States legally.

Narrator: Investigators finally learned the identity

of the woman whose life was cut tragically short

three decades earlier,

along with the unborn son she was carrying.

Corral: Her name was Reyna Angelica Marroquin.

( with accent ) Or "Reyna Angelica Marroquin"

as it might have been pronounced in El Salvador.

Narrator: Police would later find out that Reyna was a young woman

who came to America to find her American dream.

She liked fashion, she knew how to read well,

and she knew how to speak English.

She was independent, and so she didn't want to get

tied down in a bad marriage in her small town

and live the rest of her life there.

She wanted to see the world

and help her family while she was doing it.

So, that combination led her to emigrate to New York.

Narrator: Reyna arrived in America in 1966,

and despite being a young immigrant woman

living on her own in a new country,

she thrived, and loved sharing her happiness

with her family back in El Salvador.

Corral: Reyna had written regular letters to her family,

and she would even make phone calls every once in a while.

Narrator: But in the winter of 1968,

Reyna's letters and phone calls suddenly stopped

without explanation.

Corral: The family didn't know that Reyna was pregnant.

They just knew that the letters stopped coming.

Reyna's journey, it's a sad story of a dream gone bad.

Edwards: She was a very pretty girl.

It was sad to think that she spent 30 years

in the bottom of a barrel under somebody's house.

Narrator: How did Reyna's dream

of a more fulfilling life in America

end as a nightmare?

And how did her murder remain a secret for 30 years?

Corral: One of the early steps in the investigation

was to determine who had lived in that house,

because there had been multiple owners over the years.

One of the first things I did was go to the town hall

to get all the records of the house.

There were four owners starting from the time

the house was built in '62.

We did all background checks on them,

looked for any criminal background,

and came up nothing

of any consequence on any of it.

Narrator: While detectives continued looking into

all of the previous homeowners,

they also focused on their main piece of evidence--

the barrel.

Where did this industrial barrel come from

and why was it at the house?

Parpan: So, we started with the manufacturer of the barrel,

and they informed me that that barrel was manufactured

in March of 1963.

The numbers "363" were from were for March of '63.

"55" meant it was a 55 gallon drum.

Corral: The company that had manufactured the barrel

kept corporate records.

And the police used those records to determine

who that barrel had been sold to.

Narrator: And there was good news for investigators.

The company that bought the barrel

was still in business after 30 years.

Edwards: And they told us that

that barrel originally contained

a chemical that was used in the dyeing

and the manufacture of plastics.

Narrator: Detectives made an instant connection.

Was the same chemical used to make the plastic leaves

found in the barrel?

They hoped that this new lead would prove significant.

Then, there was a stunning new development.

The rest of Reyna's address book,

which detectives feared might not be salvageable,

had dried out.

Parpan: The vast majority of pages

was very incomplete information.

Sometimes there was a first name,

or a portion of a first name,

a half a phone number,

although there were a number of pages where there was

a full phone number.

Narrator: Could it be possible that these phone numbers

would still be active after 30 years?

To find out, they called every single one.

Most of them were out of service,

except for one.

Corral: The woman who picked up the phone knew Reyna

and was willing to talk to the police about her.

Parpan: And I'm thinking, how is it possible

the same person is still there?

She had a very dramatic story to tell police

about the night that Reyna disappeared.

Edwards: When she knocked on the door, nobody answered,

and when she turned the doorknob,

the door was unlocked.

She knew something terrible has happened.

Detectives made

Detectives made a huge breakthrough

in the Reyna Marroquin murder investigation.

They located a woman who actually knew the victim.

They hoped she might be able to help them

finally figure out who killed Reyna and why.

There was a woman by the name of Kathy Andrade.

So I asked her if it would be okay

if we came to speak to her.

She immediately agreed, gave us the address.

When the police met with Kathy Andrade

and mentioned Reyna's name and showed her the picture,

she broke down crying.

It was a very emotional moment for her.

Parpan: Kathy immediately went to tears,

and said, "My angel, my angel."

Which, in fact, was her middle name-- Angelica.

Narrator: For 30 years, Kathy had been living with the pain

of never knowing what happened to her friend Reyna.

Their friendship began in the 1960s,

just after Reyna arrived in New York City

to start her career in fashion.

Narrator: From that moment on,

Reyna and Kathy were inseparable.

They forged a deep bond and became as close as sisters.

Corral: Kathy and Reyna were very close.

Kathy was kind of a mentor to her and helped her,

because Kathy knew what life was like in Manhattan

and in New York. She had lived there longer,

spoke better English, so she kind of helped her out.

Narrator: And just like any younger sibling,

Reyna confided in Kathy about everything,

including her biggest secret.

She was dating a married man.

According to Kathy, Reyna would get together

with her boyfriend when his wife was away.

They'd go on long romantic walks in Central Park

or take cruises on Long Island Sound in his fishing boat.

Parpan: Kathy informed us that Reyna

was living at a Catholic residency,

and that Reyna told her, "I can't stay here any longer.

I'm pregnant."

Narrator: Reyna's boyfriend promised to take care of her.

He set her up in an apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey,

and told her they would be together forever,

even though he was still a married man.

Narrator: All of Reyna's dreams were coming true,

until the spring of 1969.

Corral: Kathy had a very dramatic story to tell police

about the night that Reyna disappeared.

Parpan: She called telling Kathy she was all upset

because the man said, "I'm not going to marry you.

I'm not leaving my wife."

Reyna told her, "I did a very foolish thing.

I called his wife.

I told his wife that I was pregnant by him."

Narrator: Kathy rushed to Reyna's apartment,

hoping she might be able to protect her friend,

if in fact she was truly in danger.

When she knocked on the door, nobody answered.

When she turned the doorknob, the door was unlocked.

Corral: She goes inside. No one is there.

She finds that there is still food that's warm.

Reyna had not been gone very long at all.

Kathy's thinking that something terrible has happened,

so she waits inside the apartment for several hours.

But Reyna doesn't turn up,

so Kathy goes to police and wants to file

a missing person's report, but police tell her,

"It's only been a few hours. Nobody's missing yet.

You can't file a report."

So Kathy goes back home to Manhattan.

Narrator: She tried again the next day,

but since she wasn't a part

of Reyna's immediate family,

the police turned her away.

Parpan: Kathy attempted to call her with no results,

and at some point she just thought

she went back to El Salvador.

Narrator: There was nothing more that Kathy could do.

She could only hope that Reyna would one day return.

Over time, she accepted that Reyna wasn't coming back.

In 1999, Detective Parpan was still trying to make the connection.

How did Reyna end up buried inside the barrel

in a backyard of a home in Jericho?

I don't think in the middle of the night

someone is going to roll a body up

and put it under someone's home.

So, we're probably dealing with a relatively short list of suspects.

In this case, the only things that we could do

is I could find out the history of the house,

everybody who lived in the house.

Detective Parpan pored through the city records

of all the previous homeowners.

That's when something strange caught his attention.

A large extension was added to the back of the house

by the second owner.

Parpan: I'm sitting with a certificate of occupancy

that says the extension was done in 1980,

and when it's he owned the house.

Narrator: And it was built over the exact same spot

where the barrel was found.

Parpan: Our initial thoughts were that

whoever built that extension

may very well be responsible for this.

We asked him if he could possibly explain

how there was a barrel with a body of pregnant woman

found under his home.

He couldn't describe her any way, shape, or form.

Why is this guy not being truthful with me?

Narrator:

Narrator: Detectives discovered

Narrator: Detectives discovered that a home extension

was built in 1980.

They now had a new lead in their investigation,

the former homeowner named Arthur Ebbin.

Parpan: The initial part of the interview

with the second owner of the house

didn't start off particularly well.

I asked him about when he did the extension

and he told me he didn't do the extension.

Immediately thought, "That's not right."

I have a piece of paper here that says you filed a permit

and put the extension up.

I have another piece of paper that says

the town okay-ed the extension

and gave you a certificate of occupancy for it.

He goes on to explain to us that the extension was there

when he purchased the house.

Corral: The previous owner said

that he had not built that extension.

All he had done was bring it up to code.

So the extension had actually been built

by the first owner of the house.

Narrator: But before their interview was over,

Ebbin made an made an off-handed comment

that floored detectives.

Parpan: He said, "And by the way,

I saw that barrel that was under there."

So, I asked him,

"So, you saw the barrel. What'd you do about it?"

And he said, "We left it."

It was in the house for 12 years

and never concerned himself with the barrel again.

Edwards: He said, "I thought it was probably

some construction material that was left over

from when the extension was put on the house."

He didn't think anything about it.

Narrator: Detectives continued to question Arthur Ebbin

in an effort to glean more information.

They specifically wanted to know

about the person he bought the house from,

a man named Howard Elkins.

Parpan: He remembered several things.

That he was married and had a couple of children,

but he also recalled that he worked in New York City.

He said that he believed that Elkins was involved

as an owner of a plastics flower company.

I'm flabbergasted.

Now Howard Elkins is determined to be the person of interest.

Narrator: It was a bombshell.

Detectives had their first tangible link

between the evidence found in the barrel

and a potential suspect.

Parpan: Howard Elkins, along with another gentleman

by the name of Melvin Gantman,

owned this company, Melrose Plastics

and sold it in 1971.

The plan was to speak to the partner

before speaking to the suspect, Mr. Elkins.

Anything more that we can gain from his partner

is information that we can use.

It goes back to learning as much as you can

before you speak with a suspect.

Edwards: Mr. Gantman was very willing to speak with us.

He was very sharp. He had a very good memory.

Parpan: Immediately upon showing him a picture of the barrel,

he identified it as the type of barrel that we would have.

Further to say, that's the barrel that we put dye in.

Narrator: Gantman also recognized the green liquid.

Edwards: He said, this is a chemical that we used to use

to dye the flowers and our shrubbery that we created.

Narrator: Detectives then steered the conversation

toward his former partner Howard Elkins.

We had asked him if he ever knew

Mr. Elkins having a girlfriend.

Edwards: He said, "Yes, he did. He had a girlfriend."

Parpan: She worked at the factory.

He said she was petite.

She was very attractive, she had long black hair,

she had gold teeth in the front.

Gold in her teeth.

My partner and I looked at each other saying,

"It's like he's describing a picture of her."

Narrator: For Detective Parpan, the evidence was lining up.

Howard Elkins was once the owner of the house in Long Island.

He operated a plastic company between 1961 and 1971.

And he had a girlfriend who matched the description of Reyna Marroquin.

Detectives found that Elkins was now 70 years old,

retired, and living in Florida.

Parpan: Pulled right up to the house and knocked on the door.

He just said, "Come on in."

We showed him the same items that we had showed Mr. Gantman.

We showed him a photo of the barrel.

He indicated that they never used barrels like that in his business.

We asked him about the dye, the green dye.

He indicated that that was not used in his company.

So the things that we knew, he lied about.

Strangely enough, he told us the truth about having a girlfriend.

In 1999,

In 1999, New York detectives

went to Florida to question Howard Elkins

about Reyna Marroquin,

the woman they believed he had an affair with

31 years earlier.

Corral: Much to the surprise of the investigators,

Howard Elkins admitted that he had had an affair

in the 1960s for some time,

but he pretended he didn't remember

anything about the woman.

Not her name, not even the color of her hair.

Parpan: He couldn't describe her any shape, way, or form,

you know, whether she was tall or whether she was slender

or whether she was short.

He couldn't go into any of that,

so we knew that he was stonewalling us at that time.

Parpan: We asked him if he could possibly explain

how there was a barrel with a body

of a pregnant woman found under his home.

And he just had no explanation.

He said it wasn't from him, he had no knowledge of it.

There wasn't a doubt in my mind

that Howard Elkins was lying.

Corral: The police detectives threatened to take

a DNA sample from his cheek

to compare it to the DNA of the fetus

to see if they could connect him to Reyna.

Edwards: And he says, "Oh, no. I can't allow that."

Well, we said, "Why not? It'll either put you in

or put you out of this thing.

And, you know, this is an investigative tool

that we would like to use."

Parpan: At this point, he started getting very standoffish,

not giving you anything,

"I know what you guys can do with that.

Look what they did to O.J."

Yeah.

We said, "Look, we're not here by accident.

We believe you're involved in this,

and we're gonna wind up getting what we have to get."

Narrator: And just when they had Howard Elkins

backed into a corner...

( ringing )

...detectives were interrupted.

Parpan: The phone rang,

and when he got up to answer the phone

we could hear his side of the conversation

and it was obviously his wife.

After a short conversation, he got off the phone.

He said, "Look, my wife is on her way home.

I don't want you here when he gets here."

Legally speaking, we have to leave.

So I said, "We'll leave. We have no choice."

But I said, "I want you to know something.

I'm gonna get a warrant.

I'm gonna get a warrant for your blood,

and I'm gonna get your DNA, and I'm gonna put you in jail

for the rest of your life. Do you understand?"

He just imperceptibly nodded his head.

He didn't say a word to me,

he just kind of nodded once or twice,

and we left.

Narrator: The detectives didn't have enough evidence

to arrest Elkins.

They feared that unless they could prove

that he was the father of Reyna's unborn child,

their case was circumstantial

and he would never be brought to justice.

So they rushed to a local judge

to obtain a warrant for his DNA.

Parpan: The following day, I decided to call the office again

just to update them on where we were.

A detective, he said,

"The Palm Beach police department

just called our office.

They want to know if you have Elkins in custody."

I thought that was a little unusual.

I said, "We don't have an arrest warrant.

Of course we don't have him. Why are you asking?"

He said, "Well, the wife is reporting him missing."

Corral: When Howard Elkins went missing,

police didn't know what to make of it.

They thought maybe he had fled,

maybe he was trying to hide from police.

Narrator: But Howard Elkins wasn't hiding.

He had already been located

by the Palm Beach police department.

Parpan: We went to a house

about a block and a half away from Elkins' home

and we saw a large police presence.

I was informed by a detective at the scene

that Howard Elkins was in fact dead.

He had purchased a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun

earlier that day with some ammunition.

He went into the back seat of his friend's car

and put the gun in his mouth and fired it.

We were absolutely convinced that he was the killer,

and certainly, I think, that is proven

by the fact that he took his life.

Corral: I think people were aghast

that a man who had everything,

a family, a home, career,

could throw it away and murder somebody.

I think people were shocked when he killed himself

and thought that maybe he was taking the easy way out.

After Howard Elkins had killed himself,

police took a sample from his blood,

and they compared it to the sample

of the DNA in the fetus,

and were able to determine

that he was the father of the fetus.

I felt that he was a double coward.

Not only did he kill a woman who he had an affair with,

but he killed his own child.

Narrator: After hunting down Reyna's killer,

investigators set their sights on another search--

Reyna's family in El Salvador.

Previous efforts to locate them had failed,

but their luck was about to change.

After Howard Elkins

After Howard Elkins took his own life in 1999,

New York detectives finally had DNA proof

that linked him to the murder of his former girlfriend

and her unborn child.

Corral: I think Howard Elkins' motive

was to keep his family intact.

And when he found that she was pregnant,

he kind of wanted to distance himself from her.

He moved her to an apartment far away in New Jersey,

and he hoped that she would just go away.

But she didn't because

she believed that he loved her

and that he would leave his wife

and do right by her and marry her.

And when she discovered that he had no plans

to leave his wife, she grew desperate.

She called his wife, she disclosed the affair,

and that caused Howard Elkins to go into a rage.

Parpan: We believe what actually happened

was he went to the apartment that day.

Whatever line he fed her to go with him, we don't know.

Nothing amiss at the apartment.

The plates are still on the table, the food is warm.

Even the door is left open, we believe,

for Kathy to come, knowing that she's coming.

We believe that he took her back to his factory.

The factory was large enough where there were areas

downstairs in the basement.

He could be pretty much alone with her.

I think, without a doubt, that is where he killed her.

The cause of death, seven to ten blows

in the back of the head.

Probably a hammer.

Narrator: Elkins placed Reyna's body,

along with a purse containing her address book,

into an empty barrel.

He then grabs four 50-pound bags

of the plastic pellets,

puts them in the back of the station wagon,

and then a 55 gallon drum.

We believe without a doubt he took her back to his home

and then filled the barrel with 200 pounds of pellets.

Corral: Maybe he crammed all those pellets into the metal drum

because he thought it would weigh it down

and that it would make it possible

to sink the drum if he took it out

to the Long Island Sound.

But, eventually,

I think he found that it was too heavy

to do anything like that with it,

and the only option

was to roll it underneath his house.

He leaves it there and they sell the house.

How long is this man looking over his shoulder?

He just leaves it there and he gets 30 years out of it.

So instead of spending 30 years in jail,

he lived his life, he watched his family grow.

And now, when it was time to pay the piper,

he took the coward's way out

and he took his own life.

I wanted him in jail.

I wanted him to be punished.

Cohen: The man took advantage of a poor immigrant worker

that worked for him.

To this day, I can't understand

how anybody would do such a horrific thing,

and then when leaving and moving,

would leave something like that behind.

It's just mind-boggling.

I don't know how the man lived with himself

for all these years.

I think that people find themselves in situations

where they dig themselves into a hole

and they don't know how to get out of it.

And in this case, Howard Elkins wanted

to wipe Reyna from his personal history,

and he did it by killing her.

Narrator: All that was left for investigators

was to notify Reyna Marroquin's family.

Because their contact numbers were out of date,

Detective Parpan enlisted the help

of journalist Oscar Corral

to track them down in El Salvador.

That was my first trip abroad as a reporter.

I just started knocking on doors in this little town

on the outskirts of San Salvador.

When I arrived at Reyna's house,

they were celebrating Reyna's mother's birthday.

She was 93 years old.

When I first arrived, they thought that

I might have been sent by a newspaper

because this woman was so old

and I wanted to write up a story about her birthday.

And it wasn't until I showed the mother the picture

of her daughter on the cover of "Newsday"

that she realized what this visit was about.

This case really weighed on me.

I never really prepared

for breaking this kind of news to them.

I wished I could come to them with good news,

that Reyna had been found, and that she was alive,

and that she had children, but that was not to be.

And the mother immediately covered her mouth

with her hand and just bowed her head

and started crying and weeping.

She told me that for years she had had a dream

that her daughter was inside a barrel

going over a waterfall,

and that disturbed her sleep for many decades.

And she said that she had reached this old age

because she wanted to know what happened

to her daughter before she died.

Narrator: In October of 1999,

the remains of Reyna Marroquin

and her unborn son were returned to El Salvador.

After 30 years, they were finally given a proper funeral.

The two were buried together in the Marroquin Cemetery

next to Reyna's mother, who died a month later.