Post by Joanna on Aug 19, 2015 16:15:32 GMT -5
UNSOLVED: 1985 Murder of Kristin O'Connell
OVID, N.Y. – Thirty years ago, Kristen O'Connell (above) was murdered. Her mother, Phyllis O’Connell, has waited a very long time to see her daughter killer – or killers – brought to justice. Police have checked on an untold number of leads, but have yet to solve one of the more notorious murder cases in this area’s history.
This much is certain: There is no way Phyllis O’Connell is going to stop in her quest to achieve closure in her daughter’s death. “As a mother, I will not give up until I die,” she said emphatically. Phyllis O’Connell traveled from her Minnesota home to Seneca County Thursday, August 13, as determined to find out who murdered her 20-year-old daughter as the day it happened. Kristin O’Connell’s body was found in an Ovid cornfield August 16, 1985, a day after she was murdered. Phyllis, who last visited the area five years ago, met with New York State Police and her own private investigators Friday.
She is more hopeful than ever that police will track down who murdered her daughter. “It’s frustrating there has not been an arrest by now, but it’s not for lack of trying,” she said. “The police have been on it and working it hard.” During an interview with the Times, O’Connell thanked former Troop E State Police Commander Mark Koss for “kicking the investigation into high gear. I hope this is it. We seem so close this time,” O’Connell said. “I hope people open their hearts and, as a mother to other mothers, put yourself in my place, having a daughter killed like that. What if it happened to you?”
The case. Private investigator Preston Felton said he and his two associates are working on an independent, parallel track with state police. Felton said both groups are “arriving at the same conclusions” when it comes to suspects. “The focus is narrowing to a smaller group of people,” he added. “We’re not ruling anything out, but everything seems to indicate this was a local event, committed by a local person, not an outsider.”
Felton asked local residents who may have been afraid to speak during the early years of the investigation, people who may now be in their 50s, to realize their fears are unfounded and that it’s time to tell what they know. Both of the young men observed walking behind O’Connell the night she was killed have been identified and one has been interviewed, Felton explained. “We know where the other lives ... we haven’t found him yet, but we will,” Felton predicted. He said a telephone call to state police a few days after the murder may have been an attempt by someone involved to cover up information or to throw police off track.
Felton and O’Connell remain hopeful the touch DNA testing now performed in the Netherlands will help solve the case.
Before she boarded a plane for New York, Phyllis O’Connell visited the Catholic cemetery where her daughter is buried next to her father, Michael – he died in 1993 – and other family members. Phyllis has her own grave-site reserved not far from those of her husband and only daughter. She was 45 when Kristin, who was entering her junior year at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, was found dead in a cornfield along County Road 139. The young woman’s throat was slashed. She had been stabbed numerous times. She was nude, her clothes piled nearby, although there were no signs of a sexual assault. Police have said it appears Kristin put up a tremendous fight for her life. Jeff Arnold was the state police’s lead investigator in the case and remained involved in the investigation until his recent retirement.
The background. Here’s what is known about Kristin O’Connell’s murder: She met James Vermeersch of Ovid during 1985 spring break in Florida. The two hit it off and she accepted an invitation to visit him in his hometown before returning to college that fall. Vermeersch picked her up at Syracuse Hancock International Airport August 12. They were at a party at Vermeersch’s mobile home on a warm summer night – Wednesday, August14. O’Connell left the party around 11:30 p.m. to go for a walk on County Road 139, just west of the Golden Buck Tavern. That was the last time anyone has admitted seeing her alive.
Between 11:50 p.m. and 12:10 a.m., she was observed walking west on the north shoulder of County Road 139. A green or blue car pulled up next to her. A second westbound car was seen pulling off the road behind her. Between midnight and 12:15 a.m., she reversed direction and walked east on the south shoulder of the road. Two white males were seen pacing about 50 yards behind her.
Police reports say neighbors reported hearing a “horrific” scream between 12:15 and 12:25 a.m., near where her body was found. Around 1:15 a.m., males matching the description of the two following O’Connell were observed walking east toward the village. They changed directions 15 minutes later, now heading west on County Road 139 on the north side of the road, just east of where O’Connell’s body would be found.
Arnold has said Kristin was not a drinker and didn’t do drugs, and may have been uncomfortable at the party because drinking was involved – and after learning that Vermeersch had a girlfriend.
Kristin called her mother a day before she was killed, saying she might return home earlier than planned. Phyllis O’Connell asked if anything was wrong, but Kristin did not indicate there was a problem. That was the last time Phyllis spoke to her daughter.
The aftermath. While everyone at the party was ruled out as suspects, there have been roughly 1,700 leads. One was the two young white males seen walking behind O’Connell on County Road 139 shortly before she was killed. While Felton said both have been identified, police have yet to name either. Another tip involved an anonymous telephone call placed August 23, 1985, to State Trooper D.C. Reyer in Auburn, telling him to look at a green Chevrolet on Main Street in Waterloo. The caller said to open the trunk and they would find what they needed to identify the killer. The caller repeated the information, said he was getting out of town “because I told him not to do it,” then hung up before he could be identified. People still have the recording of the man’s voice, which has a slight accident, and voice-identification tests can be completed if a suspect is found. A late 1970s green or blue sedan was reported to have been seen driving east on County Road 139 around the time of the murder, possibly stopping to talk to O’Connell. Neither the vehicle nor its occupants could not be traced.
Two other suspects were questioned, but have been vociferous in proclaiming their innocence. Neither has been arrested.
Today. There was renewed hope of a breakthrough when the Dutch duo of Richard and Selma Eikelenboom, world-renowned touch DNA experts, offered to test O’Connell’s clothing for skin-cell DNA evidence. However, the state health department wouldn’t allow it because the Eikelenbooms did not have a New York license or permit. Phyllis O’Connell has called it an unnecessary barrier to solving the case. She is more certain than ever someone knows who killed her daughter, but isn’t willing to say or, for whatever reason, can’t.
The Ovid area is much different now than it was in 1985. Back then, the Seneca Army Depot in nearby Romulus was operating at full strength, the Willard Psychiatric Center was years from closing and Boy Scout Camp Babcock-Hovey in Ovid was hosting a youth conference that August. The depot and psychiatric center have since closed, meaning fewer people cycle in and out of the area. Felton said a number of people who worked at those places back then had backgrounds that could have made them candidates to commit the murder. The cornfield where O’Connell’s body was found is now an overgrown pasture.
Source: David L. Shaw, Finger Lakes Times, August 6, 2105.