by Karol KaluzaWe know his DNA. We know she fought back. We know where her body was, how it was found. We knew her daily routine, we knew she ran in the daytime. Someone must have seen or heard something. We also know she ran alone this day. To me this seems like such an overwhelming amount of evidence that we as a community, and our law enforcement, should have somebody behind bars. A crime was committed and if there’s no one to pay for it, that just makes it worse. We start to lose trust in our criminal justice system. Karina Vetrano was murdered on Aug. 2, 2016 as she jogged alone in Spring Creek Park in Queens, New York, in a remote area that locals call the “Weeds.” She was a young woman (30) who had a passionate personality, who had her own blog and thousands of followers on social media. Why hasn’t the perpetrator been served justice yet? Vetrano usually went running every day and had a set schedule. She and her father use to run daily around 5pm. Until this one day when her father was nursing an injury and repeatedly told Vetrano not to go running by herself. She was brutally attacked and murdered on her jog and dragged into the weeds. Her socks were wet, her headphones, shoe, and cellphone were scattered all over the place. After a few hours her father became curious about where she was, so he called three times. She didn’t pick up. He contacted the police and went to look for her. After pinging her cell phone her father noticed his daughter’s body in the weeds with her hands still grasping the weeds, reflecting her struggle with the perp. Many say that part of the reason the killer picked the spot was to confuse the police, because the area has been a killing and dumping ground before. It must be hard on a father to find his own daughter murdered on the one day he didn’t go running with her. Does he take all the blame for it? I know for a fact how hard it is to find somebody hurt, yet alone murdered. I was walking with my friend one day in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and we went our separate ways heading home. We were texting each other and all of the sudden communication stopped. As I was right in front of my building I tried to call him and his phone was off. After several minutes, assuming something might have happened while walking at night, I hopped in my car and just headed over to his house. I found him beat up and robbed steps away from his house. I felt some sort of guilt for not walking with him; he’s the one who wanted to take the cab home in the first place. The investigation started immediately Vetrano’s body was discovered. Detectives and investigators started by noticing the bruises she had on her body and face. Her teeth were knocked out either from the struggle or biting the criminal. They found DNA on her neck, fingernails, and cell phone. They ran the DNA thought the national and state databases but they got no matches. There are two reasons why there are might be no matches. One--the perpetrator was a teen and never convicted of a crime before, or two-- that he was incarcerated before they routinely took DNA samples. There was also no DNA at the crime scene to connect it to any sexual assault. DNA analysis is still evolving; today maybe it more accurate than ever before. The innocence project has been exonerating falsely accused people due to DNA samples which don’t match or were obtained wrongfully. A week later Vanessa Marcotte, a New York City resident who worked at Google, went to visit her family in Massachusetts. She, just like Ventrano , went on a jog and never returned home. It’s not known whether she was attacked head-on or from behind and what he used to hit her. The perpetrator fought and struggled with Marcotte, and his DNA was left on her body so he decided to set her on fire. If he had committed a crime in the past his DNA might be in the system and might lead law enforcement straight to him. Burning the body would have destroyed this evidence, but the evidence was not wholly destroyed when the entire body was not burned. Marcotte’s death is very similar to the case of Vetrano , killed a week earlier. There is no direct evidence that these two murders are related but there is also a high chance that they are. Back to my story, my friend called the police from my phone immediately. They came to take a report and asked about what had been stolen. His phone, his backpack containing his computer, his camera and his wallet, my friend said. Since there had been so many robberies in that area, the police were acutely anxious to catch these attackers. They collected surveillance video from nearby houses, which gave a clear shot of the attackers but surveillance didn’t catch their face 100%, not enough to confirm the identification . The attackers used masks or hoodies to conceal their faces. These crimes haven’t been solved. Crimes go unsolved all the time, from basic robberies to murders. How is it possible that we live in this day, in an age of advanced technology, yet crimes still go unsolved? We shouldn’t we be worried every time we leave our houses, shouldn’t be to forced to look over our shoulders, shouldn’t be scared to walk down the street at night. My friend’s case and the two murders above never got solved. Our communities need to come together to help law enforcement. People in the area near a crime can be the biggest break to any case. If you have any information in regards to any case, please call Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). Finding a murderer isn’t easy, but we can’t leave any case on the shelf. We need to keep talking about it and posting about it on social media so nobody can forget. Cases usually go unsolved and unheard of after a few months—we can’t let that happen here.
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