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[Music] all homes have a history which includes the memories hopes and dreams of all who
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have lived there but this home in a quiet upscale neighborhood in suburban new york held
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something more in a steel drum stored in a crawl space was a secret that someone had hoped
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would last a lifetime [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] september 2nd 1999 was moving day for the cohen family
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in jericho new york before leaving that day ronald cohen noticed that the sanitation workers
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hadn't picked up all of his trash a note on a large steel drum said it wasn't removed because of its weight
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cohen had no idea what was inside since it had been in a crawl space in his home
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since the day he moved in nine years earlier [Music] when he broke the seal cohen was overcome by a terrible stench
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inside he saw what appeared to be a human hand and a lady's shoe [Music] local police transported the drum to the
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nassau county morgue where all of its contents were carefully removed for forensic examination inside
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were the mummified remains of a young woman there were also some plastic pellets a
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green plastic flower stem with leaves and a woman's pocketbook which was submerged in a mysterious brownish-green
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liquid at the bottom of the drum the liquid had virtually destroyed the contents of the pocketbook which might
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have identified the victim the cause of death appeared to be blunt force trauma to the head
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what was most noteworthy to the body and the cause of death were that there were
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10 different injuries called lacerations to the back and upper part of her head there are multiple fractures to the
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skull in some areas the skull was broken into small pieces there also was blood staining to these areas of injuries
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indicating that they occurred while she was alive but who was this murdered woman
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the medical examiner determined that the woman was either white or hispanic between 20 and 30 years of age she stood
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approximately five feet tall she also had some unusual dental work it didn't
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appear to be dental work that was performed in the united states it led me to believe that it was from a south
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american country when dr cadenese x-rayed the body he made a shocking discovery a 17-inch fetus a close to full-term
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baby boy three pieces of jewelry were removed from the body two rings and a locket
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that was inscribed to patrice love uncle phil the first discovery would come from the
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barrel itself there were several coated numbers on the drum one was as good as a fingerprint it
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led to a chemical company in linden new jersey company records indicated that the drum
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was manufactured in 1965 now 34 years later it shows up as someone's makeshift coffin
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[Music] a 55-gallon steel drum concealed in a crawl space of a suburban new york home
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revealed shocking evidence of a homicide the most recent owner said it had been in the crawl space since the day he
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moved in in 1990 the owner before that told police the same thing and said it never occurred to him to open the
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container since there were chemical labels on the side the woman's purse found in the liquid at
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the bottom of the drum contains some papers and an address book the pages were illegible since the
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liquid had reduced the paper to little more than pulp they were all sent to a forensic
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document examiner for analysis it was so heavily and thickly encrusted with a brownish yellow slime
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it was like a jelly like substance and it coated everything and when i touched the evidence with my gloves on i could
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see it just came right off of my hands the items had to be placed in a forensic drying cabinet for several days to draw
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out the moisture when dry they could be examined with a video spectral comparator or vsc which
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combines advanced digital engineering with the full range of infrared light sources in order to visualize writing
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that is not discernible with the naked eye this technology can show where alterations have been made on a check
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with the various light sources under an infrared luminescence setting the different ink will glow
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magnification can also detect when official documents have been altered two pages of a legal contract appear the
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same but under ultraviolet light it reveals that one of the pages was added later
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indented impressions left behind become visible with oblique or side lighting light from behind or transmitted light
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can show what's written under correction fluid after the pages from the barrel were dry
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the results were disappointing the liquid had removed the ink from the pages but after hours of meticulous and
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delicate work under infrared camera filters the document examiner started to see some names and addresses in the
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address book as i put it under the machine and tried the various filters and lights
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some names and phone numbers and addresses started to come up in the book it was actually quite amazing to see
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writing appear from within the pages of this book that had been submerged in these fluids
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for 30 some odd years but the information in the address book was 30 years old too
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and when investigators dialed the telephone numbers the individuals had long since moved
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facing an apparent dead end investigators turned their attention to the family who owned the home in the
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1960s the time frame in which the steel drum had been manufactured the owner in those years was a man named
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howard elkins who is now retired and living in boca raton florida and we have people in the neighborhood
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who are long-term residents say he was involved in some plastics company in manhattan
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the plastic connection rang alarm bells since a plastic leaf and plastic pellets
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were found in the drum along with the murdered woman in the 1960s howard elkins was part
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owner of the melrose plastic company in manhattan the company manufactured plastic plants
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and trees as investigators made plans to interview howard elkins in florida the address book from the drum
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started to reveal more names and more secrets the pieces of the puzzle were starting
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to come together in the search for the identity of the murdered pregnant woman found in the metal drum
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the serial numbers on the drum led investigators to a chemical company based in new jersey i went there with a
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detective from our lab who has some knowledge of chemicals we went there and we showed them the
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pellets and we showed them the green material showed them pictures of the barrel
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the chemical company identified the green liquid in the bottom of the drum as a die
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a halogen green dye used to color the bases on plastic flowers and trees but it hadn't been manufactured since 1971
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the pellets in the drum were the type used in making plastic leaves and flowers like the plastic leaf found with
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the body the local newspaper coverage of the unidentified woman in the steel drum led
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to an anonymous telephone call to the nassau county police he tells us about the drum where it comes from it tells us
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that that was the chemicals that they used when they were mixing the bases for these artificial trees so he puts all
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this together he puts everything in perspective first the caller did not know the identity of the dead woman but
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said that howard elkins was having an affair in the 1960s with an hispanic woman who worked for him in his plastic
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factory so we now have things to talk to about other than the fact that there was a
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barrel found under his house when police flew to boca raton florida to speak with howard elkins he wasn't
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entirely cooperative did you ever use this type of a barrel in your business no we never had any
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barrels like that no we never had any barrels like that did you ever use a dinos halogen green
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no we never used the chemical we had no need to use the cap there were plastic pellets found in the barrel
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and we believe that they were used in your business is that right i don't know
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i don't know what they would have been used for he lied to us we knew he was lying to us
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within five minutes of the interview i asked him at one point if you had did you ever have an affair
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while you were working here and he kind of surprised us and he said yes but then we went into what was her name
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i don't know can you describe her it was 30 years ago i said you can't even describe her was
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she tall was she short was she fat was she skinny was she spanish i don't remember
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after about 20 minutes of this uh i had removed from my briefcase a kit and i asked him if he would give me
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permission for me to take a swab from the inside of his mouth for dna purposes to see if he in fact was the father of
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that baby he told us no he said dude he didn't think he would allow that the interview was interrupted by a phone
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call from elkin's wife elkins asked the police to leave saying he wanted to speak with her privately
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this is private you're gonna have to leave after he asked us to leave we told him
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that we would i said that there was not a doubt in my mind that he was involved in this
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and i stood up and i stood right in front of him and i said we're gonna leave now mistaken
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but i'm going to get a court order i'm going to come back with that court order
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and i'm going to take your blood and i'm going to match your blood up to the dead
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baby and that dead girl and i'm going to come back here and arrest you for murder and put you in
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jail for the rest of your life he nodded his head and he opened the door and asked us to leave
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as police left to get the court order howard elkins left to go shopping he purchased a shotgun
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and some ammunition howard elkins was found inside a neighbor's garage by police and his own
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son a shotgun between his legs a fatal self-inflicted wound to his head the 70-year-old retired plastics
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executive left no final note of explanation after his suicide investigators took a
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sample of howard elkin's blood and sent it to labcorp a north carolina dna testing facility
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when we're testing for paternity we look for shared dna bands between the child
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or the fetus and the alleged father in the case of the fetus found in the drum there were obstacles to overcome
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the tissue samples from the fetus were very badly degraded after 30 years a technique called polymerase chain
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reaction or pcr allowed scientists to amplify the existing dna making an analysis possible
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this is the dna banding pattern from the fetus this is the dna banding pattern from mr elkins at every region of the
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dna that we tested the fetus and mr elkins have a band in common mr elkins could not be excluded with a
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99.93 probability of paternity although the crime was solved one mystery remained
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the identity of the woman in the drum the small address book that had been submerged in the green liquid in the
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bottom of the drum was finally starting to tell a story thirty-year-old secrets on blank pages
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that were now readable with the latest in forensic technology i kept looking through the book
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and on this page on the second line i found the name mr elkins and the address in manhattan with a
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phone number on another page barely readable were the words residencia nombre a resident alien number
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and the address and telephone number of someone named kathy andrade investigators were surprised to learn
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that after 30 years she was still living in the same apartment with the same telephone number
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kathy andrade knew immediately the identity of the pregnant young woman in the drum she was a student in her
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english class reyna angelica marikin from el salvador this lady almost immediately went to
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tears she told us that she knew angelic american that she was the one of the more lovely people that she ever knew
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and that she disappeared 30 years ago kathy andrade never knew what happened to her friend reyna maraquin although
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she feared she had met with foul play and i was in shock and i said oh my god you know it's hard to believe that these
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things can happen reyna marrakeen came to the united states in 1966 and lived here in a modest room in a
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catholic home for single women she attended classes at the high school of fashion industry and got a job at the
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melrose plastic company making artificial flowers she had a beautiful personality
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she always talked about her family and she was in touch with the family how much she loved new york and her dream
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was to become an american citizen shortly before she disappeared reina told kathy that she was pregnant
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but she did not tell her who the father was is he going to marry you she said eventually he will marry me
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i never asked her because she never said who he was but reyna told kathy that her boyfriend
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was married with three other children and reyna was beginning to question whether he had any intention of leaving
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his wife and children to marry her so she got very angry she called the house and once the phone was his wife
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and she told his wife that she was expecting a baby from her husband then he called her back and he says i am
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going to kill you i will never forgive you she was cried she was terrified he's going to kill me
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he's going to kill me i said why do you she says i don't know i don't know i
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just made a stupid mistake when kathy andrade went to reina's apartment she found the door unlocked
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but there was no sign of rainer and i waited for about three hours when nobody returned the phone never
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rang or anything i got scared i walked into the police station and i spoke to the officer
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and he says are you a relative of the young lady i said no i'm only a friend
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and i said but she's spreading she's about to have a baby oh she said you
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know she probably went shopping and since kathy andrade didn't know the identity of reina's lover there was
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little more she could tell police how about reyna honestly i feel sorry because there was a future for her
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you know she paid very dear for that mistake [Music] mr elkins investigators believe that
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howard elkins lured reina to the factory one night shortly after she told elkin's
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wife about their affair and elkins beat her to death he then took the body to his suburban
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long island home probably with the intention of dumping her into the ocean from his boat
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[Music] he placed the body into a steel drum from work to make sure it would sink to the bottom
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of the ocean he weighted it with plastic pellets [Music] [Music] [Music] but he miscalculated the weight of the
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drum after he sealed it at 350 pounds it was much too heavy to carry on to his boat
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[Music] his only alternative was to push it into a crawl space in his home and there it remained undisturbed
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through numerous owners for 34 years and for 30 years she spent in a barrel while howard elkins raised his family
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and had his children go to school and led whatever as normal life as you can you know waiting for that other shoe to
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drop and if trash collectors hadn't refused to pick up the drum the secret of howard elkins and reyna
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angelica marrakeen might never have been discovered oscar corral covered the story for
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newsday he flew down to el salvador to try to find reina's family in san martin a
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small village outside of san salvador he found reyna marrakeen's 95 year old
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mother she came out to the front of the house where there was a porch and i said
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to her i'm a reporter from newsday new york i told her that police had discovered a woman
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who had been murdered 30 years ago and when she saw her daughter's picture she
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almost fainted she had to lean on somebody who was carrying her her face fell she immediately began to weep it had
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been 30 years that this woman waited for an answer she told me she had dreams about her
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daughter for 30 years she told me she had a dream even that her daughter was in a barrel
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that haunted her for so long reyna maraquin left el salvador because she discovered her husband had a lover
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who was pregnant with her husband's child when she fled to new york city reyna
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found herself in the same situation although this time she was the pregnant other woman in a
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love triangle that had disastrous consequences so she was on both sides of the fence
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in this case and in the end it cost her her life investigators found one last message on
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a blank piece of paper found in the drum alongside reyna marrakeen and her unborn
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child a message possibly from reyna herself to howard elkins it said don't be mad
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i told the truth [Music] [Music] you