NYPD detectives have finally identified the body of a woman found mysteriously buried in cement in what was once a famous Hell’s Kitchen hotspot 20 years ago. And they were eerily helped by the victims of 9/11.
Police say the woman known only as “Midtown Jane Doe” was found in Sunset Park after her skeleton was discovered by construction workers at 301 West 46th Street in Manhattan in February 2003. Believed to be Patricia Kathleen McGlone, a teenage girl who lives there. Brooklyn was last seen in the late 1960s.
Detective Ryan Glass of the NYPD’s Cold Case Unit finally has McGlone’s positive ID after years of thorough old-fashioned gumshoe detective work and the toil of high-tech forensics and genealogy research in the police department’s crime lab. Obtained. Her DNA from a woman murdered on September 11, 2001.
“Now we can begin the next phase of the investigation, which is finding the culprit,” Glass recently told the Post about the story that once shocked the city, frustrated investigators and made tabloid headlines across the Big Apple. talked about the incident.
“This job is incredibly rewarding,” added the officer, who spent seven years as a detective in the NYPD’s 6th Precinct before transferring to the NYPD’s Cold Case Unit, something he said he always wanted to be.
“Everyone is someone’s child. We have to bring closure,” he said.
Investigators said McGlone, who was between 17 and 19 years old, was strangled, tied with electrical wire and wrapped in carpet in a building that once housed The Scene, a rock ‘n’ roll club where rioters were held. It is believed that it was cemented into the basement. , a joint that hosted the likes of Jimmy Hendrix and the Velvet Underground until it closed in 1969.
McGlone’s body was discovered when construction workers broke a cement slab in the basement of the building, sending her skull tumbling to the floor.
Inside the makeshift grave were a watch, a children’s toy and a signet ring with the initials PMcG.
But the agency’s investigation into the macabre discovery, which made headlines in the pages of the Post in 2003, was hampered by limited forensic technology at the time, continued rises in urban homicide rates, and numerous deadlocks in the case. Taking this into consideration, the situation quickly hit a dead end.
Eventually, however, as technology related to DNA sampling improved and family and genealogy tracing became more widespread, police eventually used small amounts of genetic material taken from a woman’s skeleton to identify her. I was able to unravel my family tree. .
“We used the Forensic Investigation Family Tree under the NYPD Crime Lab Forensic Investigation Division to create that family tree,” Glass said. “That hit is back in early 2023.”
Glass and his team then began interviewing the people in the family tree. All clues on her paternal side were missing, but investigators turned to her maternal side and found a 90-year-old woman in Florida who turned out to be a distant cousin of Midtown’s Jane Doe. .
The woman recalled that when she lived in Brooklyn, her sister used to babysit some of her younger cousins. DNA tests revealed that one of them was Midtown Jane.
Glass said he was able to help with the identification using a DNA sample from a woman who died on 9/11.
DNA submitted by a family hoping to find the remains of a female 9/11 victim in Manhattan rubble has been linked to a Midtown Jane Doe.
“The genetic genealogy used in the study was [from her skeleton] “Jane Doe was identified by her distant genetic relatives,” Glass said.
Investigators found another DNA lead they believed was Midtown Jane Doe’s parents, and used that information to identify the body as McGlone.
Mr. Glass has used public records to piece together McGlone’s short life, growing up in a house on Third Avenue in Sunset Park, attending Catholic school and then public high school for just eight days before getting married. and began looking into the records of the Brooklyn church. A man in his early 30s who disappeared around 1968 or 1969.
Now that detectives had a name, they began working to identify McGlone’s killer.
Glass said the girl’s mystery husband is connected to the Hell’s Kitchen building where her body was found.
“We’re still trying to get information about him and see what the situation was with her,” Glass said. “What we can say at this point in the investigation is that he does have a connection to where she was found.”
Glass said investigators who helped identify the tragic woman included: Lt. Michael Saccone, commander of the cold case squad. retired Detectives Gerald Gardiner and Robert Hahn; Linda Doyle, a genealogist with the New York City Police Department Forensic Investigation Division; Detective Joey Rodriguez and Criminal Inspector Sara Sciortino, as well as City Hall Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Angela Soler and Assistant Chief of the Anthropology Department Dr. Bradley Adams.
The investigation continues under the direction of Siobhan Berry of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation and Colleen Barbato, head of the Forensic Cold Case Division.
