Oct 4, 2026 · 53 min · 14 segments
This New York cold case remained unsolved for 42 years until investigators took the extraordinary step of exhuming the suspected killer. Explore the murder investigation, forensic breakthrough, and…
Eve Wilkowitz was 20 years old in the spring of 1980, and by all accounts, she was just getting started.
She'd grown up on Long Island with her younger sister, Irene, and their parents, Alfred and Dorothy.
The Wilkowitz family lived in Oakdale, a small hamlet in the town of Islip on Long Island's South Shore.
The sisters were close in the way that sisters sometimes are when life forces them together early.
Their mother, Dorothy, was diagnosed with breast cancer when the girls were young.
She fought it for years.
She lost.
Dorothy died in 1976.
Irene was about 13.
Eve was 16 or 17.
And in that moment, the family fractured in a way that never fully healed.
Alfred was left raising two daughters alone, and Eve, the older sister, stepped into a role that went beyond just being a sibling.
She became a second anchor in a household that had just lost its center.
Irene would later describe it simply.
"Mostly," she said, "she liked being a big sister to me." Eve was outgoing, social, and curious about the world in a way that made people gravitate toward her.
She had a lot of friends and kept them close.
She loved horses.
That was her real passion, horseback riding, spending time at stables and around open fields on Long Island.
Growing up on the South Shore, she had access to riding stables scattered across Suffolk County, and horses gave her something that the rest of her world couldn't always provide, a kind of freedom, a kind of calm.
Irene later said horses were her passion above everything else.
Beyond that, Eve loved music.
She loved reading and writing and drawing.
She was the kind of person who was always creating something, always engaged with the world around her.
She wasn't just passing through life at 20.
She was building one.
Eve Wilkowitz was 20 years old in the spring of 1980, and by all accounts, she was just getting started.
She'd grown up on Long Island with her younger sister, Irene, and their parents, Alfred and Dorothy.
The Wilkowitz family lived in Oakdale, a small hamlet in the town of Islip on Long Island's South Shore.
The sisters were close in the way that sisters sometimes are when life forces them together early.
Their mother, Dorothy, was diagnosed with breast cancer when the girls were young.
She fought it for years.
She lost.
Dorothy died in 1976.
Irene was about 13.
Eve was 16 or 17.
And in that moment, the family fractured in a way that never fully healed.
Alfred was left raising two daughters alone, and Eve, the older sister, stepped into a role that went beyond just being a sibling.
She became a second anchor in a household that had just lost its center.
Irene would later describe it simply.
"Mostly," she said, "she liked being a big sister to me." Eve was outgoing, social, and curious about the world in a way that made people gravitate toward her.
She had a lot of friends and kept them close.
She loved horses.
That was her real passion, horseback riding, spending time at stables and around open fields on Long Island.
Growing up on the South Shore, she had access to riding stables scattered across Suffolk County, and horses gave her something that the rest of her world couldn't always provide, a kind of freedom, a kind of calm.
Irene later said horses were her passion above everything else.
Beyond that, Eve loved music.
She loved reading and writing and drawing.
She was the kind of person who was always creating something, always engaged with the world around her.
She wasn't just passing through life at 20.
She was building one.
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