UNITED STATES
The woman with the scorpion identified thanks to her DNA 30 years after her death
Science has revealed that the one who was brutally murdered in 1991 was a young mother. And that her 2-year-old daughter has been missing since her murder. The police are looking for her.
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The police had at the time released the tattoo of the victim as well as his composite portrait in an attempt to identify him.
Richmond County Attorney’s Office
We know today that it was Christine Belusco.
Richmond County Attorney’s Office
The body was handcuffed and the hammer used to hit the victim was found under her.
Richmond County Attorney’s Office
A photo of Christa, who was two at the time of her mother’s murder and has since disappeared. She should look like the photo on the right if, at 33, she is still alive.
Richmond County Attorney’s Office
On September 20, 1991, a woman’s body was discovered in a vacant lot on Staten Island, south of New York. The body is handcuffed and the victim was strangled and hit on the head with 17 hammer blows. The assassin then set him on fire. The hammer was found under his body with an inscription engraved on it, a name, “Loyd L.”.
Despite this, the investigators will find neither the assassin nor the identity of the victim. The only clue for the latter, a red and blue scorpion tattooed on her right buttock. Police circulated the image several times, hoping someone would recognize the tattoo, but no one announced themselves and the victim has since been known as ‘the scorpion woman’. A composite sketch had also been drawn from the corpse.
Where is the child?
New advances in the field of DNA identification have once again made it possible to put a name to the unfortunate. This is Christine Belusko, 30 years old at the time, writing the «New York Times». Investigators learned of this in April 2021. They tracked down one of her biological brothers and learned that Christine was the daughter of a woman who had eight other children and was placed for adoption while she was Babe. But what the brother was also able to reveal was that at the time of his murder, Christine was the single mother of a 2-year-old baby girl, Christa. But the last time anyone remembers seeing the child was a week before the tragedy.
The police have therefore since sought to find Christa but nothing came of it. That’s why she gave a press conference on Tuesday to reveal the identity of the victim and appealed for Christa. She released a photo of the child at the time and a projection of what she might look like today at 33. “Is she alive, is she okay?” asked the detective in charge of the case. Also remains to find Christine’s murderer.
Gone when she was adopted
Investigators have tracked down the identity of her adoptive parents and a boy the couple had also adopted. None of the three ever knew that the young woman had been murdered because, when she learned that she had been adopted, she had moved away from her adoptive family. She had told him of her intention to move to Florida with her daughter. She, who worked in a chain of clothing stores, where the clothes she wore on the day of her death came from, had left Clifton where she lived in 1991. She had briefly lived in Pennsylvania but investigators do not know what she came to Staten Island where her body was discovered in September.
Serial killer Joel Rifkin, who killed 17 women between 1989 and 1993, was briefly considered a potential suspect. But today prosecutor Michael McMahon believes the gruesome nature of Christine’s death suggests it was someone who knew her well and became enraged enough to beat her mercilessly. “There is no indication that it was some sort of serial killer on the prowl who took her on board,” he said.