DNA, fingerprint evidence leads to arrest in cold case killing of 88-year-old Suffolk County widow
A tenacious retired detective and advances in photo recognition technology helped Suffolk County cops make an arrest in the brutal cold case killing of a beloved 88-year-old widow 21 years ago, prosecutors announced Friday.Raul Ayala, 51, was indicted for the murder of his then-neighbor Edna Shubert, whose body was discovered brutally beaten to death in her bedroom on Dec.12, 2003, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.“A shoe print impression was neatly visible on Ms.
Schubert’s neck, face in a herringbone pattern,” said Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Eric Abouladfia, adding the 93 pound woman’s cause of death was “blunt force trauma.”“An autopsy later revealed that Ms.Schubert sustained extensive facial fractures, as well fractures to her sternum, ribs, thyroid bone, and thyroid cartilage.
She also sustained a laceration to [her] collateral artery.” Ayala was arrested in Talmo, Georgia, where he had been living, on January 16.During a packed arraignment Friday afternoon where the suspect was remanded into custody, the now deaf defendant needed a sign language interpreter, according to lawyer Christopher Gioe.As a 29-year-old, Ayala lived merely 200 yards away from Schubert, around the corner from her home, and was believed to be unemployed then.
Tierney presented photos of Schubert’s house being broken into through a window and her front door left wide open all those years ago.The DA, who posted on X that this is “one of Suffolk County’s most brutal cold cases,” said there is no evidence of a relationship between the two.Abouladfia said that the case had a “breakthrough” in 2023 at the hands of Pasquale Albergo, a former Suffolk homicide detective “who never stopped thinking about this case … with the hopes that advances in technology would solve the murder that he never forgot.” Ultimately, detectives located Ayala’s fingerprints at the home by taking a new picture of a dated crime scene pho...