A Pregnant Worker, an Enraged Boss
(“A Voice From Beyond,” Forensic Files)
This week, it’s back to concentrating on an individual Forensic Files episode, and “A Voice from Beyond” is good way to start, with its blend of nostalgia and horror.
The story takes us back to a pre-internet world, when people kept handwritten address books with real paper.
It was exciting to see how investigators applied millennial-era forensic technology to evidence from the 1960s.
Only in L.I. In fact, the story had everything a true crime fan could hope for: an affluent businessman leading a double life, a desperate mother-to-be, a 95-year-old woman praying for word on her daughter, a crucial anonymous call to the police.
Oh, and a mummified body in a crawl space.
And for a little extra flavor, this Greek tragedy took place in Long Island, the same New York City commuter haven that gave rise to Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco, and numerous others who can’t quite pronounce the letter “r” in words that contain it but append it to words that don’t.
Forensic Files, as usual, did a great job of telling the story in 22 minutes, but I was curious about something not shown — the reaction of friends and neighbors when they learned a horrible secret about the respectable-seeming retiree in their midst.
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No Barrel of Fun. So let’s get started on the recap of “A Voice From Beyond,” along with some extra information drawn from internet research.
On September 2, 1999, as Ronald Cohen was preparing to vacate the Jericho, New York, house he had just sold for $455,000, he pried off the lid of a 55-gallon drum that had sat undisturbed beneath the bottom floor ever since he moved in.
He smelled noxious chemicals and saw a hand poking out of a pile of plastic pellets.
Authorities found an intact mummified body of a woman inside the barrel. They determined the deceased was young, petite, dark-haired, and pregnant and had died from blunt force trauma. She had some unusual dental work, likely performed in South America.
The fetus was a boy, 17-inches long.
Wrong numbers. The body had been preserved because the drum was airtight, but the pages of an address book (this is how folks kept track of friends before Outlook, iPhones, and Facebook) found in the barrel had decayed.
What really gave the episode armrest-grabbing suspense was the effort — via moisture extraction, magnification, and a video spectral comparator study — on the part of forensics experts to yield clues from the rotting paper.
They uncovered some names, addresses, and phone numbers, although the first batch yielded no leads since the people had long moved away or changed phone numbers. And this was 1999, post-internet but before social media enabled everyone to track down anyone.
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Locals help. By this time, police had traced the barrel to a chemical company in Linden, New Jersey, and dated its manufacture to 1965. It contained some plastic leaves in addition to the pellets.
Neighbors in Jericho remembered that an occupant around that time period, Howard Elkins, was part owner of the Melrose Plastic Company, a New York City maker of decorative artificial plants.
The neighbors didn’t mention any gossip about him, but the aforementioned anonymous caller did, telling Nassau County police that, in the 1960s, Elkins had been having an affair with a Hispanic woman who worked in his factory.
Elkins had long since moved to Boca Raton, Florida. He was none-too-happy to find New York detectives on the other side of his door in his upscale retirement community.
Resolution by gunfire. Presented with the evidence of the barrel and green dye inside, Elkins denied he’d ever seen such a thing. He admitted to having an affair but said he couldn’t remember what the woman looked like or her name.
He refused to give a DNA sample to determine whether he was the father of the fetus. Before leaving, Nassau County Detective Brian Parpan told Elkins the police would be getting an order for a blood sample.
Elkins, 70, promptly bought a shotgun and ammunition from Walmart and killed himself.
By this time, the lab had tapped the address book for the name of one more of the dead woman’s friends, and this one answered when police dialed her 30-year-old phone number.
Kathy Andrade knew immediately the body belonged to a friend she met in an English class, Reyna Angelica Marroquin, who disappeared in 1969 at the age of 27. A resident alien number found in the address book substantiated the identification, according to Cold Case Files Classic’s “The Barrel” segment.
Emotional turmoil. Marroquin came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1966, went to fashion school, and got a job at the Melrose factory. Shortly before disappearing, she let on that she was pregnant and that the father told her he was going to marry her.
But he already had a wife and three children and Marroquin was worried he would never keep his promise.
(Something mentioned in more than one newspaper story that Forensic Files didn’t bring up: Marroquin already had a small child whom she sometimes brought to the factory with her; it was never revealed who the father was, but co-workers suspected Elkins.)
According to Kathy Andrade, after Marroquin called her boyfriend’s house and told his wife she was pregnant, the man became enraged and threatened to kill Marroquin. She disappeared soon after.
Merciful messenger. Police theorized Elkins beat Marroquin about the head in a fit of anger, took the body to Long Island with the intention of dumping it in the ocean, put it in a steel drum, and weighted it with plastic pellets from his factory.
But at 350 pounds, it was too heavy to load onto his boat, so he pushed it into a crawl space, where it remained untouched for 30 years.
With the mystery solved and the perpetrator dead, the last loose end was finding Marroquin’s family.
Newsday reporter Oscar Corral flew to El Salvador and tracked down Reyna Marroquin’s mother in the town of San Martin. The 95-year-old, known as “Grandma Marroquin,” nearly collapsed when told of the discovery, Corral recalled in his Forensic Files interview. She’d been heartbroken ever since Reyna stopped writing home with no explanation in 1969. She’d had dreams depicting Reyna in a barrel.
Well-enough liked. As for Elkins, it sounded as though he’d been able to mask any feelings of guilt about his role in the tragedy. Below are two excerpts, including neighbors’ statements, from newspaper articles published after his suicide in 1999:
“Howard was very active in the community, very much in the social scene,” said neighbor Robert Froment. Elkins’ Florida neighbors yesterday were shocked that the big, bearded, jovial man could have been involved in such a crime. — New York Post
“He seemed like a very sociable fellow,” Frank Lonano, a neighbor in Boca Raton, said of Mr. Elkins, whom he had known only casually around the walled and affluent community of town houses overlooking a golf course. “He was just not the type.” Judith Ebbin, who with her husband, Arthur, bought the Jericho house from Mr. Elkins and his wife, Ruth, in 1972, owned it for 12 years, never suspecting all that while that a woman’s body lay in a drum in a crawl space under the den. “They seemed like such a lovely family,” she said of the former owners. — New York Times
The one bright note to the story is the resolution brought to Reyna’s mother. As CBS quoted her: “Now I know she’s with me. She came flying like a dove back to her home.” — RR
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Love this: numerous others who can’t quite pronounce the letter “r” in words that contain it but append it to words that don’t.
Why do all sleaze ball misogynists own a boat? Modern science came this far, and still no one can explain why they all own an RV. Questions linger, how the police knew the victim’s dental work was done in Central America? Bananas and pineapples embossed on her fillings? Might say it was a death attributable to impending child support, divorce and embarrassment. Love the detailed commentary on a cool show.
Interesting theory. Scott Peterson had a boat, too.
Because her two front teeth had gold inlay it’s not done in the u.s. it’s common in central america.
Ditto on the comment regarding the Long Island “r’s”. That’s hilarious. And I say this humbly as someone who comes from a part of the almost-Midwest where “y’ins” is considered a legitimate contraction.
And let’s not forget the ever-popular “the floor needs washed” sentence construction from NW Pennsylvania.
Yes, and Crayons pronounced “crans.” We were very economical with our syllables!
The floor needs washed, yins, jagoff are all indigenous to Western PA
I can attest to that, too.
What happened to the child she brought to the factory with her?!
I’m curious, too! I think the child would be around 46 years old today, but no one seems to know his or her fate.
She was no angel. It’s a shame she chose to fornicate with a married man. She didn’t learn the first time getting pregnant so she got pregnant again. She was trying to break up a family. He’s a murdering scum, but the real victim is her first-born child who had no parents and no family!
I think he used undue influence over her, but she was foolish, to be sure.
How??
It takes two to make a child. He was just as involved in the affair as she was. He broke up his family with his wife’s and Reyna’s. Quit your victim blaming.
Agreed — no one forced him to get involved with her.
Right
No one said she was an angel but yes she was fooling w/ him and it was what it was they grown if they wanted to do that they did it and he was married like you said so why did he get involved with her in the first place you thought he would say no I’m married????,Get the” F” out of here!
What happened to the child???
I’m afraid the answer died with Howard Elkins.
She did not deserve to die. He did not have to sleep with her.
True!
This story does not fully match the Forensic Files show. The young woman was married in El Salvador. Her husband cheated on her with another woman. She left him to start a new life in the US. There was no mention of a child in the Forensic Files episode.
Men during that era seen women as subserviant and made for needs of men. So go to hell those passing judgment. Your sins are not published for all to see here.
Amén you are absolutely right!! Nobody has the right to take somebody’s life just for their inconvenience..
The small child was actually a friend’s, she used to earn money child minding before she got her place at the Melrose factory.
Many thanks for filling in a piece of the puzzle.
How do you know this piece of information?
She didn’t have a child. She was caring for a friends child.
That makes more sense — thx for writing in!
For all we know Elkins raped her or at least pressed her into sex as her employer, she fell pregnant, and rightly expected his support. Or maybe she was predatory. We don’t know. Whatever, he did a terrible thing.
FIRST OF ALL She was only 17 so WE DO NOT KNOW IF SHE WAS RAPED OR WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. He could have forced her to have sex. He was the ADULT. She was a CHILD. I think I remember them saying she was 17 when she had the baby So to me if that is true all BLAME is on the KILLER. I don’t care if she said YES to Sex she was a minor. He was an ADULT who most likely could have worked his way into her life cheating on his family. NO BLAME should be on this girl. regardless of what she did or did not do she did not deserve to DIE and the child did not either. If one SHOT was fired it sounds to me like he murdered her and left the CHILD ALIVE to die on top of her BODY. I wish this man would have not committed suicide and chose to take the COWARD’S way out, because we needed details about the child and he should have SUFFERED IN PRISON for this crime. He got away with a CLEAN LIFE living it up in FLORIDA. He got to retire very nice and led a great life while her MOTHER suffered not knowing where she was at or what happened to her. But the mom had the dreams of her in a barrel or drum. How anyone can say that this girl was at fault in any way shape form or fashion when she was a MINOR is wrong. IF THE COWARD WOULD HAVE LIVED I wish they could PUT HIM IN A DRUM WITH HIS WIFE AND KIDS and see how he likes it. Of course don’t let them die, just scare them to death. Make them think they are getting what he did to her. And then release him. Put his ass in PRISON where they would tear him apart for hurting a CHILD. PRISON PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE HUMANS WHO HURT CHILDREN. HE would have been beaten to death most likely in prison.
Not possible that she was only 17. She was born in 1941, came to the U.S. in 1966. She was 25 when she immigrated. She was 12 years younger than Elkins. Elkins was born in 1929. She had to be over 25 when she was killed. Therefore no younger than 24 when Elkins impregnated her.
I think he did the State a favour by killing himself. Crimes such as this make you wonder how many others (almost) got away with murder during their natural lives…
Exactly so true.
I guess I was wrong. When I watched this show this morning I thought they said she was only 17. Sorry for that MISTAKE. I am going to rewatch it again. Regardless she did not deserve to die this way. Nor the baby.
I think the worst that can be said of the victim is that she was unwise to have got involved with her boss and a married man, and, apparently, to have told the wife, which was bound to have adversely affected her relationship with the perp (at the least). But as I say above, she may have been raped or more likely coerced – in which case she was entitled to be extremely upset and angry (though her friend, Andrade, doesn’t give the impression that this pregnancy was the result of violence but of affection – and, indeed, says on FF that it was foolish to have disclosed to the wife).
However, rather than focus on the victim’s perhaps poor decision(s) we should do so on the perp’s infinitely worse and wicked – murdering a woman and his unborn child (not to mention adultery). And I shudder to think how he lived for some years in a house with the victim rotting in a barrel under stairs. What a monster. It beggars belief… And his family (wife at least) now know it was there too…
Why should his wife and kids be put in a barrel? They’re innocent too.
Is she innocent or did she know?
This is all a story of a rich American factory owner taking an advantage of a poor immigrant worker who had come in search of greener pasture. He might have threatened her with dismissal if she had rejected him…or better still might have made huge promises of getting her life better if she agrees..In any case, she was poor and had no choice but God speaks always..after 30yrs, he got exposed for killing his own unborn child and mother.
Maybe the wife knew.
I’m sorry for Elkins’ family – who were likely appalled and traumatised when they discovered what he’d done at the time of his suicide, but his death saved the taxpayer keeping this creature in prison until death. He probably did everyone a favour by taking his life. The fact that he’d ‘moved on’ with literally no thought of her is illustrated by his moving house and leaving the corpse there… He surely wouldn’t deliberately have left evidence of a murder…
The condescension sprinkled in about the topic of address books is so stupid and out-of-touch, stopped reading the article at that point. Millennials know what a fucking address book is, we’re 26-41, we had them too you fucking ponce, you’re looking for Gen Z.
Oh, wow. I didn’t mean to condescend to millennials — I was acknowledging that my generation grew up low tech. My 31-year-old niece told me I was in a time warp for using the term “answering machine” and tipping food deliverers in cash instead of in-app.
How could Elkins’ family not smell the body in the barrel? If they did, how did he explain it?
Good question. My guess is that the chemicals in the pellets had something to do with it.
That makes sense, thank you!
Astounding that Elkins left the 350 lb. barrel in the house after selling it, because the elderly homeowner who found and opened it somehow managed to move it to the curb for pickup — maybe he had help. So Elkins easily could have paid some temp day laborer to help move the barrel onto his boat, where he could have rolled it into the ocean later, sealing the secret forever.
As a purely circumstantial killer, maybe he felt gnawing guilt all those years, as his suicide indicates.
“…maybe he felt gnawing guilt all those years, as his suicide indicates.” The suicide doesn’t remotely suggest guilt — as it occurred immediately after police informed him his DNA would be taken and he’d be charged with murder, decades after. He offed himself to avoid natural life imprisonment (and presumably his family’s reaction).
True, but prisons are full of murderers who didn’t kill themselves when the noose was tightening. Many prefer life in prison and all the opprobrium to death.
I usually like a lot of your blog posts, but this one rubbed me the wrong way because of the “millenials” comment. I’m a millenial in my 30s, I had an address book up until I got my first cell phone. It’s just a really unnecessary and condescending comment in a post that is supposed to focus on the story of the victim, Reyna Marroquin. There’s a time and place for everything.
Thanks for writing in about this. I didn’t mean to be condescending — but you’re the second reader who’s taken issue with my comment, so obviously there’s something to it. As the proverb goes, “If one man calls you a donkey, pay no mind. If two men call you a donkey, buy a saddle.” I’ll keep your point in mind as I continue writing blog posts.
You sure have a lot of patience especially with the first one, I would have told him to take a hike, makes you the better person, wish I could be that way but alas, I have no tolerance for nonsense and what in the world is a “ponce”? ha ha ha ha
“Ponce’ puzzled me too. I just looked it up in Merriam-Webster’s. Yikes, none-too-nice.
I doubt any vaguely normal woman would remain with a man she knew had murdered his lover – if only ‘cos she knows he’s capable of killing her. There are women who have: one thinks of mafia wives who may not have known the details but certainly knew their husbands were – directly or indirectly – murderers (of men). Again, I doubt a wife could live with the rotting corpse of her husband’s victim under the stairs (if your question includes that knowledge too).
On saying this, I’m unclear that Elkins was still married to the wife and/or they were separated or divorced. It is more conceivable that a woman could keep shtum about her husband’s committing murder if she was leaving him and agreed to keep quiet in exchange for generous financial support (it seems as if Elkins was comfortable), as opposed to the ‘family shame’ of his conviction and his thence inability to support her/family. Most women wouldn’t think twice separating from, and reporting, their murdering partner, but I imagine a few would see it in more practical terms.
A woman who had agreed to keep quiet remains a risk to him, and thus to herself, but there are ways of mitigating this, such as the ‘if anything happens to me my lawyer has a letter for the police…’ OK – it’s a bit ‘Columbo’ but I dare say it’s happened!
Women aren’t nearly as violent as men but are likely every bit as greedy and self-interested.
T: Indeed — a good point; suicide is in some sense much the harder option – but you’re comparing largely relatively young men with someone much nearer the end of natural life who could rationally view prison as considerably harder on someone in his 70-80s; who had known relative comfort as a wealthy man (unlike most younger prisoners); and who would expect total rejection by his family in his likely final decade (loneliness). He might thus see his loss as greater than a younger man’s, despite a significant proportion of the younger facing more years’ incarceration. A serious health condition – if he had one – could also have weighed against coping with prison. Also, the murder of a woman bearing his child could attract the special opprobrium of inmates – the ‘child killer’ – ensuring a specially grim time in prison (I was a prison chaplain: this would mean he would have to be kept apart from gen pop).
Thus while we can only infer reasoning, we can reasonably expect guilt to be stronger nearer the commission of the terrible crime, not decades later, coinciding with discovery. It therefore seems more reasonable to conclude it was discovery, not guilt, that elicited suicide. Indeed, the fact that he left her cadaver in his former home rather suggests that far from guilt he had simply forgotten about her. For who in their right mind would leave the strongest evidence of murder to be discovered when he could simply have had the barrel dumped (with help as heavy). For me this is a pretty persuasive counter to your point. If this isn’t enough, so horrible was this crime, it’s reasonable to view its commission by a sociopath – and they don’t ‘do’ guilt.