Someone, somewhere knows something.
On November 2, 1974, at about 1:30am, 17-year-old Katherine Kolodziej went missing, headed from a Main Street bar back to SUNY Cobleskill.
Twenty-six days later, her body, dressed only in her red coat, was found off MacDonald and Cross Hill Roads in Richmondville.
She had been stabbed to death.
No one has ever been arrested.
The crime continues to haunt those involved in investigating the case—among then, former State Police Trooper Tony Desmond of Sharon Springs—and Michelina Serino of Summit—and like Kathy, from Long Island--a criminal investigations buff, who’s just learned about the case 49 years later.
Convinced that somewhere out there is the missing piece to solving Kathy’s murder, Ms. Serino has been combing police reports and newspaper accounts for the past six months, digging deep online, and talking to anyone she can find who remembers when the SUNY Cobleskill freshman went missing or when she was found.
This Monday, November 13, starting at noon, Ms. Serino is holding a vigil on Main Street, Cobleskill, near the old Vault, where Kathy was last seen, hoping to draw out someone who was maybe afraid to speak up all those years ago.
She hopes, that missing piece.
“Maybe, we won’t get anything,” Ms. Serino said. “But we sure won’t get anything if we just forget about her. She deserves that much. She was here 60 days. She went out on a Friday night and didn’t come home. I’m not giving up.”
The case haunts Mr, Desmond too.
“I still think about it a lot, especially this time of year,” Mr. Desmond said. “I just don’t think she should be forgotten.”
Ms. Servino found Mr. Desmond through a phone call to the Times-Journal and he’s taken her and fiancee Glenn Svobada to the Cross Hill site where Kathy’s body was found.
They’ve been back a few times on their own, but after 49 years, Mr. Desmond said, it all looks different; what were open fields is now brush and trees.
Among the details Ms. Servino’s said she’s gleaned from her investigation: that when Kathy was discovered her red coat covered just the lower half of her body and the corners were weighted down by rocks; that she had apparently eaten after leaving the Vault, by some accounts at a diner in Warnerville; that she was stabbed using two different weapons; and that based on the autopsy report and the lack of decomposition, her body had been stored somewhere cold—maybe a freezer—for the 26 days between when she disappeared and when she was found.
Ms. Servino said she’s uncovered links to the mysterious yellow Volkswagen witnesses said Kathy was seen getting into; someone she connected with from Long Island—where Kathy was from—told her of a brother and uncle taking a trip upstate, then returning to repaint their yellow VW.
There’s also the story of a bloodied blue flannel shirt; she said she’s been in repeated contact with State Police, asking them to use updated technology to recover DNA from their evidence—though that would have to be matched to a suspect to go anywhere.
“Let me go in. Let me look at the evidence, a fresh set of eyes,” she said. “I know they’re understaffed; I have nothing but time on my hands. I’m not going to let it go.”
Anyone who can help can email Ms. Serino at Michelina.Serino@gmail or show up at the vigil.