Clara Toriello, 21, was found dead in her ground-floor Jamaica, Queens apartment on the morning of April 13, 1972. Her sister discovered her at about 7 a.m.; Toriello, a secretary who was engaged to a New York City police officer, was found naked except for a plastic cap from an electric hair dryer that was still humming nearby. An autopsy showed she had been stabbed four times in the neck and back.

Investigators concluded the attacker had entered through an open window sometime after midnight. Her murder was later linked to a series of similar attacks on women in Queens. The investigation eventually focused on Joseph Baldi, later called the Queens Creeper, who had been released from Creedmoor State Hospital and was tied to three other murders. Baldi confessed to four killings, including Toriello’s, though indictments in three of the cases including hers were dismissed on a technicality; he was convicted in the murder of Deborah Januszko and sentenced in 1975.

Did anyone who knew Clara or lived in Jamaica in 1972 notice signs that someone had been climbing through ground-floor windows?