Deborah Januszko, 15, was asleep in the ground-floor bedroom of her family home in Jamaica, Queens, in the early hours of June 17, 1972, when someone drove a knife through an open window into her chest. Her scream alerted her parents; she was taken to a nearby hospital and died soon afterward. Investigators noted a metal milkbox placed under the window near the bed, suggesting the attacker may have stepped up to strike.

Detectives kept watch in the neighborhood after the killing. Three days later Detective Donald Palmer stopped a man who identified himself as Joseph Baldi. Officers later found multiple knives and sexually explicit magazines in Baldi’s room. During interrogation Baldi reenacted lifting an invisible box, stepping up to a window and lunging forward, and gave taped answers with detailed descriptions of the bedroom. He was arrested and charged in the murder.

Baldi had an earlier 1971 incident in Queens in which he allegedly tried to shoot an officer; he was found incompetent to stand trial and was released from state hospitals in early 1972. At a non-jury murder trial in late November 1974 the court ruled a June 21 confession voluntary, and Baldi was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life. Did anyone in Jamaica at the time notice a prowler or see someone near ground-floor windows around June 17, 1972?