Sheila Heiman, 33, was killed inside her family’s home on Mulberry Place in North Woodmere, New York, on July 20, 1973. Her children were away at summer camp and her husband had left on an errand that morning; he returned in the early afternoon to find her dead in the bathroom. Investigators described severe, close-range injuries: multiple lacerations to the skull, a fractured jaw, and a lacerated jugular vein consistent with a vicious assault. Heiman worked for a Brooklyn book company at the time.

The case remained unsolved for decades. A renewed round of forensic testing in another Nassau County case produced a DNA link to Richard Cottingham in 2022; Cottingham subsequently admitted in open court on December 5, 2022, to multiple Nassau County killings from the early 1970s, including Heiman’s. Prosecutors later agreed not to pursue a separate prosecution for her murder because Cottingham was already serving sentences that will keep him incarcerated for life. Is there anyone who knew Sheila or who remembers the neighborhood and that day who can help fill in details about her life and last movements?