On the morning of January 15, 1983, staff at the Ramada Inn on Burrstone Road in New Hartford, New York, found the body of 47-year-old used car dealer Hector Ambrosi. A White male also known as Rock, Tore, or Etore, Ambrosi had been shot about seven times in the head inside his hotel room. Jewelry was taken from the victim, prompting investigators to consider robbery as a possible motive, but there was no sign of forced entry, suggesting he may have known his killer.

Ambrosi owned Midland Auto Sales in Frankfort and had ties that reached Syracuse, Albany, and Florida. The killing’s brutality and its timing soon after the gangland-style slaying of attorney Joseph Dacquino led to speculation about organized crime links. In 1985 police circulated a person-of-interest description: an intoxicated White male, about 25 to 30 years old with a medium build and a noticeable pot belly, possibly driving a late 1970s white hatchback (maybe a Ford). The weapon was never recovered, no arrests were made, and the family’s $20,000 reward went unclaimed. State police list the case as an open cold case.

Does anyone who knew Ambrosi, or who stayed at the Ramada Inn in mid-January 1983, remember suspicious visitors or that white hatchback?