Beverly Harris

On a spring Friday in Queens, New York, 13-year-old Beverly Harris disappeared. It was March 28, 1969, and the young Black girl was last seen near her family’s home at 216-18 113th Drive in the Cambria Heights neighborhood. The familiar streets she walked every day suddenly became the last place she was seen alive. Her family’s world was shattered the very next day, Saturday, March 29, when a horrific discovery was made. Beverly’s body was found in a swampy, desolate area of Rosedale, near the edge of what is now John F. Kennedy International Airport. Her remains had been burned, a brutal end to a life that had barely begun.

The investigation into Beverly's homicide was launched by the New York City Police Department, but the case quickly grew cold. Details released at the time were scant, and media coverage was minimal, leaving a void of information that has persisted for decades. The cause of her death was not widely reported, and the specific details of the crime scene have remained largely within confidential police files. The case became one of many unsolved tragedies from that era, a name on a list that investigators hoped to one day bring closure to.

Beverly’s murder occurred in a part of Queens that some researchers have since dubbed the "Springfield-Jamaica axis corridor," an area near the Nassau County border where several other violent crimes against women and girls took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. While police have never officially linked Beverly's case to a specific serial offender, online databases and cold case communities have noted similarities between her murder and others in the region. One such similarity is the act of setting a victim’s body on fire, a disturbing signature that appeared in other unsolved homicides. However, without official confirmation or new evidence, any connections remain purely speculative.

The passage of time has buried many of the facts of Beverly’s case. There are no public records of vigils, no anniversary appeals from law enforcement, and no family statements to be found in newspapers or online archives. Her story exists primarily in stark, clinical entries in cold case logs and brief mentions in timelines of other, more widely publicized crimes. Who Beverly was as a person—her friends, her hobbies, her dreams for the future—has been lost to the public record, overshadowed by the violence of her death.

More than half a century has passed, and the murder of Beverly Harris remains an open and unsolved case with the NYPD. The lack of media follow-up at the time means there are no known persons of interest, no descriptions of potential suspects, and no mention of any specific evidence collected from the scene. It is unknown if forensic evidence, such as DNA, was preserved from the 1969 crime scene or if it has been subjected to modern testing in the years since.

As of today, the investigation into who killed Beverly Harris is inactive, pending new information. There is no reward being offered for tips leading to an arrest. The case rests in the cold case files, a silent testament to a young girl whose life was stolen and whose killer was never brought to justice. The identity of the person who committed this terrible act in a Rosedale swamp remains a mystery locked in the past.