Body of Woman Missing Since 1966 Found in Home of Late Cop

"I'm happy. I'm sad. I'm angry. I want to smack somebody." Such is the reaction of a daughter to confirmation that the body of her mother, missing some 50 years, has been found buried beneath the home of her late boyfriend, a married police officer, per Newsday. After emptying her bank account, 38-year-old Louise Pietrewicz vanished from her family's Long Island farm in October 1966. Her daughter, Sandy Blampied, was then only 11, reports the Washington Post. "I gave her a hug and a kiss before I left for school, and I bet that was the day he killed her," Blampied now tells the Times Herald-Record of one-time Southold police officer William Boken, who died in 1982. An early suspect, per ABC 7, Boken's conviction for beating his wife landed him in a psychiatric hospital, and no further questioning was done.

But then a Suffolk Times investigation published in October brought renewed interest to the case. Boken's former wife—who had no contact with Boken in the 14 years prior to his death—then directed police to the basement of the Southold home the couple occupied at the time of Pietrewicz's disappearance, saying a body had been buried there, reports the Suffolk Times. Seven feet beneath the dirt basement, authorities on March 19 discovered a skeleton wrapped in burlap. DNA tests confirmed it to be Pietrewicz's. "I just broke down and cried," Blampied says of learning the news late Wednesday. Blampied tells the Herald-Record that the Suffolk County medical examiner will try to determine Pietrewicz's cause of death next week. (A dollar bill could offer a clue to a girl's 1999 disappearance.)