http://www.action3news.com/Global/story.as...8&nav=menu550_2Cold Case Investigation: What Happened to Mary Cronin?
Posted: May 6, 2008 05:35 AM
It's one cold case even investigators admit fell through the cracks.
Someone brutally killed Mary Cronin and has gotten away with it for the past 16 years.
Mistakes made early in the investigation may have let the killer slip away.
Now investigators and friends are trying to make up for lost time.
In the beginning, Liz Zorko thought she had all the time in the world with her friend, Mary. Liz reads from a letter she wrote about Mary,
"In the early morning hours, a body was thrown into a field far from the city, perhaps still alive then, still breathing and warm..."
Turns out, Liz had already shared a lifetime with Mary Cronin. But she didn't know it at the time. Looking at old pictures, Liz points out the old black and white one of Mary with her bangs and page boy haircut.
"We would have been in second grade, there she is right there."
"Mary and I went to school since Kindergarten all the way to high school, so she was pretty much a daily presence with her every day, she was always there." Mary was a bridesmaid in Liz's wedding.
"She was always there and then she wasn't there."
Douglas County Sheriff's Investigator Dave Kofoed says, "She was a young woman, who just fell off the face of the Earth."
Mary Cronin. Age 27. A business student at the College of Saint Mary's.
A woman who always had a big smile and a contagious laugh. Liz remembers, "She was a ton of fun. Everything was more fun when mary was around."
Mary worked part time at Cappy's Bar at 108th and Mockingbird in Omaha. It was April 12, 1992, she was in the parking lot about 1:30 in the morning after the bar closed with a man. That was the last time she was seen alive.
Mary's purple Cadillac found a few hours later... A few miles down the road in Sarpy County in a ditch...near 96th and Harrison. It was left running, lights on, door open with her purse still in the front seat.
Mary just vanished. Her car just towed away.
When the family got notice three weeks later her car had been impounded, Mary's brother filed a missing person's report. In May of 1992 he told reporters, "I don't believe she went willingly. She knows when you drive down the road, you lock your doors. She was a friendly person but she'd been around enough to know you just don't open your door to anybody."
Three weeks of missed opportunities for investigating foul play in Mary's disappearance. Kofoed says, "It was multi-jurisdictional in nature and in that case things fall through the cracks unintentionally."
Time goes on. Fast forward one year to May 4th, 1993. Another jurisdiction.
Mushroom hunters find a skull and some bones in a Cass County field, North of South Bend.
Cadaver dogs and volunteers search miles of fields and a trash dump.
Turns out, the skull and a few other bones belong to Mary.
No longer a missing person. But a murdered person.
Forensic Anthropologist Joanna Kay studies a replica of Mary's skull and the unique blows to her head. Kay says, "You can see there are some injuries, there are at least three big ones." You can still see the blows 16 years after they were inflicted. The murder weapon was never recovered, but by the injuries, Investigators believe it was ball ping hammer.
16 years later, they still don't know who did it or why. Detectives and even friends have theories. Mary dabbled in drugs and questionable relationships. Liz admits, "She had her dark side too, she had her demons."
Kofoed says, "I'm going through all the pieces of evidence." Today the cold case is open and in the hands of only one agency.. Douglas County Crime Scene Investigators. In a special room at the sheriff's department, every piece of evidence is layed out. There are hundreds of pieces on several tables. Kofoed says the killer's DNA could be on this evidence. DNA that couldn't be detected in the early 90's because Investigators had no way to find it." Kofoed says,
"Now 16 years later, the technology might catch up with the person who did this."
Liz tearfully says, "That girl deserves a proper burial and so I think it's a real plea to the community to help us fund who did this to her so that she can rest in peace and not some evidence locker."
Time stood still for Mary Cronin... Liz reads more from her letter:
"I see the fear and pain she must have felt, those last moments reflected in her brown eyes whenever I close my own in the light of light.. I think of her."
At the time, Investigators said everyone was a suspect.
Today, Detectives still have their eyes on the main ones. There is a $10,000 reward for any information that helps solve this case. If you know something about Mary Cronin's murder no matter how small it may seem.. Call Douglas County Sheriff's Investigators at 444-7996.
Personal Note from Michelle Bandur:
"I grew up with Mary Cronin. We attended Arbor Heights Junior High and Westside High School together. Although we went our separate ways, Mary made a lasting impression on me. I will always remember her smile and that laugh. I can still hear her laugh. I never remember Mary angry or upset or saying anything negative about anyone."
Reported by Michelle Bandur;michelle@action3news.com
Entire Letter written by Mary's best friend, Liz Zorko:
"In the early morning hours, her body was thrown into a field far from the city. Perhaps she was still alive then; perhaps still breathing and warm. It was spring. New spring, before the crickets played their violin legs. Perhaps she heard robins welcoming the dawn. More likely, their melodies fell upon her dead ears. If Mary's soul hadn't left her when she first arrived, it certainly left her when the blizzard came the next day, pulling up its frigid blanket and tucking her into her final bed of silent slumber.
The thaw came. Hungry animals torn at her limbs: the delicate hands; the arm she broke when, as a kid, she ran into a door which had been slammed in her face; the legs that used to chase me on the playground and, later, raced me to the river's edge. Insects took the remainder: the brain which could be both demented and razor sharp; the lips that used to smile, her fine china skin. Rain washed her small bones and they sank into the mud. The robins took her hair to build their nests. I'm she she felt a sense of irony, observing her decay from beyond, given that her mother's remains were sealed in a mausaoleum vault because Mary feared maggots and their penchant for rotting flesh.
I wonder how she felt observing us from Heaven: We, her friends and family, who couldn't find her and held out hope against anguished hope we would run into her, perhaps in a shopping mall or foreign city or airport crowd; they, the law enforcement officials, who couldn't find her or her killer, trying as they might to study the evidence again and once more, scenting out with dogs for hire the place where her car was found around dawn after the last night of her life, lights on, motor running, purse inside. It was finally some mushroom hunters, kicking around in the field, Mary's field now (she claimed it with her life), more than a year later, who overturned her skull, minus a jawbone, minus a body, and provided us the proof we'd been seeking, needed to go on.
She had lain there a long time. Through the final snow of spring, then under the sultry sun of a Nebraska summer, until the leaves in autumn cascaded from the trees over her myriad pieces, then the snows, then the spring. And the robins sang to no one while we waited in a state of anxious concern and wretched wonder, pondering the possibilities, unable to grieve because, still, we held out hope, although no one we'd ever heard of returned from such a scenario.
She lies there still. I miss her very much. I can still see the red button in the grass where it fell when I, as a child, pulled it off her blouse in anger. I hear her laugh when the wind sweeps through a cottonwood. I see her in my dreams, casually sitting in a chair, wondering what all the fuss is about as we ask her where she's been. I see the pain and fear she must have felt those last moments reflected in her brown eyes whenever I close my own against the light of life and think of her."