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| 1998 Kupka,Kristine 10/24/98; New York City | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 10 2006, 11:19 PM (1,006 Views) | |
| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:19 PM Post #1 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DAA0894DA404482 METROPOLITAN DESK FOLLOWING UP By JOSEPH P. FRIED (NYT) 629 words Published: March 17, 2002 Family Still Searching For Sister, and Justice They are tormented by their loss, and tenacious in seeking the justice they deem due. On Oct. 24, 1998, Kristine Kupka, 28, a pregnant honors student at Baruch College in Manhattan, disappeared after leaving her Brooklyn home with one of her former college instructors, the police said. Her family said Ms. Kupka and the instructor had begun a relationship when she was in his science lab, that he was the father of the child she was carrying and that they had argued over his insistence that she have an abortion and her desire to give birth. No charges have been filed in the case. The detective assigned to it, Daniel D'Alessandro of the Police Department's cold-case squad, said last week that the instructor, Darshanand Persaud, was ''one of the suspects'' in the disappearance, though ''the case can go in many directions.'' He refused to elaborate. In magazine and television interviews during the last three years, Ms. Kupka's sister Kathy and a private investigator for her family, Gil Alba, have said they believe that Kristine was killed and that Mr. Persaud was involved. Mr. Persaud, who is no longer at Baruch, has never commented on the case publicly. Last week he did not return a call taken by a woman at his Brooklyn home, and people answering further calls to the residence hung up when a reporter identified himself. It could not be determined if Mr. Persaud has a lawyer. ''We have enough circumstantial evidence,'' Mr. Alba, a former city police detective, said last week in explaining the contention that Ms. Kupka had been killed and Mr. Persaud had been involved. But Mr. Alba acknowledged that the evidence was not sufficient for the police to obtain a warrant to search Mr. Persaud's home or a Queens location where Mr. Alba said Ms. Kupka might have been taken. Her family and friends maintain a billboard about the case next to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and operate a Web site, www.kristinekupka.com, that asserts that Mr. Persaud knows what happened to her. Kathy Kupka, 36, said the emotions surrounding her sister's loss remained unbearable. ''It's ruined my mom's life,'' she said. ''She just cries every day.'' http://www.nampn.doenetwork.us/cases/kupka_kristine.html |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:20 PM Post #2 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DA90994D1494D81 METROPOLITAN DESK METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW YORK; Student Is Still Missing A Year After Vanishing (NYT) 206 words Published: October 24, 1999 It has been one year since Kristine Kupka, a 28-year-old Baruch College student, left the Brooklyn home she shared and never returned. The police believe that Ms. Kupka, who was five months pregnant, was killed, but her body has not been found. The police plan to offer a $10,000 reward tomorrow for information about her disappearance, officials said. Baruch College has already offered a reward. Investigators are no closer to an arrest in the case than they were a year ago, police officials said. An adjunct professor at Baruch who has been questioned by police has retained a lawyer and is no longer cooperating with the investigation, they said. The man, described by Ms. Kupka's family as the father of her unborn child, has never been publicly identified by the police, nor has he been named as a suspect. Ms. Kupka's family, which has hired a private investigator to help solve the case, plans to hold a silent vigil today in front of the professor's home in Queens, said her sister, Kathy Kupka-Moore. |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:20 PM Post #3 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DAF0894D1494D81 METROPOLITAN DESK Commencements; Missing Woman's Family Sits In for Her at Baruch (NYT) 665 words Published: June 2, 1999 Kristine Kupka was to graduate with Baruch College's class of '99 yesterday, but instead, her Bachelor of Arts degree was honorary. Ms. Kupka, a 28-year-old philosophy major who was five months pregnant, left her Brooklyn home on the afternoon of Oct. 24, 1998, and never returned. ''It is our fervent prayer that this degree will bring hope and comfort to Kristine's family,'' said Dr. Lois S. Cronholm, the interim president of Baruch, yesterday during the college's 34th commencement ceremony. She then asked Elaine Kupka, Kristine's mother, to stand. The crowd at the Theater of Madison Square Garden gave her an ovation. The school, which is part of the City University of New York, awarded 1,850 undergraduate degrees. Kristine's brother, Kurt, 31, and Mrs. Kupka had come to New York for the ceremony from their home near Madison, Wis. Another sibling, Kathy, 33, of Brooklyn, also attended. ''The two most important things to Kristine were the baby and earning this degree,'' Kathy Kupka said after the commencement. At the ceremony, the Kupkas distributed copies of a letter calling on Police Commissioner Howard Safir to improve police action in missing-persons cases. Two detectives are assigned to the case full time, a police spokesman said. The family has hired a private detective and continues to hold periodic vigils on campus and at the Chelsea restaurant where Kristine waitressed. The family and fellow students have put up posters throughout the Baruch campus to keep people aware of the case, and the college has contributed $5,000 toward the $21,000 reward. Kristine Kupka, who had a 3.97 grade point average, was to have completed her course work in February. She had hoped to go to law school, the family said. ''The degree means a lot to us,'' Kathy Kupka said, ''because we know how dedicated she was.'' |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:21 PM Post #4 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DA80994D0494D81 METROPOLITAN DESK A Year Later, a Couple's Disappearance Remains a Mystery E-Mail This Printer-Friendly Permissions Save Article By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN (NYT) 1192 words Published: November 7, 1998 A year after Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan disappeared, their loft in lower Manhattan is silent and unchanged, as if awaiting their return. Their bed, their watercolors, the table and chairs, stand in the dusty shadows like stage props. A vase wants fresh flowers. The clothes still hang neatly, unused. The couple, who lived at 76 Pearl Street, puttered with plants and paintings and jogged along the old lanes of the financial district, were last seen on Nov. 7, 1997, after a dispute with their landlord, Robert Rodriguez, who is the focus of suspicion by their friends and the police. Without bodies or other evidence of a crime, however, the police have been powerless to question the landlord, who cannot be called a suspect, or even to search his upstate home. By twists and turns, the case has become one of the strangest and most frustrating in the annals of New York's unsolved crimes. But on the first anniversary of their disappearance today, Ms. Sylvia and Mr. Sullivan have not been forgotten. Friends are planning a vigil, from noon Monday to noon Tuesday, outside their building to remember them, to protest at the door of Mr. Rodriguez's ground-floor locksmith shop, and to keep the public and the police focused on a case that has been agonizing for many. ''There is no way to describe the torment this has been for the family and friends,'' said Kim Magistro, a neighbor and one of the vigil's organizers, who, like many, voiced frustration with a stymied police investigation. ''And to think that the prime suspect is not cooperating, it's not just.'' There are others suffering similarly. In the last year, several people have disappeared under circumstances that have left families and friends bereft and emotionally unresolved. In July an 82-year-old widow, Irene Silverman, vanished from her East Side town house, and officials believe -- but have no solid proof -- that she was killed by mother-and-son swindlers seeking her fortune. And two weeks ago, Kristine Kupka, 28, a pregnant Baruch College student, vanished after going out with a man believed to be the father of her unborn baby. The police have no evidence against him, but relatives and friends of Ms. Kupka's have voiced suspicions and campaigned to widen attention to the case. They, too, have been invited to the vigil. ''A lot of tragic things happen in life,'' said Charles Delaney, a neighbor of the missing couple. ''But in most cases -- death at an early age, a car crash -- people who love and miss the departed ones have some knowledge of what happened, and are able to have closure. We have been denied that. We are trapped in a mystery, like something out of Conrad or Kafka.'' A year ago today, witnesses say, Ms. Sylvia, 36, an artist and real estate agent, and her companion, Mr. Sullivan, 54, an actor and art gallery worker, argued with their landlord over a lack of heat, and they threatened to withhold the $300-a-month rent on their fifth-floor, rent-stabilized walk-up loft. Later that day, they rented a movie, ''Addicted to Love,'' at a video store on Park Row near City Hall. Then they disappeared. Friends said that they were creatures of habit, that it was unthinkable they would go off on an adventure without telling anybody. In their loft, there were signs they had not gone away: Mr. Sullivan's wallet on a table, a set of keys, a passport, clothing in place. A week later, as detectives sought to question him, Mr. Rodriguez vanished from his Slate Hill, N.Y., home in Orange County, telling his family he was going to Manhattan to talk to the police. He resurfaced two weeks later, but has since refused to talk to the police or to let them search his property. In a cat-and-mouse game, the police have flown over the seven-acre property in helicopters and sent dogs sniffing around its edges for something that would provide cause for a search warrant; they also have questioned 100 potential witnesses and conducted a wide-ranging search for the couple, all to no avail. While Mr. Rodriguez is not formally a suspect, the police have focused their suspicions on him, saying he has never explained his dispute or last contacts with the couple, or his own two-week disappearance. And they assume that the couple were killed. ''We are investigating a missing persons' case technically, but we are using the resources of the Manhattan South homicide squad, anticipating that foul play has been employed,'' said Assistant Chief Kevin P. Farrell, the commander of Manhattan detectives. The police have found that Mr. Rodriguez bought his loft building in 1993 for $205,000, paying in part with insurance money from a suspicious fire at his upstate home. They also have reopened an inquiry into the 1991 disappearance of a Rodriguez associate, David King, after the two had a business dispute. But the results of the inquiry into the couple's disappearance have been disappointing to many. ''My main frustration continues to be that the police have not brought in the landlord for questioning,'' said Jerry H. Goldfeder, who represents the missing couple's families. ''It's very, very difficult not knowing whether your loved ones are alive or dead. There's no closure.'' He said Ms. Sylvia's mother, Laurie Sylvia, an advocate for the disabled, had continued to pay the rent on the couple's loft after their disappearance. While Mr. Rodriguez rejected the payments, he has made no eviction effort. ''Can you imagine any judge granting an order of eviction?'' the lawyer asked. ''It would raise questions as to his motivation.'' So the loft at the top of 76 Pearl Street remains as it was a year ago. But neighbors doubt that the couple will ever come back to reclaim it. ''I think my neighbors are dead,'' said Mr. Delaney. ''I think somebody killed them.'' Mr. Rodriguez did not respond to messages left at his shop, but his lawyer, Joseph P. Marro, said his client knew nothing about the couple's disappearance or whereabouts. He said suspicions voiced by the police and others were unfair to Mr. Rodriguez. The lawyer said Mr. Rodriguez last saw Ms. Sylvia on Nov. 7, 1997, when she gave him a letter complaining about a lack of heat. He said the landlord let uniformed officers into his building several days later, when the couple were reported missing, and even responded to questions. The police insist that hope is alive, if not for the couple, at least for a resolution of the case. ''I believe that in time we will solve this mystery,'' Chief Farrell said. ''A homicide is not closed until it is solved. The person or persons who are responsible for the disappearance of Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan should not rest easy.'' Photos: The police have been unable to question the couple's landlord, Robert Rodriguez, in his locksmith shop last December, in the disappearance. (Frances Roberts for The New York Times)(pg. B6) |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:22 PM Post #5 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DA80994D0494D81 METROPOLITAN DESK No Clues to Missing Student As Her Friend Is Questioned By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN (NYT) 670 words Published: November 3, 1998 The man who went out with a pregnant Baruch College student on the day she vanished last month was questioned by the police for the first time yesterday, but there were no indications afterward that investigators were any closer to solving the mystery of her disappearance. Ten days after Kristine Kupka, 28, left the Brooklyn home she shares with several roommates and failed to return, the man who escorted her, described by her family as the father of her unborn baby, went to the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn and spoke to detectives investigating her disappearance. Investigators acknowledged later that the man had been interviewed in the presence of his lawyer, but they declined to say what was discussed. The man was released, has not been accused of any crime, is not listed as a suspect and has not even been publicly identified by the police or Ms. Kupka's family. Family and friends have agonized over the disappearance of Ms. Kupka, an honor student and part-time waitress who is five months pregnant. They said she had wanted her baby, that she had expected to earn a philosophy degree in January and that she was too responsible to have skipped her midterm examinations, abandoned her job and gone off without telling anyone. Some relatives have voiced suspicions of foul play and raised questions about the man who was questioned yesterday. They said he was a former Baruch teacher who met Ms. Kupka in one of his classes last spring, had an affair that left her pregnant, married another woman in July and, when he learned of the pregnancy, told Ms. Kupka that he opposed her going through with the pregnancy. But the investigators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, emphasized that they had no evidence of a crime in what has been classified as a missing person's case, and they said they were examining various theories, including the possibility that Ms. Kupka had disappeared for reasons of her own. ''They are looking at everything, talking to friends and people she worked with, and they are giving it lots of attention,'' Kathy Kupka-Moore, a sister of the missing woman, said last night after speaking to the detectives. ''But they seem no closer to solving it.'' Ms. Kupka-Moore said that friends and relatives who have flocked to New York from Atlanta, Chicago and Madison, Wis., where Ms. Kupka grew up, would canvass the Kensington neighborhood around her home at 291 Westminster Road again today for anyone who might have seen her since her disappearance. Ms. Kupka was last seen by her roommates on Oct. 24, a sunny, warm Saturday, when she left home with the man about 1 P.M.. Tall, visibly pregnant, with short red hair and blue eyes, Ms. Kupka wore a lightweight black shirt, black skirt and black boots, carried little money, and had no jacket or luggage. Hundreds of fliers bearing her picture and description have been posted in the neighborhood and at Baruch College, but callers to the family's number -- (718) 832-3393 -- have provided no useful tips, only expressions of sympathy, Ms. Kupka-Moore said. A $2,000 reward has been posted for information. Lois Cronholm, the interim president of Baruch College, an East Side unit of the City University of New York, appealed yesterday in a message to her school's 14,500 students for help in finding Ms. Kupka. Anyone with information was asked to call the 70th Precinct detectives, on a confidential basis, at (718) 851-5553. ''Her family and friends are distraught by her disappearance,'' Ms. Cronholm said, ''and I am personally very upset by this matter, as is everyone at Baruch College.'' |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:23 PM Post #6 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DA80994D0494D81 METROPOLITAN DESK Man Refuses to Talk to Police About Missing Student By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN (NYT) 742 words Published: November 2, 1998 A man who went out with a pregnant Baruch College student on the afternoon she vanished 10 days ago has hired a lawyer and refused to talk to the police about her disappearance or her family's assertions that he fathered her unborn child and, against her wishes, wanted it aborted, investigators said yesterday. ''He's not talking, he's not cooperating,'' a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said of the man, who has not been accused of any crime, is not listed as a suspect and has not been publicly identified by the police or the family of the missing woman, 28-year-old Kristine Kupka. Her family has said that the man, a former Baruch College lecturer who last spring began a relationship with Ms. Kupka, then a student in one of his classes, and has since married another woman, accompanied Ms. Kupka on Oct. 24 when she last left the Brooklyn house she shares with several roommates. Ms. Kupka, a senior honor student and part-time waitress who is five months pregnant, did not return home that day, missed her midterm examinations, and has not appeared at a Chelsea restaurant where she has worked for three years or been in contact with friends and relatives, who have become alarmed. Last week, as the concern deepened, relatives and friends came to New York from Atlanta, Chicago and Madison, Wis., where Ms. Kupka grew up, to press the search with posters, publicity and a $2,000 reward for information. Ms. Kupka's mother, Elaine Bodell, of Janesville, Wis., was to arrive today. While the police say they have no evidence of a crime, Ms. Kupka's relatives call her a responsible woman who wanted her baby, expected to earn a degree in philosophy in January and would not have gone away without telling loved ones. They have voiced concern for her and raised questions about the man who, they say, fathered her unborn child and was with her when she left her home at 291 Westminster Road in Kensington on the day she vanished. ''Why isn't he cooperating with the police?'' Kathy Kupka-Moore, a sister of the missing woman, said yesterday. ''If you're forthcoming, you have nothing to hide.'' Ms. Kupka-Moore said the relationship between her sister and the man began last spring when he was an adjunct lecturer at Baruch, an East Side unit of the City University of New York, and she was a student in a science class. He is now a lecturer at the David B. Kriser Dental Center at New York University, officials said. Ms. Kupka became pregnant by him in early June, her sister said, and about a month later, without telling Ms. Kupka, the man married another woman. When he returned from his honeymoon -- ''he told her it was a business trip,'' Ms. Kupka-Moore said -- she informed him of the pregnancy. ''That's when he told her he was married,'' Ms. Kupka-Moore said. ''She was hurt and shocked. She couldn't believe he would be so deceitful.'' A conflict arose immediately over what to do about the pregnancy, she said. ''He wanted her to get rid of the baby,'' she said. ''He said it would ruin his life.'' But, she said, Ms. Kupka rejected his plea that she have an abortion. She did not ask for money or aid, but ''she wanted him to sign a paper saying he would give up custody rights,'' Ms. Kupka-Moore said. ''If he wanted to have supervised visits, she would allow that.'' But he refused to sign any papers, and they saw no more of one another until recently, she said. ''He started coming around in the last couple of weeks,'' Ms. Kupka-Moore said. ''It was suspicious. After all the lies and dishonesty. She was confused. She didn't trust him.'' But Ms. Kupka agreed to see him on Oct. 24, and they left her house about 1 P.M. It was a sunny, warm Saturday, and Ms. Kupka -- tall, visibly pregnant, with short red hair and blue eyes -- wore a lightweight black shirt and a black skirt and boots. Her sister said she had no jacket or luggage and little money. By evening, she had not returned. A laundry worker and a health-food store clerk in her neighborhood just south of Prospect Park reported seeing her alone about 7 P.M., but the sightings were not confirmed, Ms. Kupka-Moore said. ''She just disappeared,'' the sister said. ''You don't just disappear.'' |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 10 2006, 11:24 PM Post #7 |
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http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricte...DA90994D0494D81 METROPOLITAN DESK Pregnant Honor Student Is Missing, Family Says By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN (NYT) 809 words Published: October 31, 1998 Last Saturday shortly after 1 P.M., Kristine Kupka, a 28-year-old senior honor student at Baruch College who is five months pregnant, left the Brooklyn house she shares with five roommates for an afternoon outing with a man her family says is the father of her unborn child. She did not return. Wholly at odds with her character, relatives say, Ms. Kupka did not show up for the college's midterm examinations, which began on Monday. She has been absent all week from her job as a waitress at a Chelsea restaurant, where she had rarely missed a day's work in three years. She has not kept appointments with her midwife, and alarmed friends and relatives say she has not been in touch with them. In recent days, as the agony of silence has given way to a nightmare of doubt and growing suspicion, friends and family members have flocked to New York from Atlanta, Chicago and Madison, Wis., where Ms. Kupka grew up, to help in the search, and hundreds of posters bearing her picture and description have gone up in her neighborhood and at Baruch College -- all to no avail. ''We're deeply worried,'' Kathy Kupka, 33, said yesterday on the seventh day of her sister's disappearance. ''We've checked the hospitals and the morgue. We've enlisted the help of the police. We've checked for credit card activity, and the A.T.M.'s. She hasn't written a check. There's just no trace.'' Another sister, Terry Wantuch of Madison, said: ''Kristine has gotten straight A's every semester, and has been excited about going on to law school. Missing her midterm exams is totally out of character. We're very worried.'' Lieut. Stephen Biegel, a police spokesman, said yesterday that the police were aiding the family in the search, but that investigators had no evidence of a crime and had not listed Ms. Kupka as a missing person. Several hours later, however, the police formally classified her as a missing person, but said it was not necessarily a criminal matter. ''There's no suspects at this time,'' said Sgt. Ellen Tietjen. ''They're investigating a missing person case.'' The man said to be the father of Kristine Kupka's baby, and who was said to have been with her when she left her home at 291 Westminster Road in Kensington a week ago, was not missing, Kathy Kupka said. Neither the police nor Ms. Kupka's family would disclose the man's name. ''Kristine wanted the baby,'' Kathy Kupka said in a telephone interview from her home in Brooklyn. ''She was spiritually, emotionally and financially ready. She was not planning marriage. She was happy with that. We were already buying baby clothes. She was swimming, totally into it, taking vitamins every day.'' Asked if she suspected foul play, she said unhesitatingly, ''Yes.'' Kristine Kupka, she said, grew up in Madison, attended the University of Wisconsin for a year, moved to New York in 1993 and enrolled as a part-time student at Baruch, a unit of the City University of New York with 14,500 students and a half-dozen buildings on the East Side. She became a full-time Baruch student in 1995, majoring in philosophy, and has also worked at Negril, a Jamaican restaurant on West 23d Street. A manager, Kellie Madden, described Ms. Kupka as ''very stable, very responsible, articulate and bubbly,'' and said co-workers were concerned because her disappearance was ''totally out of character.'' Kathy Kupka said her sister was to graduate in January and was looking forward to the birth of her baby in February. She said Kristine called her regularly, and maintained contact with friends here and around the country. Kristine was described as having short red hair and blue eyes, 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing 140 pounds and ''visibly pregnant.'' When last seen on a sunny, warmish afternoon, she wore a lightweight black shirt and black skirt. She had no jacket, no luggage and only a few dollars. Anyone with information is asked to call the family at (718) 832-3393. Although there is no apparent connection, three other people have disappeared in the city in the last 20 months, touching off extensive searches by families. Patrick McNeill, 21, a Fordham University student, vanished in February 1997 and was found drowned off Bay Ridge two months later. Lawrence R. Andrews Jr., 22, of Brewster, N.Y., disappeared after New Year's Eve revelry at Times Square and was found six weeks later, also drowned off Bay Ridge. Peter Caragiulo, 21, of Brooklyn, vanished last March and was found in April in a subway utility room, dead of head injuries of unknown origin. Photo: Kristine Kupka, 28, has been missing since last Saturday. |
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| PorchlightUSA | Jul 28 2006, 10:41 AM Post #8 |
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...750C0A96F958260 (A brief mention) Body of Missing Student Is Discovered in Search of Shaftway Print Save By KIT R. ROANE Published: March 14, 1999 The body of a 19-year-old Baruch College student was discovered Friday night inside a trash-filled shaftway at the campus, four days after a fellow student had reported seeing a woman leap from an overhead window , the police said yesterday. Campus security guards found the body of the student, Yankum Huang, at 9:45 P.M., a little more than an hour after the police held a news conference to publicize her disappearance on Monday. The police said her death was apparently a suicide but cautioned that a final determination would be made by the city's medical examiner. ''We think that she either fell or jumped,'' said Deputy Chief James Ward, commanding officer of Brooklyn Detectives. ''The indication is that this happened sometime around 1 P.M. and that a woman saw her kneeling on a window ledge just before.'' Deputy Chief Ward said the witness thought she saw a woman on an outside ledge as she entered the women's bathroom on the 13th floor of the building at 111 East 18th Street, but that the figure vanished when she turned to look again. The woman then peered down into the shaftway but did not see anything, and did not call campus security officers about the sighting until around 11 P.M. He said the security officers who responded also saw nothing when they looked down into the 6-foot by 10-foot shaftway, which is not reachable or visible from the street. Ms. Huang, a sophomore in the college's liberal arts program, was reported missing by a friend on Tuesday. Ms. Huang had last been seen by the friend around 8:30 A.M. on Monday, as she entered a subway car on her way to school. Her parents became alarmed when she did not show up at their Bensonhurst home later that evening or the following day and asked the friend to report her missing, the police said.. Shy and studious, Ms. Huang was an honor student and was not one to stay out late, they told the police. After the witness saw a flier at the school reporting Ms. Huang's disappearance she called campus security again on Friday to urge the officers to do a more thorough search . Accompanied by the police, they went through a nearby building with access to the shaftway and found the body. Deputy Chief Ward said the campus security force was conducting an internal inquiry to see whether their officers acted appropriately when first approached by the witness. Lois S. Cronholm, interim president of the 25,000-student college, said she would also investigate. ''But so far as I know, as soon as the director of security told us something might have happened at that window, that they looked into it,'' she said, adding that, ''Everyone is distraught about what has happened, and it has come as a total shock.'' Ms. Huang's disappearance had been compared to that of another honor student, Kristine Kupka, 28, who is still missing. Ms. Kupka vanished from her Brooklyn home in October. Her family suspects that she may have been murdered, but investigators have made no arrests. |
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| ELL | Aug 4 2006, 07:33 PM Post #9 |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She was a romantic-you could see it in her room: handmade muslin drapes looped through dogwood boughs, low tables bearing plants, vases, goblets. A shawl-draped dresser displaying a tin Barbie box, pictures of herself as a child in Wisconsin and of her sister Kathy's adorable 2-year-old son, named Marshall, after Thurgood Marshall. The books on her shelves (Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement, The Philosophy of Right and Wrong, Development and Dependency) advertised a feisty, cerebral idealism. And on the floor near a stack of CDs (Jamiroquai, Liz Phair, Jeff Buckley, the Fugees) were more books, including a dog-eared copy of Two of Us Make a World: The Single Mother's Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth and the First Year. She was five months pregnant; and though the baby was unplanned and she was adamantly pro-choice (after vegetarianism, reproductive freedom was the cause she fought for most fiercely), she never considered abortion. She was thrilled about having this child, and while her friends had no doubt she could handle single-motherhood ("Kristine is the most competent person I know," says Denise Lilien, her girlhood friend from Madison, Wisconsin), they had worried about her involvement with the baby's father. She had detailed to at least eight confidants every twist and turn in her strange, sporadic five-month relationship with her former Baruch College science instructor and had shared key parts of the story with several others. And so when, shortly after noon on Saturday, October 24, Kristine Kupka, 28, left her room with little more than the clothes on her back and didn't return, her disappearance led those who knew her to fear the worst. Kristine was a passionate, opinionated person with a strong circle of friends and clear, close-at-hand goals. A college philosophy major two months from graduation, with a 3.97 average, she planned to go to law school and specialize in women's issues. She had a job waitressing at the Caribbean restaurant Negril, near Chelsea Piers, that she would not have abandoned. And she was happy; to those who knew her well, suicide was unthinkable. Indeed, her life seemed as disciplined and spirited as her room in the wide-porched house near Coney Island Avenue, in a hidden pocket of Brooklyn called Kensington. Deeming Park Slope too expensive, Kristine, who had also lived in the East Village, and TriBeCa, rented two floors of this house for $2,200 a month from a Turkish family. Then she shrewdly sublet the extra bedrooms, creating a kind of MTV’s Real World of frugal young urbanites: an extravagantly tatooed club bouncer, a New York Times cyber-journalist, a hotel trainee, and two college students. Within a week, there were news reports of her disappearance (PREGNANT HONOR STUDENT IS MISSING; SIS FEARS PREGNANT BARUCH COED WHO VANISHED IS DEAD), and on November 10, her friends held a vigil. Outside Baruch’s main building at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street, they embraced, cupped votive candles, help up signs expressing their fear and outrage (KRISTINE KUPKA: MISSING 17 DAYS; 17 DAYS TOO LONG) Kristine’s sister, Kathy, heartbroken, and hoarse, was given a bouquet, and a plate was passed to collect reward money. Then weeks went by without a breakthrough. As the November wind loosened the flyers (please help me find my 5-months pregnant sister) from the maple trees, the candle-clutching group that assembled in front of Kristineís house for a second vigil was smaller, and the TV crews failed to materialize. A mere $5,000 had been raised to induce anyone with information to come forward. (It has since been doubled, with a donation from Baurch’s alumni association.) Kathy Kupka had taken on the drained aspect of Dorothea Lange’s dust-bowl mother. Desperate to believe Kristine might still be alive, she had spent a recent day and night in New Jersey, futilely following a telephone tipster who promised to lead her to her sister. That outing had underscored her hellish limbo: Should she hope, or grieve? Use common sense, or take leaps of faith? Speak in the present or past tense? Frustration of a different sort plagues authorities in missing-persons cases. Without a body, it is extremely hard to prove that a crime has even been committed. Prime examples are the recent indictment of grifters Kenneth and Sante Kimes for the murder of heiress Irene Silverman, and the indictment, in November 1997, of prominent Delaware attorney Thomas Capano for the June 1996 murder of governor’s assistant Anne Marie Fahey. In both cases, police had early circumstantial evidence that pointed to the suspects. But the absence of a body made securing indictments extremely arduous. In the Kupka case, the police still aren’t certain that a homicide has been committed. By early December, the number of detectives working on the case had shrunk to four; by mid-December, to just two. Today, ten and a half weeks after Kristine’s disappearance, the identity of the Baruch College teacher who left with her that morning is still being kept secret by the nervous college and the proprietary Police Department. Kristine Kupka's family and friends, convinced her fate lies in his hands, believe it is time to change that. The man who accompanied Kristine on her October 24 outing is Darshanand Persaud; most people call him Rudy. Persaud is a respectable young Indo-Guyanese-American. A 1995 graduate of Baruch, a Manhattan-based branch of CUNY, he was a quality-control chemist testing glue products at Basic Adhesives, in Brooklyn, and an adjunct lab instructor at his alma mater. He currently attends the New Jersey Dental School in Newark, making a cumbersome commute (subway to path train to school bus) to get there each morning. He is now married to an accountant in the Dreyfus Corporation’s Park Avenue office; the couple lives with his parents in a neat house in a rundown section of Brooklyn. He’s the family’’s only son; the oldest of his three sisters is a physician. Miguel Santos, the lecturing professor for Introduction to Environmental Sciences, whose lab sections Persaud taught found him "a very pleasant, cordial, nice person, knowledgeable in science and a good teacher." Students characterized him as handsome, sometimes polite, sometimes angry and moody. He was decorous; he had refrained from dating Kristine, his student, until he had filed her course grade. It was Kristine—with her long, black clothes, bright-red hair, extra-strength opinions—who had flirted with him. When Kristineís classmate Anthon Grant, a 26-year-old Trinidadian who had befriended Persaud on the basis of their mutual interest in computers, and shared Caribbean background, told him last May that he thought Kristine had a crush on him, "Rudy said, ‘come ahhhhn....’ " Kristine found Persaud's shyness charming. "She thought of him as this gentle-lamb sort of guy, honest and naive," says Michael Legatt, a member with Kristine’s of Baruch’s Philosophy Club. Indeed, Persaud’s clean-cut looks and slight awkwardness led her to compare him, to several friends, to a "newborn baby." Where Kristine saw guilelessness, Anthon Grant saw calculation. "Rudy was very GQ-ish. He never had a bad-hair day. He seemed like someone who had his own agenda—like his main goal was getting ahead in life, like he didn’t want to be where he was, that’s for sure. He would walk into class late, in a trench coat, like he’d just come from someplace important." He was "Mr. Persaud" to his students who were mainly his age, and when the class first overheard Dr. Santos address him informally, "we looked at each other, like,’Rudy!" Grant says, laughing. It seemed too goofy a name for Persaud. Though few at Baruch knew, Persaud was that rare thing in India, rarer in Guyana, and rarer still in New York: a true Brahmin. And a Brahmin with a pandit (a priest) for a father. Kristine Kupka was a kind of reverse Rudy Persaud. They represented two different versions of the romance of migrating to New York City—colliding examples of the postmodern melting pot. He moved here as part of an esteemed ethnic family, part of an ambitious community of immigrants who had a literal caste system. She moved to New York in a quasi-bohemian fashion: a white, blue-eyed Midwesterner drawn to milieus in which she was the racial minority. Baruch has a predominantly non-white student body; and Negril, where she worked, has a largely Caribbean clientele. Many of the men she had dated were black. Anthon Grant says, "I don’t think Kristine saw color." Where Persaud maintained the formality and reserve of the Anglo-Indian culture, Kristine, a graduate of the Forum, a modified reincarnation of Werner Erhard’s EST seminars, "revealed herself," Denise Lilien says. "She didn’t hold back; she really developed intimacies. She was willing to put so much on the table so quickly. She was ‘This is who I am; this is what I can give.’ That’s how she was with men, too. It was often too much. It could be overwhelming." On October 24, a little past 11 a.m., Persaud pushed the buzzer at Kristine’s house. He had called the night before, she told her roommate Ozlem, a 22-year-old Near Eastern college student (who asked New York to withhold her last name), to tell her he had found an apartment in Queens and wanted her to see it. But Kristine had overslept; she called out to Ozlem to let Rudy in. Ozlem says she sensed that Rudy did not want to come upstairs. When he did, "he was pacing around. He had his hands in his pockets like he was distressed." Kristine came out of her bedroom in her pajamas and sat with Rudy, eating her health-food breakfast. Ozlem then when to her room; another housemate glimpsed Kristine, in a long black skirt and black sweater, leaving with Rudy. That was the last time any of Kristine’s friends or family saw her. Her last communication was a message left on Kathy’s answering machine, apparently just before she walked out the door: "I’m going to look at Rudy’s new apartment in Queens. I’ll call you later this afternoon. See ya." When Kathy didn’t hear from hers sister that afternoon or that night, she began to worry. When Ozlem called the next morning to say Kristine had still not returned, Kathy’s worry turned to alarm and dread. She and her husband, Kevin (he’s a parole officer, she a teacher), bundled up their toddler, Marshall, and rushed to the 70th Precinct. At the 70th, Kathy and Kevin were given a stock response: Because Kristine was over 16 and under 65 years old and of sound mind and body, a missing-person report could not yet be filed. Maybe she took a trip home to Wisconsin or a vacation to Bermuda, it was suggested. Kristine wouldn’t do that! Kathy protested, to no avail. It would be two days before the police called her to take an "informational account" of Kristine’s disappearance. The couple raced back to their Brooklyn apartment, with its pictures of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Frida Kahlo, and Huey Newton, to plot their next move. Both former caseworkers and political activists, Kathy is cool and wry, and Kevin, who is African-American, has the efficient manner of a young executive. They immediately started making calls and designing a flyer. Kathy left a message for her and Kristine’s mother. Ellie Bodell, 64, is as much as freethinker as her daughters: At age 56, she became a long-distance truck driver. She was on the road and didn’t get Kathy’s frantic message until October 31. When she heard it, she says, "I just sat here in total shock." Then she flew to New York. Monday morning, October 26: Still no Kristine. Kathy and Kevin went to Baruch. Joining them was Nick Papanikolu, a darkly handsome, quite graduate student who had lived with Kristine for three years; since breaking up two and a half years ago, they had been the closest of friends. Kristine’s disappearance has since taken over Nick’s life; he dropped out of school to search for her, and virtually lives at Kevin and Kathy’s. They tried to get Persaud’s home address from Baruch, but a clerk in the personnel office told them they’d need a subpoena. Through a chain of acquaintances, they came up with an approximate address in Bushwick. Nick and Kevin drove out to a row of attached redbricks with aluminum awnings, gated windows and doors, shrubs, and chain-link fences. In front of one: Indian and Guyanese flags. Its sidewalk bore a child’s worn wet-cement legend: rudy. Nick and Kevin waited in the car. When an older man approached the house, they approached him. Rudy’s uncle. He had seen Rudy Saturday morning and then not again until Sunday evening. At 5:30, a woman appeared. Rudy’s mother. "We started hitting her with all these facts,"Kevin recalls, "and told her we needed to question Rudy and to have him here at seven." Nick and Kevin waited in the car. At seven, a police van pulled up. Two officers got out, guns drawn. (the NYPD refused to grant New York an interview with the two officers.) They ordered Nick and Kevin out of the car and lightly frisked them. Then a young man climbed out of the back of the police van. "He was dressed very preppy," Kevin recalls. "Cardigan sweater, white shirt, dark dress pants, Jansport backpack." It was Rudy. Apparently alerted by his mother that two men were harassing the family, he had gone to the precinct and obtained a police escort. "Where’s Kristine?" Kevin demanded. "How should I know?" came Rudy’s flippant answer, according to both men. "You killed Kristine!" Nick insisted. "Where is she?" "He said, ‘I donít know what you’re talking about,’ and ‘Why don’t you go file a missing-persons report.’" Recalls Kevin. Kevin asked Rudy what he and Kristine had done on Saturday, since "you were the last one seen with her." He said that he had dropped Kristine off two blocks from her house between 3 and 4 p.m., because she wanted to go to the health-food store, and that that was the last time he had seen her. Kevin asked Rudy where he'd gone with Kristine. Rudy said they went shopping. Kevin asked where. Rudy answered, "Some mall." Kevin and Nick kept the questions up: Which mall? Which stores? Rudy said he had stayed in the car while she shopped. Five days later, when the news media were told of Kristine’s disappearance, reporters canvassed Kristine’s neighborhood, as had the police and Nick, Kathy, and Kevin—all asking whether anyone had seen her on Saturday. A Laundromat owner said he’d seen her through his window, and a health-food-store worker thought she may have seen Kristine in the store—"after dark," at about 7 p.m. The health-food-store worker is now "pretty sure" the woman she way after dark on Saturday, October 24, was not Kristine—among other things, that woman was wearing peach-colored pants, which Kristine did not own—but rather another customer "who looks a lot like her." And the Laundromat owner, who says he told his original story "to try to help," now says he does not know whether he saw Kristine on Saturday, the 24th, or Friday, the 23rd. On November 2, Rudy Persaud sat down for police questioning with his attorney. A police source says, of Rudy’s November 2 interview: "Did he cooperate? Yes. Did he had an airtight alibi? No." "There’s an old movie where a guy is walking down the street under a street-light looking at the ground. Another guy says, ‘what are you looking for?’ The first guy says, ‘I lost my glasses.’ The second guy says, ‘Where did you lose ‘em?’ He says, ‘I lost ‘em over there . . . but the light’s better over here.’" Lieutenant Phillip Mahony, comading officer of NYPD’s Missing Persons Bureau, likes telling this story. His small office is dominated by metal file cabinets. Several drawers are marked patz and contain files relating to the maddeningly unsolved 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz in SoHo. The lost-glasses story, says Mahony, illustrates the problem with having too obvious a suspect: He might not be the killer. "I can tell you this, none of the four detectives on this case think it’s open-shut," he says. "This Rudy may be the guy. You certainly had a guy with a motive. He was the last one seen with her—you can’t ignore that. But it still doesn’t add up. It’s no crime to be the last person seen with somebody. It’s no crime for a married guy to get his girlfriend pregnant. It’s a shame but not a crime. You can even say, ‘I have plenty of reason to want her gone,’ but you’re still not gonna get an arrest on it.’ (Repeated efforts were made by New York to contact Rudy Persaud for an interview.) Mahony says: "Our biggest fear is, she’s lying in a ditch somewhere—the result of an accident or random mayhem—"and we’re walking by her every day because we’re focused on Rudy." To this end, detectives combed the tracks of the D train, which she took to Baruch. They choppered low over Brooklyn and Queens and took pictures. Kristine’s family and friends have also gone searching. With the help of ex-NYPD detective Gil Alba—a specialist in solving kidnappings by Colombian and Dominican drug dealers—and using maps of abandoned industrial sites, parks, wetlands, and isolated land near bridges (all places where bodies tend to be buried) they have gone out in small parties several times a week, talking to park personnel, harbor partolmen, dog walkers, joggers, and vagrants. But these searches for Kristine have been futile. Denise Lilien, now a business consultant, first met Kristine back in Madison. They were both teenagers at an alternative high school. Malcolm Shabazz—named after Malcolm X—which Kristine transferred to when her regular public school proved too confining. Kristine, the youngest of six Kupka children, had moved to Madison with her mother (then a factory worker) and several siblings after the death of their father, a firefighter whom Ellie had divorced. After rural Mount Carroll, Illinois, the avant-garde atmosphere of Madison, with its history of academic and political activism, suited Kristine—as did the ultraprogressive Shabazz school, where students reclined on couches and did "free writing" exercises. Kristine went on to the University of Wisconsin, then dropped out. In her twenties, Kristine made her way to Atlanta. She got a waitress job and roomed with Kelly Richardson, now a film-production assistant. But Atlanta was too makeup-and-big-hair; and on a trip to New York, when she visited her sister Kathy, who was living with Kevin in a tenement on East 3rd Street, she vowed to move there. When Kathy and Kevin moved out, Kristine moved in. Her clothes changed from flowing neo-hippie to sleek black-on-black. She got a job at MacDougals Cafe’., a tourist magnet across from Cafe’ Le Figaro in the Village. Nick Papanikoluóa young Greek-American raised in Brooklyn, Greece, and the Boston suburbs—also waited tables there while putting himself through college. He was solemn; she was vivacious. They went to MOMA on their first date. "She kept touching the paintings," Nick recalls. " I said, ‘Kristine, they’ll kick us out!’" She moved into his apartment on Hudson Street, near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. After three years, they broke up—her decision—but remained best friends. She entered Baruch and, maintaining high grades, won a full Provost scholarship. She founded the school’s Philosophy Club, setting up debates on whether organized religion is oppressive, on whether focus on the Holocaust obscures the evil of slavery, and on the media’s roll in the death of Princess Diana. She typed papers for blind students. Kathy and Kristine, working-class sisters, shopped at thrift stores, cooked at home, got $12 haircuts, and took the subway everywhere—always competing over who could save more money. Kristineís weakness for Joan & David shoes almost cost her the honor until she found the house in Kensington and began filling it with roommates to defray the rent. Ozlem has been there the longest, and she became the little sister Kristine never had. "I would knock on her door five times a day," says Ozlem, usually with a question about a romance. "Kristine would say, --Stop being a drama queen. Just look at the facts!" With men, Kristine could give as good as she got. She often chewed them out for not calling when they said they would. "She didnít want to dominate, but she was powerful. It was challenging for the man and for her," says Ozlem. Kristine put it more bluntly to her friend Suzana Riordan: "You’re like me. We have balls—we scare ‘em off." She was involved with a law student, then, for months, a security guard. Lilien says, "I felt she picked men who weren’t her equal. She’s a really strong person. She needed somebody who could match her." Her mother, who had thought the security guard was "an overgrown brat," was pleased when Kristine stopped seeing him sometime around last winter. At the time, her mother recalls, "Kristine said, ‘No more men! No more relationships! I’m going to settle down now and just finish school!" But in the spring, Kristine started telling people she had a crush on her science teacher. She told her mother she was attracted to his intellect. Ozlem recalls her saying that "his skin was so clean and he didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, never ate meat. She also liked him because he had all these tacky neckties and not-matching clothes." Valerie Santos, a social worker who was Negril’s night hostess, says that at first Kristine "didn’t know how to read him; she was trying to figure out if he had a girlfriend." Then Kristine told Valerie that Rudy "was single—he had recently broken up with someone. He basically gave her the impression he was available." They exchanged numbers—her phone, his beeper. During conversations they had after class, he told Kristine about a business trip he would soon be taking to Turkey. An envious Kristine quipped to Kathy, "I wish he could take an assistant." Once he filed the class grades, Rudy Persaud drove to Kristine’s house for a date. He was leaning on a walking stick, Ozlem recalls, the result of a foot injury. "He made it sound like he wanted a relationship," Kathy recalls Kristine later telling her about the day, which had included lovemaking. But Ozlem had picked up a different vibe. "He’s adorable," she said, "but he’s hiding something." Rudy Persaud’s family is one of the more than 200,000 Hindu families who have flocked to America from Guyana (overwhelmingly to Queens, especially Richmond Hill) since the sixties, during and after the unfriendly regime of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. They left a Caribbean country where they and their forebears had lived since coming there as indentured laborers from India between 1838 and 1917. Queens now has about twenty Hindu temples. Pandits like Rudy’s father, having witnessed a full generation of Hindu youth raised on rap music make pleas for traditional morality and spiritual regeneration. In mid-June, Kristine told Valerie Santos she felt certain she was pregnant; Valerie brought her a pregnancy test from the health clinic she worked in. When it came out positive, despite the certainty she’d expressed to Valerie, "she was shocked," Kathy says. "It took a day for it to settle in—she hadn’t planned it. But then she said, ‘I’m graduating in January, I have a great house, I’m already 28--I can do it." Even though she only had sex with him once, Kristine told friends there was no question that Persaud was the baby’s father. Still, she was afraid to tell him, Kathy says, but she did not put the task off. She beeped him, and when he called her back, she said she had something important to discuss; could she see him in person? When he said he was busy, she broke the news on the phone. According to the accounts of several of Kristine’s friends, he heatedly denied paternity, claiming heíd had a vasectomy (a "partial vasectomy" was the term Kristine told Kathy and Nick he had used). Then in a subsequent conversation (again, according to what Kristine told friends), he backed away from the vasectomy assertion. He stopped denying paternity. "He started crying—literally crying," Kathy says Kristine told her. "He started begging her to have an abortion." He told her that he had gotten married. (Apparently, the Turkish "business trip" had been his honeymoon, and his new wife was a young Brahmin woman.) "He said, ‘You’re going to ruin my life! My parents are going to disown me!’" He said his wife and his parents were going to pay his tuition to dental school. "‘You can’t do this to me!’ This can’t happen!’" Kathy reports, "He talked to her a few more times. Each time, he begged her again to have an abortion—the baby ‘would ruin his life.’ She was trying to work it through with him. I said, ‘Would you stop already? It’s his problem! You don’t have to make it right for him.’ But she wanted it to be right for him." She had reasons for this. She wanted his name on the birth certificate so her child wouldn’t be embarrassed enrolling for school with a document that did not list a father. The acknowledgment of paternity would also allow her to sue him for child support, something Kathy pressed her to consider. "But Kristine is definitely not about money. Never once did she say, ‘Oh he’s gonna be a dentist one day!’" Kristine would only consider suing for child support "later," Kathy says, "if down the road she needed money to safeguard the baby." During these weeks, in July, of talking with Rudy about the pregnancy, "it got bad, real bad—very negative—between them," says a Negril waiter named Sean, who had joined Kristine’s band of confidants. She’d become so afraid of Rudy’s feelings on the matter, she told Sean and others, "she only wanted to meet him in a public place. I thought she was being paranoid; she was very assertive and very together, so I was surprised when she said that." She confided to Nick several times her fear that Rudy might "hit her in the stomach" or find some other way to end the pregnancy. She told Valerie (who was arranging her prenatal care) "words to the effect of ‘If anything happens to me, he will have probably have done it.’ It was her gut [feeling] from the beginning. She never told me he threatened her verbally, but she was anxious and scared—and I don’t think even she could explain why." Still, Kristine pressed on. She "wanted Rudy to have some kind of relationship with the baby," Kathy says Kristine told her. He said," How am I going to do that? I have a wife! My mom and dad would find out!" She said, ‘You could do it on a weekend. People have problems when they don’t have a father—they think they’re worthless. They feel abandoned.’"He stopped calling. She started beeping. Kelly Richardson pleaded, "Kristine, is there any way you can have this baby and just . . . completely not involve him? Put him out of the picture?" Ozlem picked up the ringing phone one evening in late July. A young woman’s voice demanded, "Do you know someone named Rudy Persaud? You just called his beeper." Ozlem said no and hung up the phone. The same thing happened the next morning, at seven. Ozlem woke Kristine and said, "She called again; I don’t want to get caught in between." The next time, Kristine answered the phone. And that is how Kristine entered into an astonishing communication, over the course of a number of phone calls, with Rudy’s wife, Rochelle. First Kristine told Rochelle she was merely one of Rudy’s students. The second or third time Rochelle called, Kristine admitted they’d been involved but that they no longer were and said there was a reason she was remaining in touch with him. According to several of Kristine’s friends, every time Rochelle asked what the reason was, Kristine said, "You’ll have to ask Rudy." Finally Rochelle asked,"Are you pregnant?" Kristine admitted she was. As Ozlem listened, Kristine carefully explained that Rudy had told her he wasn’t married (which was apparently true at the time of their single sexual encounter). According to Kristine’s reports to several friends, Rochelle expressed explosive anger toward her husband, even telling Kristine she didn’t want Rudy—why didn’t Kristine take him? Kristine said she didn’t want him. Over the course of these phone calls, "at first, Kristine couldn’t figure the wife out," Valerie Santos says, "and then she felt more empathy for the woman." Kristine told Suzana Riordan that she tried to assure Rochelle (in Suzana’s words): "The pregnancy won’t affect your life together or any children you have; I don’t want to hurt your relationship; I just need a few things from him." According to what Kristine told friends, Rochelle seemed to pour her heart out to Kristine: describing the wedding (it may have been through Rochelle that Kristine determined the approximate date), musing about an old boyfriend. (Rochelle Persaud was called at her office for a response. Told New York was doing an article about Kristine Kupka’s disappearance, she abruptly said, "I don’’t know anything about it!" When asked whether she had placed calls to Kristine, she angrily said, "I cannot talk to you right now! You called my job; don’t you ever call back!" and hung up.) By summer’s end, to the relief of Kristine’s friends, Rudy and his wife had slipped out of her life, which seemed to return to normal. But at the beginning of October, Rudy was back. His parents were out of town, he said, and his wife had kicked him out. He was staying with a cousin, Kristine told friends. One day, he met Kristine on her porch—he was "disheveled," she said—and told her he was hungry, that he was waiting for Dunkin’ Donuts to throw out its leftovers. Did she believe him? Her mother says: "She doubted that he was actually kicked out, but it made her feel bad." Nevertheless, others say she wanted to help him. "She said they would spend days together and kind of walk around," Valerie Santos says."That they were affectionate but not sexual. She encouraged Rudy to get back with his wife." He was cool toward the pregnancy, Kristine reported to her confidants. It bothered her that he would pat her head but never touch her stomach. Yet he also seemed to embrace paternal involvement. According to what Kristine told friends, he offered to be the birthing coach. And he said he wanted to give the baby a Hindu name. Still, "she was very confused." Valerie Santos says, "because Rudy had gone from one extreme to another in a really short amount of time. She was not listening to her gut anymore, because his nice behavior had swayed her." Yet she never entirely surrendered her skepticism. During the last two weeks before she disappeared, in "every conversation we had," Nick says, her wariness of Rudy "always came up. She was afraid of him; she was afraid he was going to get somebody to punch her in the stomach." Ozlem and Kathy say Kristine discussed such fears with them too. But she usually concluded that he wouldn’t hurt her because if something happened to her, it would be too obvious; all fingers would point to him. The third week in October, Kristine was feeling upbeat. She had $7,000 in her savings account, and she had chosen a birthing center on West 14th Street. Just before she disappeared, she stopped by to visit with Anthon Grant at school. They sat together in the student-government office and talked about her future. "She looked so good pregnant," he remembers ruefully, "and she seemed so happy." Kristines site: http://www.kristinekupka.com/html%20folder/nymag.html |
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| 100PercentFound | Sep 6 2006, 09:16 PM Post #10 |
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http://www.kristinekupka.com/ Kristine Kupka left her sister Kathy a phone message on the morning October 24, 1998. She stated that she was going out with the father of her unborn baby, Darshanand Persaud, also known as Rudy, to help him clean his new apartment and that she would call later. Kathy never heard from her 28 year old pregnant sister again. Kristine, a Baruch College student in New York City was 5 months pregnant and looking forward to a life as a single mother. Rudy was the baby's father. He had been Kristine's teacher at Baruch. When Kristine informed Rudy that she was pregnant, he told her that he was married. Tension rose between Kristine and Rudy over the pregnancy. He feared that it would ruin his life and his family would shun him. He pleaded with her to have an abortion. She feared him and told her roommate "If anything happens to me, Rudy did it." The Kristine Kupka investigation is being carried out by Gil Alba. anyone who has suggestions, recommendations, advice, or wants to chat about Kristine's case should visit the message board at http://www.albainvestigations.com |
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| PorchlightUSA | Dec 14 2006, 02:38 PM Post #11 |
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Note discrepancy in YEAR of Kristine's disappearance ::sigh:: The City's Top 10 Unsolved Crimes No justice yet for victims and their loved ones By MICHELE McPHEE and PATRICE O'SHAUGHNESSY Daily News Staff Writers stunning cover girl. An elderly Brooklyn lawyer. A struggling immigrant child. An off-duty cop. A jogger in Central Park. Two toddlers at play. They are victims of the unsolved mysteries of the city, crimes with trails long gone cold or lacking evidence or witnesses. Some vanished without a trace; others disappeared, only to turn up dead. Some were killed in their homes and neighborhoods, where they felt safest. Two of these 10 unsolved cases involve serial predators who attacked repeatedly on the Upper East Side and in Prospect Park. Together, these mysteries have persisted through a changing city, years of declining crime and dozens of investigators. In each case, justice has been elusive for the victims and their loved ones. The NYPD asks anyone with information on these crimes to call (800) 577-TIPS. 1. Knife Slaying of Star Model Victim: Marie Josee St. Antoine When: June 1982 Crime: Murder Marie Josee Saint Antoine, a raven-haired beauty with striking blue eyes, arrived in New York from Montreal in 1979 and quickly became a fixture on the city's glamour scene. At age 21, she signed with the Ford Model Agency, and before long, her impish smile and high cheekbones were gracing the covers of European and American fashion magazines such as Chatelaine and Femme. In 1982, Saint Antoine jumped to John Casablanca's Elite Modeling Management. Soon she was living the supermodel's life, earning nearly $100,000 per photo shoot, living near Gramercy Park and partying at the hottest night spots. On June 17, 1982, Saint Antoine attended an A-list affair hosted by Casablanca at Xenon. John F. Kennedy Jr., actress Valerie Perrine, singer Grace Jones and boxer Jerry Cooney were among the guests. Model Marie Josee St. Antoine was murdered in 1982. The night seemed to represent the realization of all Saint Antoine's dreams, but it would be the beginning of an enduring murder mystery. Shortly after midnight June 18, Saint Antoine was found dead in her fourth-floor apartment at 246 E. 23rd St. She had been stabbed through the heart, and her face was battered. There was no sign of a struggle. Detectives were perplexed that the victim's white high heels were found on the first-floor landing. The homicide has long since faded from the headlines, but detectives have been actively pursuing the killer. "Everyone who was in her life at the time can be a suspect. We've talked to boyfriends and ex-boyfriends," said Capt. Vincent Ferrara, commanding officer of the cold case squad. "We know the killer is someone that she knew." He added: "There is someone we are looking at a little stronger than others." Last month, detectives flew to California to interview actress Kim Delaney, who plays "NYPD Blue" Detective Diane Russell. Delaney, who was Saint Antoine's neighbor, remembered seeing the model walking with a man hours before her body was found, police sources said. "She was a very sweet girl," Casablanca said last week. "It's a shame that the person who did this to her hasn't been caught." 2. East Side Rapist Still Eludes Police Victims: 15 women When: Past seven years Crime: Rape and stalking It's been more than three years since the predator known as the upper East Side rapist last struck, but police believe he still stalks the streets. "We are still actively looking for him," said NYPD spokesman Lt. Steve Biegel. "We know he is still out there." A police sketch of the East Side Rapist Between Sept. 18, 1994, and March 24, 1998, 15 women were attacked by the same man in an area ranging from 75th St. to 90th St., as far east as York Ave. and once as far west as Amsterdam Ave. Police said the attacks usually occurred Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays between midnight and 5 a.m., near or at midblock buildings with no doormen. Most of the victims have been slim blond women who appeared to be in their 20s. The last victim, 24, escaped after she was grabbed from behind on E. 90th St. The others were sexually assaulted and robbed in some cases. 3. & 4. Toddlers Kidnapped From City Park Victims: Christopher Dansby & Shane Walker When: May & August 1989 Crime: Kipnapping Shane Walker in 1989 At Lenox Ave. and W. 114th St., children scampered around the sprinkler and the colorful slides and jungle gyms on a hot morning last week. But 12 years ago, two toddler boys vanished from this playground on separate balmy evenings. "They remodeled the swings, but the bench is the same," said Rosa Lee Glover, whose only child, Shane Walker, 20 months old, was taken Aug. 10, 1989, as she sat on a bench in the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers playground. She last saw her son playing with two older children. A computer-aged presentation of what Walker would look like today. "That day never leaves my mind," Glover said. Three months earlier, on May 18, the same bench was the last place anyone saw Christopher Dansby, a 26-month-old who lived in the same building as Shane. Detectives checked leads on drug-related motives, cults, baby-selling rings and any other theories that came up. "There has been not a word about them," said Detective Cameron Brown, who inherited the case in 1999. "We've had false sightings as far as California. Christopher Dansby in 1989 "We believe they were kidnapped, but we don't believe they're linked." Glover, 47, remains hopeful. "It's hard. ... I'm still hoping and praying. Maybe when he gets older, whoever has him will feel sorry for what they did and confess," she said. "Maybe it will be like one of those cases where someone raised him, and he'll come back." Christopher was in the park with his aunt and mother, Allison, when he disappeared. Christopher was in the park with his aunt and mother, Allison, when he disappeared. Later, a 7-year-old neighbor told cops he saw Christopher walking on W. 111th St. with a man with braids. A computer-aged depiction of what Dansby would look like today. Police checked out leads that filled nine file folders. They investigated drug-related motives, cults, baby-selling rings and any other theories that came up. "There has been not a word about them," said Detective Cameron Brown, who inherited the case in 1999. "We've had false sightings as far as California. "We believe they were kidnapped, but we don't believe they're linked." Glover, 47, and Dansby, 37, remain hopeful. "Maybe when he gets older, whoever has him will feel sorry for what they did and confess," Glover said. "Maybe it will be like one of those cases where someone raised him, and he'll come back." "I feel he's out there somewhere," Dansby said. "I never get any feelings as far as ... (her son being dead.)" Rosa Glover still hopes for the safe return of her son, Shane Walker. Glover and Dansby were not close neighbors but became bonded by loss. Their sons were cute, chubby-faced boys who now — according to computer-generated imagig — would be angular-faced teens. Both women moved from the King projects, and both call Brown every so often. Brown reinterviewed Dansby's son, Levon, who was 3 when his brother disappeared, but Levon can't remember much. Glover appealed to whoever took Shane, and to anyone who might know something about his whereabouts: "Please return him. He's the only son I ever had." 5. Who Killed Lawyer Sanford Silver? Victim: Sanford Silver When: Feb. 5 Crime: Murder Sanford Silver He lived his life in one corner of Brooklyn, a creature of habit who had a mom-and-pop law business. He wasn't known much beyond Borough Park, where he tended his garden and his ailing wife. When Sanford Silver, 73, disappeared from his blood-spattered storefront office Feb. 5, police at first thought it was a case of an injured and disoriented elderly man. But five days later, his body was found wrapped in plastic trash bags, hands bound, in a reedy lot at the edge of Coney Island Creek. He had been strangled in what appeared to be an act of rage, not a premeditated murder, a police source said. Silver was attacked in his office on 48th St. between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. and carried out as heavy, wet snowflakes fell. Police have no witnesses. "The day he was reported missing was the day we believe he was moved. But how did they carry him out of the office? And how did they dump in that area of Coney Island?" one investigator wondered. Mourners pay their respects at Silver's funeral. Cops are pursuing several avenues related to Silver's professional dealings, sources said. Aside from his law business, Silver owned a building with his cousin Brooklyn state Supreme Court Justice Edward Rappaport. Silver and a tenant of the building had been in contentious negotiations over the lease. Detectives have sent Silver's clothing and other evidence recovered from the crime scene to the FBI lab for further tests, because "there was nothing — not a print," said a police source. Silver was born and raised in the house he shared with his wife, Saralyn, and an extended family. He never ventured far from the neighborhood, except to visit his cherished granddaughter, Elizabeth, in Philadelphia. Saralyn Silver, whom he was supposed to take to a doctor's appointment the day he vanished, is in failing health. "Here's a guy who led a very quiet life. Everyone loved him. The postman that delivered the mail loved him. His neighbors loved him. His family loved him," Rappaport said. "He was a wonderful man. The list of things that he did for people went on and on and on. Then somebody ends up killing him. Why? It's terrible." 6. Schoolgirl Vanishes Victim: Quin Rong Wu When: May 13, 1997 Crime: Murder The smiling face of Quin Rong Wu on the "missing child" posters plastering the lower East side belied how hard her life had sometimes been. Quin Rong Wu was murdered in 1997. To circumvent China's family planning laws, she did not live with her parents for the first eight years of her life. She finally joined them to emigrate the Guandong province to a tiny apartment on Henry St. Her parents worked long hours in factories. Then, on May 13, 1997, 11-year-old Quin Rong was reported missing. She never arrived at Public School 2, down the block from her home. A massive search was launched. The family burned incense and prayed. She was found May 28, strangled, in the East River. The case became clouded by language barriers and a clash of cultures. Police were surprised that her parents never inquired about developments. The Chinatown community raised $100,000 for the family and was puzzled that the Wus closeted themselves. Police talked to scores of homeless people after a caller said she saw Quin Rong on a subway train with a vagrant, but they never verified that report. Family and friends grieve with Quin Rong Wu's parents at the 11-year-old's funeral. They also have not confirmed reports that the Wus had an infant daughter who died in China. "We did an extensive investigation, and the answer lies with someone close to her," said a police source. The girl's father, Qun Sheng, moved his family to another apartment in Chinatown. His youngest child, Jia Rong, now 11, still attends Public School 2. Reached at home last week, the father said, "Thank you for your concern, but I don't want to talk about it." 7. What Happened to Kristine Kupka? Victim: Kristine Kupka When: Oct. 24, 1999 Crime: Missing During the lingering Indian summer of October 1999, Kristine Kupka was consumed by her pregnancy and the promise of motherhood. "Today I went swimming," Kupka, 29, scribbled Oct. 22 in a spiral-bound journal. "Now I know that I'll do this regularly," she wrote. "It relaxes me and it makes me feel like a good mom." Kristine Kupka has been missing since October 1999. On Oct. 24, Kupka left her Brooklyn home with her lover, Darshanand (Rudy) Persaud, a Baruch College lab instructor and a devout Hindu. Persaud picked Kupka up at her Kensington apartment, telling her roommate they were going for brunch in Queens. But by the next morning, Kupka had not returned. Her worried roommate called the missing woman's sister, Kathy, saying: "Kristine never came home. I think something terrible has happened." Detectives and Kupka's loved ones believe the Baruch student was murdered. Persaud, who is married, has refused to cooperate with detectives. Kristine Kupka's sister, Kathy (r.) is comforted by a friend near billboard in Williamsburg about her sister's disappearance. "It's still incredibly painful," Kathy Kupka said Thursday — which would have been her sister's 30th birthday. "I still get depressed all the time. I can't get over it. I'll never get over it until someone goes to jail," she said. "Her birthday passes, and what would have been the baby's birthday passes, and it gets worse." This year, Kupka's case was assigned to Detective Daniel D'Allessandro of the cold case squad. 8. Jogger Is Slain Victim: Maria Isabel Monteiro Alves When: Sept. 17, 1995 Crime: Murder It was a murder in "the crown jewel of the city," according to then-Police Commissioner William Bratton, so he formed a huge task force of cops to hunt for the person who bludgeoned and sexually assaulted Maria Isabel Monteiro Alves as she ran through the northern end of Central Park on a Sunday morning. Maria Isabel Monteiro Alves Alves was dragged into a ravine and brutally beaten, then dumped in a stream. There was also a rainstorm that day. Any forensic evidence was washed away, police said. Alves, 44, an avid runner, came from Brazil and worked in a trendy Manhattan shoe store. Her slaying, on Sept. 17, 1995, came just as crime rates began to drop. A total of $63,000 in rewards was offered. Park habitues were questioned. Thousands of posters were tacked up and handed out to joggers. Alves' life was scrutinized. Police ran down hundreds of leads. Within two weeks, cops had arrested a can scavenger who said he witnessed the attack on Alves. They questioned him for 36 hours and released him. The man he named was cleared. Lidia Pinto-Machado (c.), mother of Alves, mourns over her daughter's coffin at her funeral in Brazil. Detectives said last week that they believe Alves was assaulted by homeless people still living in the vicinity of the park. "We continue to look in that direction," said Lt. Antonio Collazo of the cold case squad. Alves was buried in her hometown of Marcia, Brazil, a seaside resort. Her mother, Lidia Pinto-Machado, visits her daughter's grave every day. "Justice didn't work very well," Alves' brother, Antonio Monteiro Alves, said last week. "I'm very sad. ... I think justice could have done better." But he added that he and his mother "still have hope they will find the person who did it." 9. Gay Men Attacked Victims: Five gay men When: In the past year Crime: Slashing He moves silently and strikes without warning. He swaths his muscular frame in black clothes and covers his face with a mask. And he has attacked five gay men in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, slashing at them with a long serrated knife or beating them with his fists, detectives said. Five gay men have been attacked in Prospect Park over the past year. Last summer, he struck four times between June 28 and July 7 in a section of the park called the Vale of Cashmere, a heavily wooded area known as a gay cruising spot. Police believe the man also attacked a Brooklyn social worker near Grand Army Plaza on Jan. 15. One victim called the assailant the ninja because he slashed at the air with his hands. "This guy comes out of nowhere," said Detective Larry Menniti of the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force. "He's truly a mystery. We feel he's a loner, and we know he lurks in the park." 10. Cop Felled in B'klyn Ambush Victim: Ralph Dols Date: Aug. 25, 1997 Crime: Murder Police officer Ralph Dols was murdered in 1997. Every time Maria Dols shops for food, she walks past her late son's Brooklyn apartment and her heart races with the terrible memory of his violent end. Two gunmen ambushed off-duty cop Ralph Dols outside his home at E. 19th St. and Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay as he left his car Aug. 25, 1997. Dols, 28, was shot seven times and died of his wounds the following morning. His parents, Maria and Eddie, live two blocks from the murder scene and shop at Key Food, directly across the street. "Every time I pass his house, it brings it all back. It's terrible," said his mother. "Every day it's hard, and there's no escape from it." "There are days that seem as dreary as the night he was killed. It's always the same," added Dols' sister, Anna. Dols, a bodybuilding four-year NYPD veteran, was nicknamed Gentle Giant by the children in the Coney Island housing projects he patrolled. Flowers left in doorway of slain off-duty cop Dols' home Detectives believe his death is linked to organized crime. Dols' widow, Kim Kennaugh Dols, 41, has been married to three reputed Colombo crime family figures: Thomas Capelli; Enrico Carini, who was shot dead, gangland-style, in 1987, and Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace, a capo who survived a 1992 shooting, police sources said. "We're looking into all leads and associations with Russian and Italian organized crime figures," said Brooklyn homicide Detective Anthony Angotti. "This case is the homicide of a cop," he said. "You take particular interest because it's one of your own." Original Publication Date: 5/6/01 |
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| PorchlightUSA | Dec 14 2006, 02:39 PM Post #12 |
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http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...opic=2387&st=0& |
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| PorchlightUSA | Mar 4 2010, 06:22 PM Post #13 |
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http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/...XZ53VKmTS0OlqvJ Dig for missing Brooklyn gal By MURRAY WEISS and KIRSTEN FLEMING Last Updated: 2:05 PM, March 4, 2010 Posted: 3:38 AM, March 4, 2010 Comments: 5 | More Print Police dug up the basement of a Queens plumbing-supply store yesterday in search of the body of a Baruch College student who vanished 12 years ago while she was five months pregnant with her married professor's child, sources said. Aided by a cadaver-sniffing dog, the NYPD cold-case squad believes that the dig at the Jamaica shop will yield the remains of Kristina Kupka, a 28-year-old undergrad who vanished in 1998. Kupka's lover and chemistry instructor at the time, Darshanad Persaud, was a prime suspect in her disappearance, but without evidence he was never arrested. KRISTINA KUPKA Vanished in 1998. KRISTINA KUPKA Vanished in 1998. "No comment, I can't help you out," Persaud, 41, a Guyanese immigrant who is now a dentist in Tampa, Fla., told The Post. The cadaver-sniffing dog indicated there were human remains in the basement of the Liberty Avenue shop and investigators noticed one section of the concrete floor did not match the rest. Teams dug down six feet and are expected to resume the search today. In 2000, police received an anonymous tip that Kupka's body was hidden in basement of the shop, which at the time was an auto-supply store run by Khemraj Maraj, Persaud's cousin. Maraj refused to let cops conduct a search. The store was recently leased to a plumbing-supply business, which allowed the search. murray.weiss@nypost.com |
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| tatertot | Mar 6 2010, 10:00 AM Post #14 |
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http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens...kupka_case.html Investigators search Queens basement for remains in Kristine Kupka case BY Oren Yaniv and Jonathan Lemire DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Friday, March 5th 2010, 10:19 AM Investigators hope they are tantalizingly close to solving the decade-long disappearance of a pregnant Baruch College student - but two days of searching a Queens basement has yielded nothing. Kristine Kupka, 28, vanished in October 1998, but her body has never been found. While suspicion has long centered on the married professor whose child she was carrying, he has not been charged. Cold case detectives dug up the basement of a Liberty Ave. plumbing supply store Thursday, a day after a cadaver dog indicated a corpse was buried in the concrete. While the excavation has not yet turned up Kupka's remains, her long-suffering sister refused to give up hope that her beloved sibling would be found. "It's been horrible and I can't even describe it," said Kathy Kupka. "In my mind, I know she was killed in that [store]." Darshanand (Rudy) Persaud, Kristine Kupka's boyfriend and chemistry instructor, has "certainly" remained the prime suspect over the years, a high-ranking NYPD source said Thursday. The missing woman's sister, who has spent 12 years keeping her sibling's case from being forgotten, believes Persaud - the last person seen with Kristine Kupka - is guilty. "I want to know what happened," said an enraged Kathy Kupka. "I want closure." "She was afraid of him," said Kathy Kupka, remembering that her sister once told her, "'If anything happens to me, it's Rudy.'" Persaud, now a dentist living in Florida, has never cooperated with investigators, police sources said. His cousin, Khemraj Maraj, was the former owner of the Jamaica store that entered cops' cross hairs in 2000 when they received an anonymous tip that the five-months pregnant Kristine Kupka was buried in its basement. Maraj refused to let cops search the store, which used to be an auto-supply shop, and investigators did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant, the sources said. Every six months for the last decade, cops would visit the store, and each time Maraj would deny them entrance, the sources said. But in January, the cold case detectives learned the store had been sold - and the new owner granted them permission to search the basement. "We've been waiting all these years to search this place," said Gil Alba, a private investigator hired by Kupka's family. "It was a stumbling block," Alba said. "Why wouldn't they allow us inside?" Investigators have focused on a six-inch slab of concrete that appears shoddily installed on the basement floor, sources said. A dog signaled a "hit" under the slab Wednesday but cops did not locate any remains, leading investigators to fear that it was a false positive, the sources said. The investigators will resume the search early Friday after the dust from the latest round of digging settles, clearing the air for the dogs, police said. Khemraj Maraj, who has moved to Florida, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Investigators have suspected that he and another cousin may have helped Persaud dispose of Kupka, the NYPD sources said. A woman who answered the phone at Persaud's office declined to comment Thursday and neighbors in his suburban Tampa neighborhood said he had not been around for days. Kathy Kupka said her sister, who lived in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, was not aware Persaud was married when they began their affair and that he pressured her to have an abortion. When she refused, their romantic relationship cooled but they still spent time together - including Oct. 24, 1998, when Persaud said he wanted to show her his new apartment. That was last time Kristine Kupka was seen alive, police confirmed. Cops and private investigators searched hospitals, warehouses and the coastline but never located Kupka, and there was no evidence that her baby was ever delivered. "She was fabulous, funny and smart," said Kathy Kupka. "She was great, incredibly funny, and just so strong." |
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| tatertot | Mar 9 2010, 07:28 AM Post #15 |
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http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/...oweRxzs1MExvilM Bones found in Queens not missing student By JOHN DOYLE and MURRAY WEISS Last Updated: 6:14 PM, March 8, 2010 Posted: 1:30 PM, March 8, 2010 Bones fragments unearthed today in the basement of a Queens plumbing supply store are not human, but cops will continue to search for the remains of a Baruch college student who vanished 12 years ago while she was five months pregnant with her married professor's child, sources said. A test on the fragments dashed the hopes of investigators who thought they might have solved the mystery behind the disappearance of Kristina Kupka, a 28-year-old undergrad who vanished in 1998. Kupka's lover and chemistry instructor at the time, Darshanad Persaud, was a prime suspect in her disappearance, but without evidence he was never arrested. In 2000, police received an anonymous tip that Kupka's body was hidden in basement of the Jamaica shop, which at the time was an auto-supply store run by Khemraj Maraj, Persaud's cousin. Maraj refused to let cops conduct a search. After years of legal wrangling, detectives were finally started searching inside the Jamaica store last week using shovels, a back hoe and a cadaver-sniffing dog. Investigators had noticed that one section of the concrete floor did not match the rest and focused their efforts there. |
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| PorchlightUSA | Mar 9 2010, 12:42 PM Post #16 |
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http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=...ocal&id=7312449 Stacey Sager More: Bio, News Team Eyewitness News QUEENS (WABC) -- There may be a big break in the search for a pregnant college student who has been missing for 12 years. Police say they have new clues in the disappearance of Kristina Kupka. "When they called me, I have to say I was in shock," the victim's sister, Kathy Kupka said. "It was shocking, just a call out of the blue. I've been waiting for it for years." Kupka's been waiting since 1998 for news on whoever killed her sister. And this week, police are hoping they're closer to finding an answer, searching beneath the cement floor of a business on Liberty Avenue in Jamaica. Related Content More: Eyewitness News on iPhone! More: Get Eyewitness News delivered to you! Kristina Kupka was a 28-year-old student at Baruch College who was 5 months pregnant when she disappeared in October of 1998. Her family and friends last saw her with Darshanand "Rudy" Persaud, her professor at the time, who was married but believed to be the father of her unborn child. Gil Alba is a private investigator who has interviewed hundreds of people about the case. "I think he holds the key to this investigation," Alba said, adding that he thinks Persaud was involved. And for years, Persaud's relatives owned a business at that address. Police asked to search, but they were never allowed. Now, the business has finally changed hands. Rudy Persaud, still married and now a dentist in Tampa, Florida, did not respond to Eyewitness News' request for a comment. As Kupka's sister insists, there was certainly motive for murder. "He desperately wanted her to have an abortion, and she became afraid of him," Kathy Kupka said. Police are continuing their search at the business. (Copyright ©2010 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.) |
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2:23 PM Jul 11