Authorities in upstate New York have identified the person they believe is responsible for the 1994 murder of an 81-year-old woman in her home, but said justice will unfortunately not be served.
Jeremiah J. Guyette, the suspect linked to the death of Wilomeana “Violet” Filkins, committed suicide in 2019, authorities said at a news conference Thursday.
Filkins was found dead on August 19, 1994 in her East Greenbush apartment by her brother and niece after no one could locate her. She was killed two days before. She was found with multiple blows to the head, authorities said.
“She was a very simple woman, lived quietly and never would have imagined what happened,” said Carol, Filkins’s niece.
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Wilomeana “Violet” Filkins, 81, was found dead in her New York apartment in 1994. Her alleged killer took his own life in 2019, authorities said Thursday.
(New York State Police)
DNA collected from Guyette after his death was linked to the murder after the sample matched a fingerprint found on a coffee table in Filkins’ suburban Albany apartment.
“Throughout my career, every time there was a change in our detective bureau, there was a promise from one detective to another to never stop investigating this case to find justice for Violet and her family,” the police chief said. of East Greenbush. Elaine Rudzinski.
Guyette, who was 17 at the time of the murder, planned to steal a car and hold up a bank to get money for college, police said. Three years after the murder, Filkins’ belongings were found several miles from the crime scene along a highway, WNYT-TV reported.
Guyette, a Minnesota native, moved to East Greenbush to live with his father and graduated from Columbia High School in 1994, said East Greenbush Police Detective Sgt. Michael Guadagnino. He enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed at the then Patrick Air Force Base south of Cape Canaveral.
After being released, he ended up in Rosendale, where he was interviewed by police in 2019. At the time, he was driving a school bus and a bus for the elderly. During the interview, Guyette became defensive and visibly upset, Guadagnino said.
In 2019, a former girlfriend told police that Guyette had made comments a decade earlier about an elderly woman, authorities said.
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“The ex-girlfriend who came forward had never really thought about the statements that Jeremías had made to her,” Guadagnino said. “He was watching Cold Case Homicide on Netflix and saw it and it caught his eye. He started googling different things and saw that Jeremiah had lived in East Greenbush at the time of Violet’s murder, he put two and two and once together. That we got that lead we were basically able to dissect Jeremiah’s life, the different places he lived and then run on that information.”
The next day, the New York State Police were called to Guyette’s apartment on reports of gunshots. He was found dead in his garage.
