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| Margaret Zorn, photo from Bethpage Tribune |
Here's an unsolved crime from my childhood that has always stuck with me.
The robbery and murder of Margaret Zorn on November 22, 1976.
I didn't know the victim. My family only occasionally bought meals from the establishment owned by the Zorn family - we weren't regular customers but we liked the product, and yet the crime has always stayed with me.
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| Photo courtesy of Bethpage Chamber of Commerce |
I don't think I fully appreciated how close my later place of employment (for 30 years) was to where her car, with her dead body in the front seat, was parked until I found a series of archived newspaper articles earlier this year. I wasn't working anywhere at the time of the crime. I was, maybe, in my first year of Junior High School.
The week of Thanksgiving is always a busy one at Zorn's and the daily deposit reflected this. On Monday, November 22, 1976, Margaret, 66-years-old, was driving to the Farmingdale, New York branch of Banker's Trust, 170 Conklin Street, with $6,000 in cash and $10,000 in checks. She left the store at 1:30 PM.
Traffic on Hempstead Turnpike/Conklin Street can be very slow and congested but when Margaret hadn't returned within 2 hours, the store employees called the bank to see if she'd made it there. She had not - they phoned the police.
This wasn't the only phone call to police that afternoon regarding Margaret Zorn. A 17-year-old boy had discovered Margaret slumped over in her car and he alerted a neighbor who then phoned police. This was at 3:40 PM. She was dead.
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| Photo from the Farmingdale Observer |
Margaret's car was parked on the south side of Prospect Street, near the corner of Bernard Street. She had been shot once. Gone were the cash and checks but Margaret's jewelry hadn't been stolen.
Police interviewed more than 350 people and Margaret's family offered a reward of $5,000 for information leading to an arrest but to no avail. The rumor I'd always heard was, the ever-vague, "it was an inside job" but that gossip never led to an arrest.
2 comments:
That's interesting. I never knew. And you're right. It's so close to where we work. It is weird that her jewelry was not stolen. Someone should look into this cold case again. Only if they could have Kathryn Morris to crack the case wide open. ;)
My late grandmother recalled the crime very well of Margret Zorn. The cold case she be reopwnd again.
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