Forensic Files - Season 5, Episode 4 - A Voice from Beyond - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] all homes have a history which includes the memories hopes and dreams of all who
have lived there but this home in a quiet upscale neighborhood in suburban new york held
something more in a steel drum stored in a crawl space was a secret that someone had hoped
would last a lifetime [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] september 2nd 1999 was moving day for the cohen family
in jericho new york before leaving that day ronald cohen noticed that the sanitation workers
hadn't picked up all of his trash a note on a large steel drum said it wasn't removed because of its weight
cohen had no idea what was inside since it had been in a crawl space in his home
since the day he moved in nine years earlier [Music] when he broke the seal cohen was overcome by a terrible stench
inside he saw what appeared to be a human hand and a lady's shoe [Music] local police transported the drum to the
nassau county morgue where all of its contents were carefully removed for forensic examination inside
were the mummified remains of a young woman there were also some plastic pellets a
green plastic flower stem with leaves and a woman's pocketbook which was submerged in a mysterious brownish-green
liquid at the bottom of the drum the liquid had virtually destroyed the contents of the pocketbook which might
have identified the victim the cause of death appeared to be blunt force trauma to the head
what was most noteworthy to the body and the cause of death were that there were
10 different injuries called lacerations to the back and upper part of her head there are multiple fractures to the
skull in some areas the skull was broken into small pieces there also was blood staining to these areas of injuries
indicating that they occurred while she was alive but who was this murdered woman
the medical examiner determined that the woman was either white or hispanic between 20 and 30 years of age she stood
approximately five feet tall she also had some unusual dental work it didn't appear to be dental work that was
performed in the united states it led me to believe that it was from a south american country
when dr cadenese x-rayed the body he made a shocking discovery a 17-inch fetus a close to full-term
baby boy three pieces of jewelry were removed from the body two rings and a locket
that was inscribed to patrice love uncle phil the first discovery would come from the
barrel itself there were several coated numbers on the drum one was as good as a fingerprint it
led to a chemical company in linden new jersey company records indicated that the drum
was manufactured in 1965 now 34 years later it shows up as someone's makeshift coffin
[Music] a 55-gallon steel drum concealed in a crawl space of a suburban new york home
revealed shocking evidence of a homicide the most recent owner said it had been in the crawl space since the day he
moved in in 1990 the owner before that told police the same thing and said it never occurred to him to open the
container since there were chemical labels on the side the woman's purse found in the liquid at
the bottom of the drum contains some papers and an address book the pages were illegible since the
liquid had reduced the paper to little more than pulp they were all sent to a forensic
document examiner for analysis it was so heavily and thickly encrusted with a brownish yellow slime
it was like a jelly like substance and it coated everything and when i touched the evidence with my gloves on i could
see it just came right off of my hands the items had to be placed in a forensic drying cabinet for several days to draw
out the moisture when dry they could be examined with a video spectral comparator or vsc which
combines advanced digital engineering with the full range of infrared light sources in order to visualize writing
that is not discernible with the naked eye this technology can show where alterations have been made on a check
with the various light sources under an infrared luminescence setting the different ink will glow
magnification can also detect when official documents have been altered two pages of a legal contract appear the
same but under ultraviolet light it reveals that one of the pages was added later
indented impressions left behind become visible with oblique or side lighting light from behind or transmitted light
can show what's written under correction fluid after the pages from the barrel were dry
the results were disappointing the liquid had removed the ink from the pages but after hours of meticulous and
delicate work under infrared camera filters the document examiner started to see some names and addresses in the
address book as i put it under the machine and tried the various filters and lights
some names and phone numbers and addresses started to come up in the book it was actually quite amazing to see
writing appear from within the pages of this book that had been submerged in these fluids
for 30 some odd years but the information in the address book was 30 years old too
and when investigators dialed the telephone numbers the individuals had long since moved
facing an apparent dead end investigators turned their attention to the family who owned the home in the
1960s the time frame in which the steel drum had been manufactured the owner in those years was a man named
howard elkins who is now retired and living in boca raton florida and we have people in the neighborhood
who are long-term residents say he was involved in some plastics company in manhattan
the plastic connection rang alarm bells since a plastic leaf and plastic pellets
were found in the drum along with the murdered woman in the 1960s howard elkins was part
owner of the melrose plastic company in manhattan the company manufactured plastic plants
and trees as investigators made plans to interview howard elkins in florida the address book from the drum
started to reveal more names and more secrets the pieces of the puzzle were starting
to come together in the search for the identity of the murdered pregnant woman found in the metal drum
the serial numbers on the drum led investigators to a chemical company based in new jersey i went there with a
detective from our lab who has some knowledge of chemicals we went there and we showed them the
pellets and we showed them the green material showed them pictures of the barrel
the chemical company identified the green liquid in the bottom of the drum as a die
a halogen green dye used to color the bases on plastic flowers and trees but it hadn't been manufactured since 1971
the pellets in the drum were the type used in making plastic leaves and flowers like the plastic leaf found with
the body the local newspaper coverage of the unidentified woman in the steel drum led
to an anonymous telephone call to the nassau county police he tells us about the drum where it comes from it tells us
that that was the chemicals that they used when they were mixing the bases for these artificial trees so he puts all
this together he puts everything in perspective first the caller did not know the identity of the dead woman but
said that howard elkins was having an affair in the 1960s with an hispanic woman who worked for him in his plastic
factory so we now have things to talk to about other than the fact that there was a
barrel found under his house when police flew to boca raton florida to speak with howard elkins he wasn't
entirely cooperative did you ever use this type of a barrel in your business no we never had any
barrels like that no we never had any barrels like that did you ever use a dinos halogen green
no we never used the chemical we had no need to use the cap there were plastic pellets found in the barrel
and we believe that they were used in your business is that right i don't know i don't know what they would have been
used for he lied to us we knew he was lying to us within five minutes of the interview i
asked him at one point if you had did you ever have an affair while you were working here
and he kind of surprised us and he said yes but then we went into what was her name
i don't know can you describe her it was 30 years ago i said you can't even describe her was
she tall was she short was she fat was she skinny was she spanish i don't remember
after about 20 minutes of this uh i had removed from my briefcase a kit and i asked him if he would give me
permission for me to take a swab from the inside of his mouth for dna purposes to see if he in fact was the father of
that baby he told us no he said dude he didn't think he would allow that the interview was interrupted by a phone
call from elkin's wife elkins asked the police to leave saying he wanted to speak with her privately
this is private you're gonna have to leave after he asked us to leave we told him
that we would i said that there was not a doubt in my mind that he was involved in this
and i stood up and i stood right in front of him and i said we're gonna leave now mistaken
but i'm going to get a court order i'm going to come back with that court order and i'm going to take your blood and i'm
going to match your blood up to the dead baby and that dead girl and i'm going to come back here and
arrest you for murder and put you in jail for the rest of your life he nodded his head and he opened the door and
asked us to leave as police left to get the court order howard elkins left to go shopping
he purchased a shotgun and some ammunition howard elkins was found inside a neighbor's garage by police and his own
son a shotgun between his legs a fatal self-inflicted wound to his head the 70-year-old retired plastics
executive left no final note of explanation after his suicide investigators took a
sample of howard elkin's blood and sent it to labcorp a north carolina dna testing facility
when we're testing for paternity we look for shared dna bands between the child or the fetus and the alleged father in
the case of the fetus found in the drum there were obstacles to overcome the tissue samples from the fetus were
very badly degraded after 30 years a technique called polymerase chain reaction or pcr allowed scientists to
amplify the existing dna making an analysis possible this is the dna banding pattern from the
fetus this is the dna banding pattern from mr elkins at every region of the dna that we tested the fetus and mr
elkins have a band in common mr elkins could not be excluded with a 99.93 probability of paternity
although the crime was solved one mystery remained the identity of the woman in the drum
the small address book that had been submerged in the green liquid in the bottom of the drum was finally starting
to tell a story thirty-year-old secrets on blank pages that were now readable with the latest
in forensic technology i kept looking through the book and on this page on the second line i
found the name mr elkins and the address in manhattan with a phone number on another page
barely readable were the words residencia nombre a resident alien number and the address and telephone number of
someone named kathy andrade investigators were surprised to learn that after 30 years she was still living
in the same apartment with the same telephone number kathy andrade knew immediately the
identity of the pregnant young woman in the drum she was a student in her english class
reyna angelica marikin from el salvador this lady almost immediately went to tears
she told us that she knew angelic american that she was the one of the more lovely people that she ever knew
and that she disappeared 30 years ago kathy andrade never knew what happened to her friend reyna maraquin although
she feared she had met with foul play and i was in shock and i said oh my god you know it's hard to believe that these
things can happen reyna marrakeen came to the united states in 1966 and lived here in a modest room in a
catholic home for single women she attended classes at the high school of fashion industry and got a job at the
melrose plastic company making artificial flowers she had a beautiful personality
she always talked about her family and she was in touch with the family how much she loved new york and her dream
was to become an american citizen shortly before she disappeared reina told kathy that she was pregnant
but she did not tell her who the father was is he going to marry you she said eventually he will marry me
i never asked her because she never said who he was but reyna told kathy that her boyfriend
was married with three other children and reyna was beginning to question whether he had any intention of leaving
his wife and children to marry her so she got very angry she called the house and once the phone was his wife
and she told his wife that she was expecting a baby from her husband then he called her back and he says i am
going to kill you i will never forgive you she was cried she was terrified he's going to kill me
he's going to kill me i said why do you she says i don't know i don't know i just made a stupid mistake
when kathy andrade went to reina's apartment she found the door unlocked but there was no sign of rainer
and i waited for about three hours when nobody returned the phone never rang or anything
i got scared i walked into the police station and i spoke to the officer and he says are you a relative of the
young lady i said no i'm only a friend and i said but she's spreading she's about to have a baby oh she said you
know she probably went shopping and since kathy andrade didn't know the identity of reina's lover there was
little more she could tell police how about reyna honestly i feel sorry because there was a future for her
you know she paid very dear for that mistake [Music] mr elkins investigators believe that
howard elkins lured reina to the factory one night shortly after she told elkin's
wife about their affair and elkins beat her to death he then took the body to his suburban
long island home probably with the intention of dumping her into the ocean from his boat
[Music] he placed the body into a steel drum from work to make sure it would sink to the bottom
of the ocean he weighted it with plastic pellets [Music] [Music] [Music] but he miscalculated the weight of the
drum after he sealed it at 350 pounds it was much too heavy to carry on to his boat
[Music] his only alternative was to push it into a crawl space in his home and there it remained undisturbed
through numerous owners for 34 years and for 30 years she spent in a barrel while howard elkins raised his family
and had his children go to school and led whatever as normal life as you can you know waiting for that other shoe to
drop and if trash collectors hadn't refused to pick up the drum the secret of howard elkins and reyna
angelica marrakeen might never have been discovered oscar corral covered the story for
newsday he flew down to el salvador to try to find reina's family in san martin a
small village outside of san salvador he found reyna marrakeen's 95 year old mother she came out to the front of the
house where there was a porch and i said to her i'm a reporter from newsday new york i told her that police had
discovered a woman who had been murdered 30 years ago and when she saw her daughter's picture
she almost fainted she had to lean on somebody who was carrying her her face fell
she immediately began to weep it had been 30 years that this woman waited for an answer
she told me she had dreams about her daughter for 30 years she told me she had a dream even that
her daughter was in a barrel that haunted her for so long reyna maraquin left el salvador because
she discovered her husband had a lover who was pregnant with her husband's child
when she fled to new york city reyna found herself in the same situation although this time
she was the pregnant other woman in a love triangle that had disastrous consequences so she was on
both sides of the fence in this case and in the end it cost her her life investigators found one last message on
a blank piece of paper found in the drum alongside reyna marrakeen and her unborn
child a message possibly from reyna herself to howard elkins it said don't be mad
i told the truth [Music] [Music] you

When a decomposed body is found stuffed in a barrel, it's easy to presume murder. But the body had been placed in the barrel 30 years earlier. One of the few clues was an address book found along with the body.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

A steel drum reveals a 30-year-old murder mystery involving Reyna Marrakeen and Howard Elkins in New York.

Key points

The Discovery of a Secret. A steel drum in a crawl space reveals a dark secret from the past.
The Shocking Find. Inside the drum, a young woman's mummified remains and a fetus are discovered.
A Long-Lasting Mystery. The identity of the murdered woman remains a mystery despite DNA evidence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

All homes have a history.

0:06WatchNov 11, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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