DNA test
snares thug in '83 slay
For nearly a
quarter-century, Susan Huppelsberg ignored the happy rituals of
impending summer: weddings and graduations, fireworks and family
picnics.
As
every July 18 approached, she lit votive candles or dialed
homicide detectives. She thought back to the sweltering morning
when a strange voice answered the phone at her mother's
apartment in Pelham, Westchester County.
"A police
officer," Huppelsberg recalls, "he told me my mother had
passed."
He spared her the
grim details, but they soon emerged. Josephine O'Keefe was found
naked and dead inside her apartment on July 18, 1983, strangled
by a rapist who disappeared into the summer wind.
"A 100% innocent
victim," one investigator says.
Year after
painful year, Huppelsberg, who turns 44 this month, counted down
the days to her sad anniversary, a prisoner of grief while the
killer roamed free.
Until now.
Investigators -
using new evidence and a DNA match - have a suspect locked up.
It was the longest span between a murder and an arrest ever made
by the Westchester County Police Cold Case Squad.
 |
|
Ex-con
Kenneth West allegedly raped and killed Josephine
O'Keefe (shown here in undated picture with her
daughter, Susan Huppelsberg) in 1983. |
When July 18
arrives this week, when Huppelsberg remembers her mother's death
on its 25th anniversary, the sadness will finally give way to
other emotions.
"It's like
watching the whole thing all over again, reliving it - but this
time with a happy ending," she says.
****
Josephine O'Keefe
lived with her two dogs in an apartment on Lincoln Ave. in
quiet, suburban Pelham. On the ground floor was Al's Tackle
Shop; its employees included a teen named Kenneth West.
Her murder,
Pelham's first in seven years, was brutal and stunning: The
53-year-old widow, a mother of four, was found dead in her
bedroom. The screen was knocked loose from a window off her fire
escape. A plant was knocked over.
Two suspects
emerged, and circumstantial evidence found, but the trail soon
went cold, and life went on.
Every year, just
before Christmas, Huppelsberg marked her mother's birthday. She
kept in touch with police about the case, particularly when July
18 arrived.
West became a
bouncer in a Mount Vernon strip club - Sue's Rendezvous, where
another bouncer was shot to death in 1987. West later admitted
helping kill the man and dispose of the body.
In return for
testimony against a co-defendant, West pleaded to manslaughter
in 1994 and received a nine- to 18-year prison term. He was
paroled in April 2006.
By then, West was
a suspect in another death: the slaying of Josephine O'Keefe.
****
Huppelsberg's
daughter was 6 months old at the time of the murder. The little
girl grew up without knowing her grandma.
