Yonkers Cops Offer $5,000 Reward In 5-Year-Old Cold Case Murder
YONKERS, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Police in Yonkers are now offering a reward for information about a 5-year-old Bronx murder.
Posters started going up in High Bridge on Wednesday.
As CBS2's Lou Young reported, Tawanna McClellan carried her pain for all to see on Ogden Avenue in the Bronx, putting up police posters for the new $5,000 reward -- $1,000 for every year her sister's murder has gone unsolved.
"Just knowing that someone's out there who knows what happened, who knows who did it, how can you live with yourself? It's almost five years," she said.
Pamela Graddick was 26 when she died, clad in a t-shirt and underwear. The home healthcare worker had no apparent enemies.
"I believe it was someone that she knew," Detective John Geiss, Yonkers Police Department said, "Because of the way she was dressed when she was found."
It's presumed she was killed in the Bronx, perhaps inside her own apartment. For the first weeks it was a low-priority missing persons case. It didn't become a murder until her body turned up in Yonkers near the Sprain Brook Parkway.
"Right here in a black garbage bag. She was in a fetal position in the bag," Captain Joseph Monaco said.
Yonkers police caught the case and remain haunted by it.
"We never forgot about Pamela. This homicide is extremely solvable. In the last 5 years prior to this year it is one of two unsolved homicides in the City of Yonkers," Monaco said.
All of the clues, except the body are in the Bronx. Graddick lived on Morris Ave with a girlfriend -- they were a couple her sister said.
The girlfriend was away the weekend Pamela vanished -- she spoke briefly and reluctantly at the apartment door.
"I wasn't here that weekend. I went away," she said.
She wouldn't answer further questions.
The time that elapsed between the initial disappearance and the discovery of the body means the murder scene could have been sanitized.
Police will not say how Graddick was killed, but hope the $5,000 will loosen some lips.
"I don't think it was random. I think it was someone who knew her," McClellan said, "Losing my sister this way? I'll never get over it."
Five years and not forgotten.