With the help of DNA, police have solved the murder of a 31-year-old mother of three and wife of a dentist who was sexually assaulted and shot in her home in New York in 1974, according to the Nassau County Police Department.
On March 11, police announced that DNA evidence tied Thomas Generazio, who died of cancer in 2004, to the murder of Barbara Waldman. Waldman was discovered face down in her bedroom by her 5-year-old son who had been dropped off at home by his kindergarten school bus, according to a press release dated March 11 from the police department.
Solving the case brought closure to the family, who dealt with decades-long rumors that Dr. Gerald Waldman, Barbara's spouse and a dentist in Oceanside, NY, was the killer.
The cold case was solved thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, which linked Generazio, a local sanitation worker, to Barbara’s murder. When Barbara’s young son found his mother, her hands were bound behind her back with the stockings she had been wearing. She had been shot in the back of the head and strangled, according to police.
Over the years, a man in prison had confessed to murdering Waldman, but DNA did not provide a conclusive match. The family’s hopes for closure were destroyed another time after DNA evidence failed to link another man who was convicted of a similar murder.
Because of the Waldman family’s persistence, police continued DNA testing.
