Murder of Reyna Marroquín

Reyna Angélica Marroquín was a 27-year-old immigrant from El Salvador living in the New York area, where she worked as a nanny and was also employed at Melrose Plastics, a Manhattan-based artificial flower company. She disappeared around January 1969 while pregnant. Her disappearance went unresolved for three decades.

On September 2, 1999, workers found a 55-gallon drum in the crawl space of a house in Jericho, New York, a Long Island suburb of New York City. Inside was the mummified body of a pregnant Hispanic woman in her late 20s, standing between 4'9" and 5'0", with distinctive dental work. Medical examination determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Along with the remains, the drum contained polystyrene pellets, two rings (one inscribed "M.H.R."), a locket inscribed "To Patrice Love Uncle Phil," green dye, an artificial plant stem, and a partially preserved address book.

Investigators traced the drum's manufacturing markings to a 1965 shipment intended for transporting dye to Melrose Plastics, a company partly owned by Howard B. Elkins, who had previously owned the Jericho house where the drum was found. Elkins sold the company in 1972 and relocated to Boca Raton, Florida, with his wife.

Using infrared light, investigators recovered a legible Social Security number from the address book, which belonged to Marroquín. A phone number in the book led detectives to Kathy Andrade, a friend of Marroquín's, who told police that Marroquín had been having an extramarital affair with Elkins. Andrade said Marroquín had grown afraid of Elkins after disclosing the affair and her pregnancy to his wife, Ruth. Andrade recounted going to Marroquín's New Jersey apartment and finding it empty, with no further contact from her afterward. Employees at Melrose Plastics reportedly recalled a woman matching Marroquín's description appearing with a toddler, with coworkers joking that Elkins was the child's father.

When detectives interviewed Elkins in September 1999, he was uncooperative. After being told police intended to obtain his DNA for comparison with that of the fetus found with Marroquín's remains, Elkins purchased a shotgun at Walmart and, on September 10, 1999, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the back seat of a car at a friend's home in Boca Raton, Florida. Subsequent DNA testing confirmed Elkins was the father of the fetus.

Investigators believe Elkins killed Marroquín either at her apartment or at the factory, then transported her body to the Jericho house, possibly intending to dispose of it at sea using his boat, but left the filled and weighted drum in the crawl space after finding it too heavy to move. The case has since been the subject of several television treatments, and Marroquín's elderly mother in El Salvador described to a journalist having dreamed of her daughter trapped inside a barrel.