MINEOLA, Long Island (WABC) — A suspect in the 1974 murder of a woman in her Oceanside home was identified by DNA, finally bringing closure to her family.
Nassau County police announced Wednesday that Thomas Generazio of Oceanside killed 31-year-old Barbara Waldman in 1974, a cold case that has remained unsolved until now.
Waldman was discovered face down in her bedroom by her 5-year-old son, her hands bound behind her back with her stockings wrapped around her neck. She had been shot in the head and strangled.
The case remained unsolved until last year, when DNA identified a suspect, who died of cancer at the age of 57 in 2004.
Authorities said Generazio “committed a violent sexual assault against the mother and put a bullet in the back of her head as she lay on the floor, tied up with the stockings she was wearing.”
A sketch at the time “was almost a perfect match to the subject” … but DNA evidence did not exist, and Generazio slipped through the investigative cracks.
He was employed as a sanitation worker with two prior arrests, for assault and possession of stolen property
“We would have liked to have seen him in jail for that entire time for that brutal murder that he did, the animal that he was that day, taking that mother from her three children, just inexcusable,” Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder, said in announcing the arrest.
Family members were initially told of the breakthrough in 2024, but more investigation was necessary.
The closure brought relief to her children, who battled persistent rumors for decades that their father was the killer. He was never charged, and the man now identified by DNA was not a family member.
At one point, a man confessed to the killing while in prison, but DNA did not match.
The family’s hopes were dashed again when DNA failed to link another man convicted in a similar 1968 killing in Valley Stream.
Nassau police did not give up, continuing DNA testing at the family’s urging, eventually using genetic genealogy to identify the suspect.
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