Jill-Lyn Euto

Case background and investigation

Jill-Lyn Euto was 18 years old when she was killed in her apartment in Syracuse, New York, on January 28, 2001. She lived alone on the sixth floor of an apartment building at 600 James Street, and, according to CNY Central, worked at a store in the Shoppingtown Mall and commuted by bus. Published accounts say she hoped to become a paramedic.

January 28 was Super Bowl Sunday, and Euto had planned to watch the game with her mother, Joanne Browning, and her sister, Jenna, at the family's home elsewhere in the city. She never arrived and did not answer phone calls. The next morning, after she also failed to turn up for work, her mother went to the apartment and found her dead.

Euto had been stabbed multiple times and had a cut to her neck. Investigators determined that the weapon was a knife taken from her own kitchen. Syracuse police detective Tom Murfitt said in 2016, according to Spectrum News, that neighbors had seen Euto enter her apartment alone. Detective Christopher DeJoseph told CNY Central in 2026 that investigators believe she knew her attacker and let that person into her home.

The investigation became one of the most extensive in the history of the Syracuse Police Department, and the case file is described as unusually large. Police have said over the years that several people have been looked at, but no one has been publicly named and no one has been charged. In January 2016, on the fifteenth anniversary, police announced that they had DNA evidence they hoped could help build a profile of a suspect. A decade later, DeJoseph said investigators had been unable to obtain a DNA profile from the knife, noting that many of the forensic tools available now did not exist in 2001.

Browning campaigned publicly for answers, appearing on national television programs and distributing fliers and billboards. She died in 2007 after an accidental fall. Euto's sister and other relatives have continued to speak publicly on anniversaries of the killing.

As of early 2026, twenty-five years after the murder, the case remained open and unsolved. Police have said that solving it is likely to depend on someone with direct knowledge of what happened coming forward, and have asked anyone with information to contact the Syracuse Police Department's cold case unit.