Sarah Fox

Case background and investigation

Sarah Fox was a 21-year-old drama student in the Juilliard School's acting program who lived in the Inwood neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan. On the afternoon of May 19, 2004, she left her apartment to go jogging in nearby Inwood Hill Park, a large and heavily wooded park where she often ran, and never returned. Her disappearance prompted a large search effort involving police and volunteers. On May 25, 2004, six days after she vanished, a volunteer searcher found her naked, decomposing body in a secluded wooded area of the park, not far from a running path she frequented.

The medical examiner determined Fox had been strangled; her larynx was crushed and a rib was broken. Investigators described unusual features of the scene: her body lay face-up encircled by yellow tulip tree blossoms and branches, and a stick had been placed between her legs, details that led some investigators and reporters to characterize the scene as ritualistic. A portable CD player recovered roughly 100 feet from the body yielded a DNA sample that became a central piece of evidence in the case.

Early in the investigation, detectives focused on Dimitry Sheinman, a neighborhood resident who frequented the park and who, according to police, volunteered details during a lengthy August 2004 interview that investigators believed only the killer would know, including the broken rib. Sheinman, who described himself as clairvoyant, denied any involvement, and his DNA did not match evidence from the scene; he was never charged. He later moved to South Africa, then returned to New York in June 2012 and delivered a letter to the 34th Precinct claiming psychic visions had revealed the identity of the real killer, whom he asserted was a Juilliard teacher previously ruled out by police. Police said they wanted to interview him, and he remained uncharged.

In July 2012, officials announced that DNA from the CD player appeared to match DNA on a chain used to lock open subway gates during a March 2012 Occupy Wall Street protest in Brooklyn, a development that drew national attention. Within days, officials determined the match was the result of contamination by a lab worker who had handled evidence in both cases, and the lead collapsed. In May 2013, law enforcement sources told reporters that detectives were conducting forensic tests on a new suspect who had allegedly made incriminating statements to a fellow inmate while imprisoned in New England; that man denied involvement and was not charged.

In December 2016, the head of the NYPD cold case squad said investigators had identified a person of interest who was not Sheinman, but no arrest followed. More than two decades after Sarah Fox's death, the case remains open and unsolved, and no one has ever been charged with her murder.