PENNSYLVANIA 1976 Cold Case Solved — Arrest Shocks Community

So on December 20th, 1976, a teenager was playing near the Lehigh River, East Side Burrow, Carbon County. Uh he discovered a dismembered body and a nearly full-term fetus. The state police were called, evidence was collected, and ultimately an autopsy was completed, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide by likely strangulation.

And there was also a gunshot wound noted uh to the neck of the dismembered female. >> A man accused of killing a woman and her unborn child more than four decades ago is headed to trial. >> A magistrate in Carbon County says there’s enough evidence to send Luis Sierra to trial for the 1976 murder of then 15-year-old Evelyn Cologne.

 News Watch 16’s Carmela Maloney shows us the emotional day in court. Imagine a winter morning. A 14-year-old boy walks along the frozen bank of the Lehi River in Carbon County, Pennsylvania on December 20th, 1976. His hands are tucked in his pockets and his breath turns to smoke in the biting cold air.

 Then he sees three suitcases lying by the riverbank. Two of them had burst open after falling from the 300 ft high Interstate 80 bridge. One remained intact, lying in the nearby bushes. He walks closer. Something protruding from one of the broken suitcases looks like a doll’s head. He gets closer. It’s not a doll. Terrified, he runs away.

 That boy had no idea he had just stepped into one of the coldest, strangest, and most unjust cases in Pennsylvania history. A case in which the people in those suitcases would have no names for the next 44 years. This is not a story about a stranger in the night or a random attack. This is the story of a 15-year-old pregnant girl.

 And the only person who knew where she was is the man who put her into those suitcases. No search was ever launched for her. No missing person report was ever filed. Her family received a letter, believed it, and waited in silence. And yet, for reasons we will explore together, the final answer came from genealogical DNA technology, a grandson in Texas, and an internet database that no one in 1976 could have imagined.

 But let’s go back to the beginning. In 1976, America was celebrating its 200th anniversary of independence with the most spectacular fireworks in history. Dance floors from New York to Los Angeles pulsed to the disco beats of Donna Summer and the Beegs. The TVs and workingclass living rooms broadcast tense news coverage of the presidential election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, the year America was finally emerging from the wounds of Watergate.

 In Jersey City, New Jersey, just a short ferry ride across the Hudson River from downtown Manhattan, the Colon family lived in a modest apartment in a Puerto Rican immigrant community. There were six children, two parents, and an apartment small enough that everyone knew what the others had eaten for breakfast and what time they went to bed the night before.

 Evelyn Khan was born on April 17th, 1961. the daughter of Luis Khalan Senior and Aurelia Torres. She grew up on the familiar streets of Jersey City in a family where love was shown through hot meals every evening and a mother’s watchful eyes following her children out the door. Evelyn had a father, a mother, an older brother, Louise Jr.

, and a family that loved her in the quiet, steadfast way poor immigrant families often love one another. In 1976, Evelyn was 15 years old, and she met Luis Sierra, who had once lived right next door to the Cologne family. He was 19, four years older than her. Not long after, Evelyn became pregnant. The Colon family knew they weren’t happy, but they accepted it.

 That was life, the reality of immigrant families in Jersey City. In 1976, the two moved in together in an apartment in another part of Jersey City. And Mrs. Aurelia Torres, the mother, would frequently visit her daughter, bringing food, checking in, and watching Evelyn’s belly grow larger. But there was something Mrs. Aurelia didn’t know.

 Something Evelyn’s younger sister, Magdalia, would later tell police. Sierra, was jealous and controlling, and at times he would lock Evelyn inside the apartment and not let her leave. The last time the family saw Evelyn was in early December 1976. She was heavily pregnant, her belly round and full, just weeks away from giving birth.

 Luis Coland Senior looked at his daughter and her large belly and had no reason to think it would be the last time. Then in mid December, Evelyn called her mother saying she wasn’t feeling well and asked her to bring soup. Mrs. Aurelia prepared a pot of soup, went to the apartment, and knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again, still silence.

 When she pushed the door open, the apartment was empty. The furniture had been cleared out. There was no trace of her daughter or Sierra. Neighbors in the building said they had moved out. Then in January 1977, a letter arrived in the Colon family mailbox. It was written in Spanish, postmarked from Stamford, Connecticut. The message was brief.

Eivelyn had given birth to a healthy 9-lb baby boy named Luis Sierra Jr. They had moved to Connecticut. Everything was fine. Don’t worry. If they needed anything, Evelyn would be in touch. Luis Cologne, Senior, held the letter, read it over and over, and he believed it. This was 1977. There was no internet, no cell phones, no new address or phone number to call and check.

 When people received a letter, they believed the letter. That was how the world worked back then. It was the only thing they had. The Cologne family continued to wait for the next letter for Evelyn to reach out when she needed them for news about their new grandson they had never met. But the news never came.

 One year passed, then two, then more. The silence stretched on so long that it could no longer be explained by any normal reason. Not busyness, not forgetfulness. Eventually, Luis Cologne Senior went to the police, explained the situation, and asked what could be done. But the letter from Connecticut was still there and it said that Evelyn had left voluntarily and had chosen to cut off contact with her family when she needed to.

 No missing person report was filed. The police said she has her own family now. She’ll reach out when she needs to. There’s no missing person case here. But this is what Luis Cologne Senior did not know when he read that letter and what Mrs. Aurelia Torres did not know when she stood in front of the empty apartment holding a pot of soup.

 Eivelyn’s body already lay at the foot of the Interstate 80 bridge in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. While the Cologne family waited in Jersey City, more than 100 m to the west, something horrific had already happened. On December 20th, 1976, in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, temperatures below freezing, the Lehigh River partially frozen, the bushes along the riverbank bare in the winter wind.

 A 14-year-old boy walking along the riverbank saw three suitcases scattered about. Two had burst open after falling from the 300 ft high Interstate 80 bridge. One remained intact in the nearby bushes. Something protruding from a broken suitcase looked like the head of a doll. He looked closer. It wasn’t a doll.

 The Pennsylvania State Police were called. When they arrived, what they found was something even the most seasoned investigators struggled to face. The dismembered body of a young woman stuffed into three suitcases along with a near-term female fetus. Everything was wrapped in an old chenille blanket as if someone had tried to hide what they had done.

 There was no identification, no wallet, no keys, nothing that could tell police who this woman was. The autopsy showed the victim died from strangulation combined with severe facial trauma and a broken nose. And she had also been shot. The dismemberment had been performed after death, not as the cause of death. And it was done by someone with skill, someone who knew what they were doing.

Investigators in 1977 described it. Not a surgeon’s cut, but he knew what he was doing. Based on the condition of the body, the medical examiner determined the crime had occurred within 24 hours before discovery. That meant she had been killed, dismembered, packed into suitcases, and thrown from the bridge, all within a terrifyingly short period of time.

 There were no signs she had been held for a long time before death. This was a planned act carried out quickly and immediately covered up. Police immediately hit their first wall. No identity. The victim’s physical characteristics, young woman, black hair, petite build, olive skin, suggested Latina or Mediterranean origin, but nothing was certain.

 A facial sketch was drawn and widely distributed. No responses. The three suitcases were common types sold anywhere. Their origin could not be traced. The chenille blanket was the same. The only thing police knew for sure was that she had been very close to giving birth, meaning someone knew she was pregnant, meaning there was a man who was the father of the baby.

 But where that man was, police had no way of knowing. An investigation was opened, but it had no direction. And here is the most absurd part of the entire case. A young woman had been murdered and discarded like trash on a riverbank, but no one had reported her missing. Not a single family member, not a friend, not a neighbor.

 In any missing person case, the silence of those around her is the first sign that something is wrong. And here that silence was absolute. The reason was that the perpetrator had controlled the narrative. The fake letter postmarked from Connecticut had ensured that her family would not search for her, would not report her missing, and would simply sit and wait, believing she was happy somewhere.

 This was a deliberate premeditated murder. perfectly disguised from the very beginning. Police had the body. They had evidence of a coldly planned crime, but they had no name. And without a name, they could not move toward the perpetrator. 7 years passed since that 14-year-old boy called the police. 7 years during which the case file still sat on the desks of the Pennsylvania State Police, still marked as open, still unsolved.

 But no one was actively searching anymore because there was nothing to follow. No one came to claim the body. No lead led anywhere. In 1983, Carbon County officials made a decision. Burial. A simple grave at the local cemetery with no family standing by. No flowers, no prayers from loved ones. The name on the headstone, Beth Doe.

 No date of birth, no hometown, only the year she was found, 1976. Pause for a moment on that image. a 15-year-old Puerto Rican girl who grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, buried under a name that was not hers in a place she had never set foot in while alive among complete strangers with none of the people who loved her knowing she was there.

 While she lay under the headstone marked Beth Doe in Carbon County, what were her family in Jersey City doing? Year after year, Luis Cologne Senior kept asking for news about Evelyn, asking acquaintances, old friends of hers, anyone who might know something. The family tried writing to the Connecticut address mentioned in the 1977 letter. No response.

 They told themselves, “Maybe she had started a new life. Maybe she didn’t want contact. Maybe she was happy in her own way and didn’t need them anymore.” That was the only thing they could think of to keep going. As for Mrs. Zurelia Torres, the mother. She would sit by the window looking out at the streets of Jersey City. Her grandson, Luis Colol Jr.

, later recalled that she would sometimes think she saw Eivelyn in a crowd and call relatives asking, “I just saw Eivelyn. Was that her?” In 2000, Mrs. Aurelia Torres was dying in the hospital. In her final hours, she held her son’s hand and whispered, “Find Evelyn.” Then she passed away. She never knew the truth.

 She never knew that her daughter had died 24 years earlier, that her daughter was lying in an unmarked grave in Carbon County under the name Beth Doe. Luis Colon, Senior later said, “The truth would have killed my mother long before she died.” While the Colon family lived with that uncertainty, the Pennsylvania State Police never completely gave up.

 The Beth Doe file was kept, evidence was preserved, and every time forensic technology advanced, they tried again. In 2007, nearly 30 years after the body was found, a new technology brought new hope. Isotope analysis. Scientists took samples from Beth Doe’s teeth and bones and analyzed the ratios of chemical isotopes absorbed from water and food during her early years.

 A technique that could determine where a person had grown up in the world. The result sent the entire investigation in a completely unexpected direction. The isotope markers suggested the victim had grown up in central Europe, possibly Poland, the Czech Republic, or Slovakia. Police immediately shifted focus. They contacted immigration authorities, checked missing persons lists from Eastern European countries, and searched records of Eastern European immigrant communities in America.

 Years passed in that direction, and they found nothing. The reason, which only became clear later, was that the isotope analysis did not account for one important factor. Puerto Ricans who had lived in the United States for generations, eating from a wide variety of food sources could have isotope profiles that did not match typical patterns.

 And the best technology available in 2007 had sent the investigation down the wrong path for many more years. Then in 2019, a new lead emerged, and this one looked so convincing that people genuinely believed Beth Doe was finally about to get her name back. A former classmate of a woman named Maline Maggie Cruz happened to see the facial sketch of Beth Doe and immediately recognized the resemblance. She called the PSP.

 Cruz’s background matched in a chilling way. She had run away from her foster family in Massachusetts around 1974, had lived in Lennox and Framingham, fled to Terry Town with her foster sister, and never returned. In the summer of 1976, she called a friend saying she was pregnant and asking for money, then completely disappeared.

 The PSP announced they were considering the possibility that Beth Doe was Maline Cruz. The media covered it widely. The Cruz family was contacted. Everything looked like it was about to be resolved after 43 years. Then a few weeks later, police located Cruz. She was still alive. The wall of dead ends rose again, higher, thicker, and heavier than ever before.

 After 43 years, two technologies, two leads, two sparks of hope that flared and then died, the woman in the three suitcases on the Lehigh River Bank still had only one name, Beth Doe. But the Pennsylvania State Police did not give up. Detective Brian Null and his colleagues continued to keep the Beth Doe file, continued to preserve the evidence, and continued to reopen the case every time technology took another step forward.

 The next step came in 2020 when the PSP partnered with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and DNA Labs International to try a completely new method. They reached out to Oram, a specialized DNA laboratory in Houston, Texas. Founded with one single purpose, to solve cases where every other lab had failed.

 Uram specialized in handling heavily degraded DNA samples from cold cases using next generation gene sequencing technology to build full genetic profiles from samples previously considered unusable. They took samples from Beth Doe’s remains, the woman who had lain in the ground in Carbon County for nearly 40 years, and began their work.

 In February 2021, they obtained a complete genetic profile. Oram uploaded it to commercial genealogical databases, the kind that millions of ordinary Americans had submitted their DNA to in order to learn about their ancestry and find relatives. The system processed it, and it returned a match. more than 1,700 centmorggans of shared DNA with a man named Luis Colon Jr.

 then living in Texas 1,700 centmorggans that is the level of DNA match between a niece nephew and an aunt or uncle. On the other side of that match in Texas, Luis Colon Jr. knew nothing about Beth Doe. He was the son of Luis Kolan Senior, meaning he was Eivelyn’s nephew and he had grown up with the story of the aunt he had never met.

 His father had told him about Eivelyn, about how she disappeared in 1976, about the letter from Connecticut, about the years of fruitless searching. Luis Kolan Jr. had carried that story with him his whole life. When the internet became widespread and commercial DNA testing services appeared, he decided to try it. He submitted his DNA to 23 andMe and Family Tree DNA.

 not to solve a murder case, not because he suspected anything, but simply because he wanted to find his missing aunt and relatives he had never met, and to fill in the gaps in his family tree. The DNA results told him his family was Puerto Rican with Spanish ancestry. He didn’t find Evelyn. He found no leads.

 He thought the trail had gone cold. Then the phone rang. It was the Pennsylvania State Police. The PSP contacted Luis Cologne Jr. and began asking questions about his family, about missing relatives. He told them about Evelyn, every detail he knew, everything his father had told him over the years. Then he called his sister, Miriam Cologne Veltman.

 He sent her a link, the Wikipedia page, about the Beth Doe case. Miriam opened it. She saw the facial sketch of the unidentified woman reconstructed from the remains found in 1976. The first thing she said to her brother without hesitation, without comparison, without any further testing was that it looked like their Evelyn.

 She later recalled, “We never heard of Beth Doe ever. As soon as I saw the picture, I said, “That looks like my aunt.” DNA testing confirmed what the entire family had felt in that first moment. More than 1700 centmorgans, Beth Doe was Evelyn Coen. The woman without a name for 44 years finally had her name back and that name was Evelyn.

 When her brother Luis Cologne heard the news, the man who had grown up with Evelyn in the cramped apartment in Jersey City, who had watched his parents hold the letter from Connecticut and believe it, who had seen his mother sit by the window waiting year after year, who had stood by her hospital bed and heard her whisper, “Find Evelyn before she closed her eyes in 2000.

” He said, a sentence no one in the family could ever forget. All this time, we were looking for Evelyn Cologne, not Beth Doe. As soon as the DNA confirmed the identity, the Pennsylvania State Police contacted the Colon family to gather information. The first question they asked was, “Who was the last person to see Evelyn?” The family pointed to Louis Sierra.

 They told them about the letter postmarked from Connecticut, about how Sierra never contacted them again, and about how he was the father of the child Evelyn was carrying. Luis Colan Senior told the police that he had not seen Sierra since the day his sister disappeared. That Sierra had grown up right next door to the Colon family in Jersey City and that everyone in the neighborhood knew him by the nickname Whiso.

 Evelyn’s younger sister, McDalia, provided additional details the family had kept inside for many years. Sierra was violent and jealous, and he would often lock Evelyn inside the apartment and not let her leave. Evelyn had once told her mother directly that she was afraid of Sierra, and that if anything happened to her, he was most likely involved. Mrs.

 Aurelia had heard those words from her daughter’s mouth. She didn’t know what to do with them. And then the letter from Connecticut arrived, and everything was buried. Police also immediately noticed another detail. Based on Evelyn’s limited reading and writing ability, the Spanish letter from 1977 was most likely not written by her.

 Luis Coen, Senior, also provided a detailed description of his sister that matched Beth Doe down to the smallest details, including the mole on her cheek and the scar on her leg. The PSP began tracking down Luis Sierra. He was living in Ozone Park, Queens, New York, not far from Jersey City and not far from Pennsylvania.

 Full name Luis Sierra Senior. Age 63. Occupation: bus driver, stable residence, no related criminal record. Normal neighbors, normal neighborhood. No one knew anything. Luis Sierra had lived like that for 45 years, driving a bus through the streets of New York while Evelyn lay in an unmarked grave in Carbon County under the name Beth Doe on her headstone.

 while Luis Coen senior year after year asked for news about his sister and found nothing. While Mrs. Aurelia Torres sat by the window waiting and died without knowing the truth. And throughout those 45 years, he made no effort whatsoever to search for his pregnant girlfriend or his own child.

 No missing person report, no contact with the Colon family to ask about her. Nothing that a normal person would do when a loved one suddenly disappeared. On March 3th, 2021, Detective Brian Null and his PSP colleagues went to Ozone Park in coordination with local New York police. They knocked on Sierra’s door. He opened it, 63 years old, graying hair.

 Null said they were investigating a missing person report and wanted to ask him about Evelyn Colon. Sierra said he didn’t know who that was. When Nol mentioned 1976, Sierra changed. He admitted he knew her, that they had dated, and that she was pregnant with his child, but he insisted the last time he saw her was at the Jersey City apartment.

 Nol asked why he never searched for his pregnant girlfriend after she disappeared. There was no answer. Nol asked about the letter from Connecticut. No answer. After more than 2 hours, Null stepped outside and called Carbon County. An arrest warrant was signed. New York police executed it on the spot. Sierra was arrested right inside his home in Ozone Park.

 Charge: criminal homicide. He was held in New York pending extradition and according to what was revealed later, Sierra admitted that he himself had written the 1977 letter, the letter the Colon family had believed for 44 years. On that same day, March 31st, 2021, the PSP held a press conference in Lee Heighten.

 Two pieces of news were announced at the same time. the victim’s identity and the suspect’s arrest. When the news broke, the Colon family reacted in different ways. Granddaughter Miriam Coen Veltman told the press, “It’s overwhelming. Her memory was always very present in our family. Our DNA is hers.

” Grandson Luis Coen Jr., the person whose DNA had led police to the entire truth, spoke from his home in Houston. He lived his whole adult life thinking he got away with it. Miriam called her brother the hero of the family, the one who had submitted his DNA to find his missing aunt and unintentionally gave her back her name after 44 years.

 The family named the unborn fetus Emily Grace. They wanted to find Kenneth Jumper Jr., the 14-year-old boy from that day, now an adult, to thank him for calling the police on December 20th, 1976. For the first time in 44 years, the name Evelyn Khalan was spoken on national television. Not Beth Doe, but Evelyn Khalan, 15 years old, from Jersey City, New Jersey.

 About 2 weeks after his arrest in Ozone Park, Sierra was extradited to Pennsylvania. The judge denied bail. Sierra was held at Carbon County Prison in Jim Thorp. Defense attorney Robert Madden from Philadelphia took the case. On April 28th, 2021, the preliminary hearing was held in Weatherly before Judge Joseph Hmanco. About 30 people were present in the courtroom, including the Colon family, reporters, and people from Carbon County, who had followed the Beth Doe case for decades.

 Sierra sat silently in dark prison clothes, his hands cuffed. This was the first time he had to hear the evidence the prosecution had directly. Madden argued from the start. The entire case had no physical forensic evidence directly linking Sierra to the crime. No weapon, no fingerprints, no DNA from Sierra on the body or on any evidence collected from the 1976 scene.

What the PSP had was the family’s statements that Sierra was the last person to see Evelyn and the letter from Connecticut that Sierra himself admitted writing. Madden called the arrest of Sierra a huge reach. the police had reached too far and arrested the wrong person. He also suggested that instead of Sierra, police should investigate another serial killer who was active in the same area around the same time in the late 1970s without naming the person publicly, but the argument was entered into the record. The PSP pushed back the

consistent statements from multiple Colen family members, the fake letter written by Sierra himself after Eivelyn’s death, and the fact that Sierra was the only known person who knew where Eivelyn was in her final days. All of it together was enough to bring the case to trial. Detective Brian Null testified, presenting the entire DNA journey from the PSP sending the femur sample from Beth Doe to Uram in Houston to the match with Luis Colon Jr.

in Texas to the phone call that led to the Colon family in New Jersey to the name Luis Sierra. Null described the March 31 interview in Ozone Park, how Sierra initially denied knowing Evelyn, then changed his story and how he had no explanation for the disappearance of his pregnant girlfriend.

 Then Luis Coen Senior took the stand. He was 61 years old and living in Stradsburg. He testified that the last time he saw Evelyn was in early December 1976. She was pregnant and living with Sierra in their new apartment. He testified about the letter from Connecticut. The family read it and believed it. He testified about contacting the police twice in the years that followed and both times being turned away because the letter proved Evelyn had left voluntarily.

 That letter was later destroyed in a fire. No physical evidence remained. And in that courtroom that day, for the first time in his life, Luis Cologne, Senior, saw the face of Luis Sierra, the man he believed had killed his sister 45 years earlier, sitting right there just a few feet away. Outside the courtroom after the hearing, Luis Cologne Senior told reporters, “When I saw that luggage, I saw her image in my eyes.

 I can’t sleep at night. It was hard. I don’t want to find her like that.” Judge Homo ruled there was sufficient preliminary evidence to send the case to Carbon County Court. Sierra remained held without bail, but beneath that outcome, there was a reality no one in the courtroom could deny. There was no direct physical evidence.

 The entire case rested on circumstantial evidence after 44 years. statements from people recalling events from the 1970s, a letter that had been burned, and an interview that the defense attorney was attacking from multiple angles. Nearly a year after his extradition to Pennsylvania, Sierra was released on bail in 2022.

 He returned to Queens, back to life in Ozone Park. The case entered the pre-trial phase, slow, technical, full of legal arguments. Madden filed a series of motions and among them the motion to suppress was the most dangerous for the prosecution. Madden’s argument when the PSP came to Sierra’s home on March 31th, 2021, Sierra was already the prime suspect in a murder case, but he was not read his Miranda rights because he had not been formally arrested at that time.

 Madden argued that regardless of whether Sierra was handcuffed or not, regardless of the fact that the interview took place at his own home and appeared voluntary, he had not been fully informed of his right to remain silent, his right to an attorney, or his right not to incriminate himself. That interview, according to Madden, violated the fifth amendment to the US Constitution, and all statements obtained must be suppressed.

 In June 2022, the hearing on the motion to suppress was held before Judge Madaka. Detective Null testified again. Sierra was not handcuffed, was not under arrest. The interview took place at his home. He invited the officers in himself, and he voluntarily answered questions from beginning to end, and was repeatedly told he could stop at any time.

 The PSP argued, “Miranda writes are only required when the person being interviewed is in custody. Sierra was not in custody at that time. He was sitting in his own living room. Null also explained why New York police were present. The PSP did not have authority to execute an arrest warrant on New York soil, so local police were needed in case the situation arose.

 Judge Matika listened to both sides and took note of the arguments. The question hung in the air in the courtroom. If the statements from that interview were suppressed, if everything Sierra said during those more than 2 hours in Ozone Park could no longer be used as evidence, then what would the prosecution have left? The family’s statements, the description of a letter that had been burned, and the fact that Sierra was the only known person who had lived with Eivelyn in her final days.

But while the Miranda debate was still unresolved, another crack appeared bigger and deeper. During the pre-trial investigation, the evidence increasingly pointed to a reality both sides had to face. The murder most likely took place in Jersey City, New Jersey, not Pennsylvania. The body was found in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, but that was only the disposal site where the perpetrator dumped the body, not where the crime occurred.

 The apartment of Sierra and Eivelyn in Jersey City, where Evelyn disappeared, where her mother came to knock on the door and found it empty, that was the crime scene. and Carbon County, Pennsylvania, did not have jurisdiction to try a crime that occurred on New Jersey soil. This was not a technical error that could be fixed with additional paperwork.

 This was a fundamental jurisdictional issue, and once it was raised, no argument from the prosecution could overcome it. Madden moved to dismiss all charges. PSP and prosecutor Michael Greek tried to argue otherwise, but the evidence did not support them. The central question of the entire legal case narrowed down to one single question.

 Who had the right to try Louis Sierra? And the answer, not Pennsylvania. In March 2024, prosecutor Michael Greek issued an official statement. During the course of the investigation, it was determined the alleged crime most likely took place in Jersey City, New Jersey. Because of that, the charges are being dismissed here. The judge agreed.

 All charges were dismissed. The case was officially transferred to New Jersey. Sierra was free, not detained, not tried, and returned to Queens. He had been out of prison since 2022, but even the single charge that had hung over him for the past 3 years was now gone, at least in Pennsylvania. The Colon family did not react loudly.

There were no angry statements in front of the cameras. There was only the quiet exhaustion of people who had waited too long and understood that the journey was not over. It was simply starting again in another state. New Jersey received the file from Pennsylvania after March 2024.

 As of June 2026, there is no public information indicating that New Jersey has formally charged Luis Sierra. He is 67 years old and still living in Ozone Park, Queens. He is not under any special supervision according to any public information. No conviction, no verdict, no moment of justice since March 31, 2021 when he was handcuffed in his own home.

 And even that moment was erased by the Carbon County Court’s decision in 2024. While the justice system continued to struggle, the Colon family began bringing Eivelyn home. Granddaughter Miriam Coen Veltman launched a GoFundMe called the official Beth Doe Eivelyn Colon Memorial Fund with the goal of moving Eivelyn’s remains from the unmarked grave in Carbon County to a place where the family could visit.

 Placing a headstone with her real name and holding a proper memorial service, something she never had. After 44 years lying under a headstone marked Beth Doe in a strange land with no loved ones by her side, Evelyn Colon was being returned to the people who loved her. But of all the people who had waited for news about Evelyn through those decades, the two most important ones were no longer alive to see this day.

 Her father, Luis Cologne Senior, had passed away before 2021. Her mother, Mrs. Aurelia Torres, had been dying in the hospital in 2000, holding her son’s hand and whispering, “Find Evelyn!” before closing her eyes. She had raised Evelyn, had agreed to let her daughter go with Sierra, had brought the pot of soup to the apartment, and found the door empty, had held the letter from Connecticut, and believed it because there was no other choice.

 She had sat by the window in the years that followed, looking out at the street, and thinking she saw her daughter’s shadow in the crowd. And she died without knowing that her daughter had died 24 years earlier, and was lying in an unmarked grave in Carbon County under the name Beth Doe. Her brother Lewis, the eldest son among the five colon siblings, 61 years old in 2021, living in Straoudsburg, was the only one in the parents’ generation who lived long enough to learn the truth.

 He was the one who testified in court, the one who stood outside in the parking lot before the hearing and shouted at Sierra, “I’m Evelyn Coen’s brother. I want justice.” And his son Lewis Coen Jr., The grandson who submitted his DNA to 23 andMe and Family Tree DNA to find his missing aunt with no idea that his action would solve a 44-year mystery was called the hero of the family by his sister Miriam.

 His story is proof of something the system often does not want to admit. Sometimes justice does not come from the police or the courts. Sometimes it comes from a grandson in Texas sitting in front of his computer, typing his information into a website and never giving up. The evil and colon case also became one of the most important case studies on the power of forensic genealogy in cold cases.

 Uram’s method building genetic profiles from heavily degraded samples and matching them against commercial genealogical databases is now being applied to hundreds of other Beth Doe cases across America. Nameless people are getting their names back. Families are receiving answers after decades, no matter how painful those answers may be. The Evil and Colon case leaves behind real lessons that anyone living in America should know.

 First, if a loved one suddenly cuts off all contact, even if there is a letter, even if there is an explanation, report them missing. A letter is not proof that someone is safe. The Colon family believed the 1977 letter and did not file a missing person report. A decision that while completely understandable in the circumstances of the time, cost the case 44 years.

 Today, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children can take reports 24/7 at 1 800843-5678 or at missingkids.org. It’s free. No proof required. Just suspicion is enough. Second, if you have a relative who went missing decades ago and was never found, submit your DNA to genealogical databases like 23 and me family tree DNA or GED match.

 This is exactly what Luis Coen Jr. did and it broke open a 44-year mystery. Many missing persons or unidentified remains are waiting to be matched in databases right now, and your DNA could be the missing piece. Third, if you notice signs of violence in a loved one’s relationship, controlling behavior, extreme jealousy, isolation from family, don’t wait.

 Eivelyn told her mother she was afraid of Sierra. Mrs. Aurelia heard it but didn’t know what to do. Today, the National Domestic Violence Hotline operates 24/7 at 1 8007997233 for both victims and concerned family members. Fourth, if you are Puerto Rican or part of the Latinx community and have a missing loved one, also reach out to Natasha’s Justice Project or the DNA Dough Project.

 Organizations that specifically support minority communities often overlooked by the system. If Eivelyn’s story touched you, please hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next cold case stories. Every subscription is a small way to make sure stories like Eivelyns are not forgotten a second time. Thank you for following until the end.