The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali, and I just wanted to bring you a quick update. Last week, we brought you the cold case of Pat Shea. And I had the chance to connect with her nephew, Kevin Shea, who was able to give us some updates on the case and also clarify some information that was written in the newspapers at the time that was incorrect. So he was able to clarify and give us the correct facts.
So I just wanted to bring you a quick update, a quick little correction episode, just to get some of these facts correct. Because here at Cold and Missing, we're all about bringing you the most accurate information because we never know what piece of information is going to be that thing that finally brings closure and answer to the families.
So if you haven't listened to last week's episode, I do recommend you go back and listen so that way you can understand more about who Pat was as a person and who she was in her community. One thing that her nephew, Kevin, said that I thought was really poignant, quote, a person like my aunt Pat, who gives so much to their community deserves justice, particularly given the circumstances, end quote.
And I talked a lot about that last week on our episode, just what an amazing person Pat was in their community. So right there with the family, we absolutely need justice in this case. But just to go ahead and jump into some of the corrections that I wanted to get out there, Pat was 44 years old in 1982. I had reported and newspapers reported at that time that she was 40, but she was actually 44. When Pat went missing, she was dropped off at the side entrance of her building.
She was seen headed towards Agnes's building around 11 PM. At Aggy's building, there were three known, less than reputable men hanging around the building. Two of these men were questioned and giving polygraph tests, which they passed. The third man is the person of interest, a blonde man that we talked about in our last episode. And if you'll remember from the timeline last week, Aggy had said that the blonde man had hurt Pat.
Here's some additional things that I learned about the person of interest. He is still alive. He was known to have been in the building for an extended period of time the night that Pat went missing. He worked as a confidential informant for the New York Police Department in Brooklyn, South. He officially started in 1984, but Pat's family believed that he could have been working with police off of the books during the time of Pat's murder.
This man particularly was not asked to take a polygraph test, despite the other two men taking polygraph tests. Pat's family would like this informant to be brought in for an official polygraph regarding Pat's murder. This man has also worked with the police in other murder cases and has a violent criminal history. And it seems like lots of investigators who have worked Pat's case heavily suspect that it is this person of interest, but no charges have been brought against him.
Another thing that we had talked about in the timeline was that evidence had been destroyed by Superstorm Sandy. Now according to Kevin, this is untrue. The evidence was simply lost. The flooding of the evidence room that came from a lead detective at the time, that's Detective Simon, who we talked about a bit in the timeline. He was the one who said that it had been lost due to flooding, but Pat's family is actively asking for this to be found, for it to be located.
The evidence appears to be missing from the locker it should have been in. The specific evidence missing is her clothing and the man's shirt that was found next to her body. Despite not having these pieces at this moment, them being lost, hopefully they are found soon, but police do have the rope that was wrapped around Pat. And Kevin is pushing for the NYPD and the DA's office to test the rope found at the scene for DNA.
The police have never tested the rope, but they still have it in their possession. To me personally, this seems like a slam dunk of evidence. I have seen other cold cases really get a lot of evidence from rope. And specifically, those knot areas can be really great places for touch DNA and new DNA technology to kind of get at. So I really hope that the NYPD takes Pat's family's requests seriously, because I do think that a lot could come from testing that rope.
And then Kevin is also pushing to have the fingernail scrapings from his Aunt Pat retested with more sensitive and new technology. However, this would have to be done outside of the NYPD, as the NYPD doesn't do this specific testing. So he's trying to work with police to get that done as well. Another thing that Kevin mentioned to me that I thought was interesting was in 2009, Kevin's father, so that would be Pat's brother, was swabbed for DNA by police.
The swab was so police would have part of Pat's DNA on file. However, there is no record of this event happening. There's no notes, there's no write ups, and there's no results of the DNA. None of this is in with Pat's file, despite many people witnessing it and also remembering the swab happening. However, the file was not updated. For what reason? I don't know. And then Kevin was also able to provide a little bit more information about that letter.
So that's something that I really got hung up on in the last episode, because it's just so odd. And if you looked at our Instagram, you'll see the pictures on there and everything of the letter. However, according to Kevin, police were able to track down the writer of the letter. And it turned out that the author was a distant relative of the police officer who was accused of Pat's murder in the letter.
So this was just somebody trying to really throw somebody under the bus and just created a lot of noise, a lot of mess around Pat's case that didn't need to be there. So those are the updates and corrections that I have on Pat's case. Again, I do recommend that you go back and listen to the full episode where we really get into the timeline, we get into who Pat was in her community.
But with these updates, and if you already listened to last week's episode, hopefully this helps shed some more light on Pat's case and we're able to get some more information for her family and we're able to get this case solved. Now knowing a little bit more about the case and knowing that police have this rope, I'm really hopeful that justice will be seen in this case and that Pat's family will get the answers that they've been looking for and the justice that they've been looking for.
If you know anything about the murder of Pat Shea in July of 1982, please call the currently detective, Detective Ann Marie Burngozzi at 212-239-2256. In the future, we are hoping to have Kevin, Pat's nephew on the podcast to talk a little bit more in depth about her, her case and the work that he's doing trying to get the NYPD to bring justice and get this solved.
So I think that conversation will be really illuminating, not only about who Pat was as a person, but about the case and about the work that, you know, the family ultimately like ends up bearing in so many of these cold cases that we cover. So that is hopefully coming down the pipeline. But that is all I have for my updates this week.
We are still going to have our regular episode come out later this week of a new case, but it's really important to me that we get these corrections out and in the future when we have corrections or need to update, I think this is how we will do it with just kind of a one small bonus episode coming out so that way we pay respect and get those corrections and it doesn't get mixed up with a different case or like kind of lost anywhere.
I want all of the information to be very easily findable for anybody else who's looking. So thank you for listening to Cold and Missing. I'm your host, Allie. We'll talk to you later this week. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.