Hicksville woman's remains identified; husband sought

Police want to speak to the husband of a woman whose remains were found in a plastic bag in New Cassel following her disappearance a year ago.

An autopsy revealed the woman, Winsome Angela Perez, a Hicksville bank worker, died of blunt force trauma to the head, police said. On Wednesday, police formally identified her and said they were seeking the woman's husband whom they had been unable to find since Perez went missing some time after July 28. He has not been named as a suspect.

Workers found the bag on Monday at Express Steel Supply Co., where her husband had worked. The site at 110 Hopper St. had already been searched last July, after Perez, 45, was reported missing by co-workers at Chase Bank in Wantagh. Perez was last seen at the bank on July 28, 2009.

Since Perez's disappearance, investigators have been unable to locate her husband, whose name they would not release. He worked as a welder at Express Steel around the same time she was reported missing, police said.

Perez's remains were identified through dental records and her son, who lives in Jamaica in the Caribbean, has been told of the death, police said.

Express Steel workers called police Monday after they found the bag, emitting a foul stench, wedged between a 40-foot steel storage container and a chain-link fence at the rear of the business.

At the time of the discovery Monday, police weren't sure whether the remains were human or animal - only that "there was some type of organism . . . that was decaying and decomposing," police spokesman Det. Lt. Kevin Smith said.

"The body was in various stages of decomposition," Smith said Tuesday.

Among questions detectives are seeking to resolve is how long the storage container had been in place at Express Steel.

A sticker affixed to Perez's home on Clarissa Drive in Hicksville said the home was unoccupied. County records showed the home has been in foreclosure.

Police continue to look for Perez's husband, though they haven't named him as a suspect in her death.

"He's a person that we would like to speak with. It is his wife," said police spokesman Det. Sgt. Anthony Repalone.

With Gary Dymski