Cold case: 36 years after Theresa Cerney's killing, her family meets with Suffolk investigators 

Two teens going to play handball found Theresa Cerney’s body lying behind a factory on New Highway in Amityville. There was blood, and her hair was matted over her face. She seemed underdressed for the cold weather that day, recalled one of the teens, Kirk Carter. It was Thanksgiving morning, 1988.

Thirty-six years later, her killing remains unsolved.

Her family still wrestles with their unanswered questions. Worse, they say, they haven’t heard from police since the late 1980s.

"I would think that a murder case would have been taken more seriously," said Rhonda Singletary, who was 16 when her mother was killed. "Literally, her throat was cut."

Cerney’s killing is one of at least 66 cases of dead women being reviewed by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney’s new  cold case unit. Another 287 cases of dead men in Suffolk are also under review. Cerney’s family contacted the unit after Newsday reported in October that more than 100 women have been found dead outdoors since 1976 on Long Island, and that neither Nassau nor Suffolk police departments had active cold case units.

"The sheer number of bodies surprised me," Tierney said in a recent interview.

He said in the past, cold cases were treated in "an ad hoc way." The goal of the new cold case unit, with the help of $1 million in recently secured grants from the U.S. Department of Justice, is to go through a series of investigative steps for each case.

The steps include interviewing the people who found the body, the last person to see the victim alive and DNA analysis, among other things, Tierney said.  

Fifteen people currently work in the new unit and four investigators will be added in 2025.

Tierney declined to comment on Cerney’s case but said the unit is examining it. Cerney’s daughter, aunt and cousin briefly met with the district attorney's office recently — the first time any of them had met with investigators. They said they left feeling hopeful.

"I know a lot of time has gone by, so I’m trying not to have unrealistic expectations," said Cerney’s niece, Eudora Gutmann, of North Babylon.

The Suffolk police department said in a statement it "is committed to investigating all open murder cases and building upon our success in clearing cold and older cases."

Once close to family

Cerney was 33. Because her body was found just three blocks from her in-laws’ home, her family believes she was on her way to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. She never missed a holiday.

Cerney wasn't living with her family when she died. She lived in hotels, on the street or on someone’s sofa. She had once been close to her four siblings. Growing up in Copiague, theirs was a tight-knit family. But after a high school boyfriend left to join the Air Force, Cerney fell for Lawrence Singletary, her sister, Patricia Young said.

He was handsome, and he was cool, Rhonda Singletary said. He was also Black. That was more than Cerney’s father could take in the late 1960s, Young said.

"My father would not allow him to set foot on our property. That’s how prejudiced our father was," said Young, whose family was white. 

That choice ended her once-close bond with her father. Then Cerney got pregnant in her teens. She gave birth to her son  in 1969 at age 14. Two years later, she gave birth to her daughter. Cerney never finished high school.

Lawrence Singletary’s mother took in her grandchildren and raised them. Singletary and Cerney both fell into heroin addiction, Young said.

"He came from a very good family, but he was hanging with the wrong crowd," she said.

Cerney was fun, easygoing and always ready to lend a hand. When she was pregnant, she would take the train to Valley Stream, where Young was living, to help her sister with her first child.

"She was the one who showed me the right way to bundle up the blanket and change the diaper," Young recalled, adding, "When none of her demons got in the way, she was a great caretaker."

Sometimes, to support her drug habit, she turned to prostitution, her family said. Court records show one conviction for prostitution in September 1988.

That’s why family members said they haven’t heard from police over the years.

"I felt like she was judged," Gutmann said, adding, "It was just easy to say well, she was not the model citizen and she was out there. It is what it is." 

Still no answers

On the morning Carter and his friend saw her lying on the ground, he knew immediately that something was wrong. He walked over to try to wake her, but there was no response. He went home to tell his father, who called police. When they arrived, he led them to the scene.

Later, he learned, to his shock, that the woman he saw lying on the cold ground was the mother of his sister Kerstein’s best friend, Rhonda.

It fell to him to tell her and her brother what he saw, Carter said. 

"That was probably the hardest part," he said.

Today, Carter, 51, is a science teacher in Bay Shore. He said he hasn’t heard from police since that day.

For Rhonda Singletary, now 53, her memories of that day are a blur. Although she lived with her grandmother, she felt loved by her mother. Cerney visited often, bearing gifts.

After she was found dead, the family didn’t talk about it. Singletary said she believes, however, that she saw the impact. Relatives suffered from post-traumatic stress, nervous breakdowns, hospitalizations. Her father died three years after Cerney, and her brother struggled with drug addiction and later died, she said.

"It really ran through my whole family," she said.

She and her brother stopped celebrating Thanksgiving.

I’m hoping that the truth isn’t worse than not knowing.

— Eudora Gutmann, Theresa Cerney’s niece

Not knowing what happened gnaws at her, Singletary said.

"You wake up in the morning, and you think of your loved one and you think of what happened, and you just cry. You’re driving along at night, on your way home, and the tears just come. You try to move on as if everything was OK, and sometimes, it’s just not OK," she said.

She said the meeting with members of the district attorney’s cold case unit was basically a "meet and greet" and that they were told there would be another meeting.

Gutmann said the entire family wants answers, but she admitted feeling apprehensive.

"I’m hoping," she said, "that the truth isn’t worse than not knowing."