On the afternoon of Sunday, July 9th, 2000, a woman was walking in Speakman Park in Wilmington, Delaware, when she came upon a body, partially concealed in the bushes in a somewhat secluded area of the park.
The victim was found partially clothed, and marks around her neck suggested she’d been strangled. She’d also been forced face down into the ground and punched repeatedly prior to her death.
The woman was subsequently identified as twenty-eight-year-old Carmen Rodriguez, a well-liked, popular young woman who lived nearby and frequented the area around the park.
She had recently moved out of her family home and had sadly become involved with drugs, though relatives stated that everyone had loved Carmen and no one would have any reason to hurt her.
According to witnesses, Carmen had been spotted at around ten p.m. on Saturday night, walking near the park, and then again at around three-thirty a.m. on Sunday morning, about a block away from where her body would be found hours later.
For a time, investigators sought to link Carmen’s murder with that of another Wilmington woman, thirty-eight-year-old Deborah Jackson, who was found bludgeoned to death under the Ninth Street overpass in January of 2000. However, it doesn’t appear that this angle yielded any significant leads.
Twenty-five years later, police seem no closer to finding Carmen’s killer.
Crime Immemorial 