Crime Immemorial

The unsolved murders of Janet C. Scott and Ruth Potdevin in May 1985 remain one of the more chilling and mysterious cases from New York City’s mid-1980s crime landscape. Occurring just days apart in hotels on West 54th Street in Manhattan, the brutal killings—both involving severe head wounds from a sharp, heavy weapon—prompted police to form a special task force and sparked fears of a serial offender targeting women in hotel settings.

On May 25th, 1985, eighty-five-year-old Janet C. Scott was discovered dead in her seventh-floor room at the Bryant Hotel (located at 230 West 54th Street), a single-room-occupancy residential hotel in midtown Manhattan. Her apartment had been ransacked, suggesting robbery as a possible motive. Janet had suffered numerous severe wounds to her head, inflicted by what investigators believed was an axe, machete, meat cleaver, or similar heavy, sharp instrument. The attack was ferocious, leaving her skull fractured and damaged.

A particularly disturbing detail emerged: the killer performed a ritualistic act by removing and placing pieces of her scalp, hair, and splintered skull fragments near the body in a patterned arrangement that appeared meaningful to the perpetrator. This element elevated the crime beyond a simple robbery-homicide.

Janet, an elderly resident of the hotel, had lived there for some time. Her advanced age and vulnerability made the case especially tragic, and it initially appeared isolated.

But just five days later, on May 30th, 1985, fifty-eight-year-old Ruth Potdevin of Ridgewood, New Jersey, was found slain in her room at the upscale Dorset Hotel (at 30 West 54th Street, near Fifth Avenue)—only about two blocks from the Bryant Hotel.

Ruth had been in New York for a business or convention-related event. She had gone to her fifth-floor room to change clothes for a luncheon but failed to return. Her husband, concerned by her absence, went to check and discovered her body. Like Janet Scott, Ruth Potdevin had been killed with multiple heavy blows to the head from a similar sharp, axe-like weapon. Investigators noted the same ritualistic element: a shorn piece of her hair and scalp had been removed and positioned in a deliberate manner near the body.

By early June 1985, the NYPD acknowledged the strong likelihood that the same person committed both murders. A special task force was formed to investigate the linked cases. Police focused on the Times Square area (nearby and known for transient activity at the time) and pursued leads involving a couple reportedly seen using one of Ruth Potdevin’s stolen credit cards at a camera store in Times Square shortly after her death. Composite sketches were created, but these leads did not result in arrests.

The crimes drew media attention, including reports of an “ax murderer” operating in midtown hotels. Authorities even checked for similarities to unsolved murders in other states, but no definitive connections emerged.

Despite the task force, physical evidence and witness accounts did not yield a suspect. The killer left no clear sexual assault evidence.

By mid-1986, updates on the West 54th Street murders appeared in newspapers, but no breakthroughs were reported. The cases gradually went cold. No additional murders with the same signature (axe-like weapon, ritualistic hair/scalp placement, hotel settings) were publicly linked in New York City afterward, leaving open questions about whether the killer stopped, moved elsewhere, was incarcerated for unrelated crimes, or died.

More than four decades later, the murders of Janet C. Scott and Ruth Potdevin stand as haunting reminders of a brief but terrifying period in midtown Manhattan. With forensic technology of the mid-1980s limited compared to today, and no known DNA evidence preserved or tested publicly, the identity of the perpetrator—who struck twice in one week and then vanished—remains unknown.