Crime Scene

There is no getting around the occasionally grisly nature of crime reporting. It certainly has been that way for me in the past week, as I have teamed with reporter Leslie Korngold to keep readers updated on the Mamaroneck police investigation of a woman’s torso that washed up at Harbor Island Park on March 3. It doesn’t get much more heart-wrenching than that.

Thus far, police have been frustrated in their attempts to identify the woman, although there are periodic leads here and there. Leslie picked up another update today, which you “can read about here”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070312/UPDATE/703120381 . Hopefully, there will be more to come.

As those of you who have followed the story know, the probe is focusing on a tattoo above the woman’s right breast. I have a photo of it on my desk, which I’ve shown to tattoo artists and others as part of my own research. Today, a colleague asked me to keep it out of sight because it disturbed him to see it day after day as the story lingers.

Obviously, I did as he said. But it struck me that the photo has a necessary effect for me, as it serves as a reminder that, whoever this woman turns out to be, she was very much alive once and very much a real person. She chose to get that tattoo — two cherries with two green leaves and a long stem — for some reason. Perhaps it was based on her nickname, or a private joke with a friend. Maybe she got drunk and got the darn thing one night while out with the girls. Whatever the reason, that two-inch tattoo is a link to the person she was, and hopefully a clue to her identity.

For me, the point is never lost. As a crime reporter, you can never forget that you’re dealing with real people and real lives.