Sagaponack, New York, located out in the pastoral farmlands of eastern Long Island, has always been a fairly quiet town. It’s the type of place that’s vaguely reminiscent of cinematic 50’s every town, Pleasantville. Unfortunately, even these utopian small towns have their share of dark secrets and even darker stories.
This sordid tale of Sagaponack begins more than five decades ago. It begins on a day like many others in the small town. Life was progressing in the quaint, happy way it always had, and then Louise Pietrewicz disappeared.
See You Later
Sandy Pietrewicz, 11, had woken up for school that morning just as she always had. She brushed her teeth, got dressed, and headed out the door to school. This being 1966, it was perfectly reasonable for the pre-teen to walk on her own, so she kissed her mother goodbye and headed off.
Her Final Goodbye
Sandy’s memories of that day are foggy. She could not remember how cold it was on that October morning. What she could remember, was that the goodbye kiss was the very last one she would ever give or receive from her mother Louise.
Rocky Marriage
At the time of her disappearance, 38-year-old Louise Pietrewicz was going through one heck of a tough time. At only 11 years old, her daughter was only marginally aware of this. She knew that her parents’ marriage wasn’t the greatest, she just always assumed that fighting was what parents did sometimes. She had no idea how violent it had actually gotten.
Disappeared
Not long after Sandy left for school, Louise withdrew $1,273.80 from her personal bank account and closed it. After that, accounts of her presence around town varied. Some say she just vanished into thin air, others swore they saw her leave in the company of a “male friend.” But no matter what the real explanation, the fact remained that Louise was gone.
Driving Off
The last time any of Louise’s relatives saw her, she was driving away from her parent’s farm, alongside her current boyfriend, William P. Boken. She and Sandy had come to live there after a particularly violent incident between her mother and father, Albin Pietrewicz. It was Albin who police sought out first after her disappearance.
Local Whispers
At the time of her disappearance, nearly everyone in the area suspected that Louise’s estranged husband Albin might have been responsible for her disappearance. The two weren’t on good terms after all. Still, so many had seen her drive off with William Boken, her new man. William couldn’t be involved though, he was a police officer himself.
In “Good” Company
Of course, William P. Boken was hardly beyond reproach. He was a married man himself and though he was a police officer in Southold, he was known wife beater himself. He’d even been charged with domestic abuse. He also happened to retire from the Southold Police Department a few days after being interviewed about Louise and charged with the assault.
Denial
In the end, police decided that the only proof they had of Louise’s actual intentions that day lay in her fully drawn and closed bank account. It seemed as though she just ran off. She let Boken drop her off somewhere and left for good. Sandy was sure that her mother would never just leave without calling to tell her where she’d gone.
Five Decades
Sandy was certain that something sinister had befallen her mother. For more than 50 years, she waited for a phone or a letter that never came. Meanwhile, the case went cold. No arrests were made, no charges brought against Albin Pietrewicz or William Boken, and no body was ever found. All people in town could do was murmur about the sad woman who vanished without a trace.
Reopened Case
Louise’s disappearance was left unsolved and her memory forgotten. That is, until 2018, when Suffolk County Police received a tip that might reopen the case. Boken’s former wife, the same one he had beaten and cheated on when he first became involved with Louise Pietrewicz, had called them with some startling information.
Abandoned Property
On the word of Boken’s aged, former wife, Suffolk County detectives headed out to the old Boken house, the same one that had been sold in the late 1970s. Boken himself had died in 1982, many years after he had sold the property, but he’d left a secret hiding in the basement: the desiccated bones of a near-middle-aged woman.
Prior Searches
In the course of the initial investigation, Suffolk detectives had searched the Boken house but had found nothing. It wasn’t until the recent revelation from Boken’s ex-wife that they received a warrant to allow them to search a different area of that same basement; one which they had simply overlooked before.
Sonar
The detectives of today had a tool that those of the 1960’s didn’t, ground-penetrating sonar. It was through the use of this miraculous new technology that they were able to locate the precise location of the bones. They dug down four feet and found a jawbone. Then, after digging three more feet down, they found the rest of the skeleton. Boken had buried her well.
Buried Bones
The body had been buried beneath the basement and covered in five inches of fresh concrete. The overall condition of the bones indicated that they may have once belonged to a female the same height and age as Louise Pietrewicz. They exhumed the remains in order to test them, but even if they identified them, there were still so many questions to answer.
Confirmation
Finally, after about a week of uncertainty, a medical examiner identified the recovered bones as the remains of Louise Pietrewicz. They had matched the DNA from one of Louise’s last surviving sibling to that of the bones. Still, why had Boken’s wife waited so long to come forward? Why had she waited 50 years to give Louise’s family closure?
It Happens
Gerard Gigante, Suffolk City chief of detectives spoke at a news conference about why Boken’s wife had come forward. “Sometimes later in life witnesses do come forward to give us information that maybe at one point they felt compelled not to release, felt threatened … or just out of their conscience come forward.”
Homicide
Louise’s “disappearance” was now a homicide, though the medical examiner wasn’t exactly able to accurately determine the cause of death. It’s pretty clear that Boken was the culprit though, dead or not, and Sandy believes that he committed the murder soon after she’d left for school that fateful October day. She also believes the other police officers knew he’d done it even then.
Similar Disappearance
At the time of the disappearance, Boken was allegedly sent over to the town of a local judge instead of questioned by detectives. There, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital, essentially separating him from the investigation entirely. He may have been guilty of domestic abuse and he was no longer a cop, but at least they’d stopped one of their own from being labeled a murderer.
Boys Club
There are many who believe that the Suffolk County officials at the time were a bit of a “boys club” who were out to protect their own jobs and necks rather than search for someone who people would eventually forget about. It being 1966, it was easy to simply lose track of someone without surveillance equipment and cellphones. It made perfect sense.
Bittersweet End
According to the Suffolk Times, only two skilled New York State Police investigators seemed at all interested in the case. No other officials in the area pushed or even seemed to care what happened to Louise or for the daughter she left behind. Sandy is glad to have some manner of closure in all this, but though she can now bury her mother, she’ll never bury the years of uncertainty she lost waiting for her to return.
