A routine construction project in the Hudson Valley uncovered something no one expected: human remains buried behind a home.
The discovery in April 2024 is now the subject of a new investigative podcast from the Times Union. The limited-series, Long Buried, explores explores the central question: How does someone disappear for more than four decades without anyone asking why?
Hosted by Hudson Valley editor Philip Pantuso, the podcast combines archival research, interviews and reporting to piece together the life of a woman who seemed to vanish from public record.
A discovery no one expected
The story began with what seemed like a routine assignment for a newsroom.
Pantuso said the paper first learned about the case through a state police press release announcing that a body had been discovered during construction.
“We got a press release from state police saying that this body had been discovered and we wrote it up as we do with any number of news releases from agencies and other authorities and kind of thought that that would be that,” Pantuso said. “Like maybe there would be a follow-up once they identify it and there wouldn’t be anything more to the story.”
Early reporting speculated the remains might belong to someone missing since the mid-1990s — a well-known cold case in Putnam County. But when investigators identified the remains more than two months later, the case took an unexpected turn.
“It turned out to be a woman who nobody was looking for,” Pantuso said.
A disappearance no one reported
The woman had apparently not been seen or heard from since 1980. No missing person report had ever been filed. And yet, Pantuso said, investigators determined that she had been murdered.
“She had apparently been missing or had not been seen or heard from since 1980, but there was no missing person report,” Pantuso said. “There seemed to have been no organized effort by law enforcement or even her family to find her. And yet she had been murdered, it turned out.”
The mystery drew Pantuso deeper into the story.
“So I got really obsessed with this case trying to find out more about who this woman was and what could have happened to her.”
Telling the story beyond true crime
When Pantuso began developing the podcast, he said he wanted to avoid sensationalism and focus instead on the woman at the center of the case.
“It was really important to me to not make it a kind of salacious true crime podcast,” Pantuso said.
Instead, the reporting focused on reconstructing her life.
Once investigators identified her, Pantuso began searching records and tracking down people who had known her.
“I found her high school yearbook. I found friends who knew her from childhood all the way up until shortly before she died. I talked to dozens of people,” Pantuso said.
The goal, he said, was to restore the story of someone who had nearly disappeared from public memory.
“She was only 25 years old when she died,” Pantuso said. “And she has basically vanished from anyone’s memory except a couple of people who still are living and connected to her.”
Reporting a cold case from scratch
Investigating a case that began more than four decades ago brought significant challenges.
Many records from the pre-digital era were difficult to locate. And many people who might have known details are no longer alive.
“This is an era before records were digitized,” Pantuso said. “There are a lot of things that were just really hard for me to find.”
Unlike many crime investigations, the podcast also does not follow an unfolding court case or prosecution.
“I was sort of having to drive the reporting here,” Pantuso said.
A bigger question behind the mystery
Beyond the details of the crime, the podcast also explores how memories change over time — and how secrets shape what people share or conceal.
“What the show really gets into is the secrets that people carry in different ways,” Pantuso said. “Our memories can change over time, our interpretations of events can warp based on the revelation of new information.”
The case has also left him wondering how often something like this might happen.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about just how many other cases like this might be out there,” Pantuso said, “where somebody disappears or just seems to have lost touch with others in their life and those other people for the most part don’t ask questions about what might have happened.”
Image Credit: Times Union