Police Track Down Murder Victim's Kin

Police are one step closer to cracking an that took place in South Nyack over four decades ago.

Florence Kalbach was an 84-year-old widow who ran a boarding house in South Nyack. In May of 1971, she was brutally murdered—and now, with the advent of forensic technology coupled with hair preserved from crime scene, local authorities are keen to catch the killer.

Robert Van Cura, South 's police chief, said that while DNA is key to solving the crime, there's a catch—investigators need a sample of Kalbach's DNA to differentiate it from the murderer's.

And recently, investigators had a coup, successfully tracking down a family members of Kalbach, an 80-year-old nephew living in Connecticut.

The nephew allowed investigators to take a DNA sample for use in the lab.

"He's the son of Kalbach's brother," Van Cura explained. "The DNA will be used as a control."

Once police eliminate Kalbach's DNA from the equation, they can run other DNA found at the scene through a database—and see if it matches any existing felons'.

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The murder occurred on May 24, 1971 in South Nyack's Tower House, a sprawling residence located on the corner of Cedar Hill and Broadway. A rooming house at the time, Kalbach ran the establishment despite her age and poor eyesight; a Nyack periodical that reported on the homicide described her as a "nearly-blind widow."

Kalbach's murder was gruesome—police who arrived at the scene found the elderly woman strangled with one of her own scarves. Her face was bruised heavily, and she had a knife wound across her throat, according to reports. The murderer had poured wine on her body to make her appear inebriated and possibly responsible for her own death, authorities noted.

Police quickly narrowed in on motives. An easy target, Kalbach often collected rents in cash—and the murderer may have believed she kept the monies on hand. The crime scene, her room, was ransacked; drawers were toppled over.

Police at first believed they had nabbed the murderer, but the suspect was later cleared. Nyack Patch's history blogger, , wrote about the case in the Nyack Villager a few years ago:

"A few days after the investigation began, the authorities arrested an 18-year-old high school dropout for the murder," Leiner recalled. "Tall, slim Kenneth Hansen from Valley Cottage lived in a rented room at the Tower House... He admitted to burglarizing the apartment but denied he killed Mrs. Kalbach. The evidence was circumstantial, centering mostly on hairs found around the body. The jury found Hansen innocent of the murder."