"We conclude," Carney declared Monday, "that Stanislaw Maciag murdered Suzanne Nauman on May 30th, 1995."
The story of the investigation is long and winding. It was initially aimed at Nauman's known boyfriend, Keith Gavreau. A fellow cocaine user, according to Carney, Gavreau was obsessive about his relationship with Nauman and threatened violence against the young woman and any man he found with her. Gavreau also pleaded guilty to a manslaughter in Schenectady around the same time.
Witness accounts about Gavreau's whereabouts on May 30, 1995 were inconsistent though, and a later DNA test absolved him of any connection to Suzanne Nauman's death.
Key evidence found at the scene seemed to exonerate Gavreau. A larger-framed man, he wore a size 11 shoe, but a lone sneaker found at the scene of Nauman's murder, from which the shoelace that strangled her was taken, measured in at size 8.5.
At that same time, a 37-year-old Polish immigrant with a criminal sexual assault record was living on Lansing Street in Schenectady. In 1996, Stanislaw Maciag would be arrested and charged for the murder of Phyllis Harvey. She was a known prostitute, who had also been strangled with a string. Maciag's shoe size was also 8.5.
While imprisoned for a probation violation in 1997, Stanislaw Maciag hung himself by a bedsheet in his cell.
"Before taking his own life, he reportedly told another inmate, 'I've done a lot of bad things and I have to pay,'" explained Carney.
Even after his death, Maciag would not be formally tied to Suzanne Nauman's death until 2016, when newly-analyzed DNA evidence from Nauman's fingernails was matched to several of Maciag's family members. County officials later exhumed Maciag's body and tested the DNA evidence against his remains. Even the bite profile of Maciag's corpse matched the teeth marks that had been found on Nauman's breasts the day she was discovered.
Excerpt of article from 2017 -
Case closed: Police solve 22-year-old Schenectady murder case
