The silence in Ovid, New York, is not the peaceful quiet of rural life. It is a heavy, suffocating quiet, the kind that settles over a town when its residents have collectively decided that some questions are better left unanswered. For forty years, that silence has been the only accomplice in the brutal murder of Kristin O’Connell, a 20-year-old Minnesota woman whose life was extinguished in a cornfield just steps from the town’s only tavern.
The case remains officially unsolved, but the whispers, the three screams, and the shadowy figures seen that night paint a damning portrait of a community that chose to look away.
The last time Phyllis O’Connell heard her daughter’s voice, it was crackling through a payphone receiver on August 14th, 1985. Kristin, who had traveled to the Finger Lakes region to visit a man she met on spring break, sounded disturbed. She told her mother she was cutting her trip short and coming home the next day.
She never made it. Hours later, at approximately 11:30 PM, Kristin left the trailer she was staying in, located behind the Golden Buck tavern, to go for a walk. She was barefoot, a habit her family says was typical for her when she needed to clear her head.
She was never seen alive again by those who knew her name.
The timeline of that night, pieced together from witness statements over the decades, reveals a terrifying sequence of events that unfolded in plain sight. Between 11:50 PM and midnight, multiple motorists on Route 139 observed a young woman walking west along the north shoulder. An older model sedan, green or blue, pulled up beside her, the driver leaning out to speak with her.
A second vehicle also pulled over behind the first. Kristin refused the ride and continued walking, but something spooked her. She turned around and began heading back east, toward the village.
Approximately fifty yards behind her, two white males, described as thin with shoulder-length hair, were walking in the same direction. One wore a denim jacket and stood about six feet tall; the other was slightly shorter. They were following her, and they were closing the distance
Between 12:15 and 12:25 AM, the screams began. A family living near MacGregor Road, hundreds of feet from a dirt path locals called Lovers’ Lane, reported hearing three distinct, piercing screams cutting through the night air. Immediately following the screams, they heard an engine revving at low speed, then a vehicle accelerating away without its headlights on, disappearing into the treeline.
Back at the trailer, two children who had noticed Kristin hadn’t returned stepped outside to look for her. They heard the screams too, but dismissed them as noise from the tavern. No one called police that night.
No one reported the two men matching the description seen walking east toward town at 1:15 AM, nor when they were spotted again fifteen minutes later, walking west along Route 139 near the field where Kristin’s body would be discovered
The morning of August 15th brought rain, a steady downpour that would effectively wash away any remaining physical evidence. Jim Vermeersch, the man who had invited Kristin to Ovid, finally reached state police at around 1:00 PM, nearly thirteen hours after she vanished. He reported her missing from the trailer he had rented for their stay, a trailer that lacked a phone and was parked conspicuously behind the Golden Buck.
A missing person report was filed at 4:00 PM, but searches did not begin in earnest until the following morning. On August 16th, at approximately 5:10 PM, a search party found Kristin’s body in a cornfield less than a quarter mile from the trailer. She was 𝓷𝓾𝓭𝓮, stabbed multiple times in the chest, with her throat slashed.
Her clothes were found neatly folded beside her, not torn or scattered, suggesting a strange, methodical calm by the killer. The autopsy confirmed she had not been drinking, and there were no signs of sexual assault. But the rain had destroyed footprints, tire tracks, and any trace evidence that might have led to her attacker
The investigation immediately zeroed in on the two men seen following her, but despite extensive canvassing of the tiny town, population just over five hundred, no one could or would identify them. Jim Vermeersch and all those present at the trailer party were questioned and ultimately cleared. The case went cold, but not for lack of leads.
On August 23rd, 1985, a week after the murder, an anonymous caller phoned state police and spoke with investigator D. C. Ryer.
The caller instructed Ryer to check a green Chevrolet parked on Main Street in Waterloo. “Open the trunk, and you’ll find what you need,” the caller said. Then he added something far more chilling: he told Ryer he was leaving town because he had warned someone not to do this.
He had told them not to, but they did anyway. Now he was leaving. The call was recorded, but the tape remained sealed for ten years before the public ever heard it.
To this day, the caller’s identity remains unknown, and whether that green Chevrolet ever existed, or what it might have contained, is a mystery that has never been solved
The case might have progressed had it not been for systemic failures that plagued the investigation for decades. Gary Veeder, a forensic scientist with the New York State Police, handled the fiber evidence in Kristin’s case. For years, his work was considered unimpeachable.
But in 2007, the state Inspector General’s office released a report revealing serious misconduct in nearly a third of all cases Veeder had ever touched. The findings cast doubt on evidence used in courtrooms across the state for years. Phyllis O’Connell learned that Veeder had processed the original evidence in her daughter’s case, but no one could tell her whether his misconduct had compromised that specific investigation.
The uncertainty, she said, has been a torment that never ends
In 2009, hopes were raised when Seneca County District Attorney Barry Porsch and Chief Investigator Jeff Arnold partnered with Dutch forensic scientists Richard and Selma Eikelenboom, who had developed a technique to extract microscopic skin cell residue from old evidence. The county board approved funding between $25,000 and $40,000 for the testing. All they needed was approval from the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center in Albany.
After a three-hour meeting, the request was denied because the Dutch lab lacked proper certification from the state Department of Health. An exemption process existed, and such requests were rarely refused. The exemption was submitted in May 2009, and it was denied.
Senators Chuck Schumer and Amy Klobuchar personally intervened, but the state health commissioner upheld the rejection. Years later, a different accredited lab within New York State offered to test the evidence. That offer was also refused.
For the O’Connell family, watching opportunity after opportunity evaporate due to bureaucratic stonewalling while their daughter’s killer walked free has been one of the most agonizing aspects of this forty-year ordeal
In early 2014, the case suddenly reignited when Doug Zamiate, a local man, found himself at the center of a renewed investigation. His half-sister had come forward to tell investigators she remembered seeing bloodstains on his clothing around the time of Kristin’s murder. Zamiate claimed the blood came from slaughtering a pig for a barbecue that weekend.
He and his friend Michael Swank were interrogated repeatedly, with sessions lasting up to eleven hours. Both men voluntarily provided DNA samples, and Zamiate passed a polygraph test, denying any involvement in the murder and denying knowledge of who committed it. He also claimed he had called police in 1990 to report a coworker who said he knew a man who hid in a basement for days after the murder, covered in scratches.
The officer he spoke to, Zamiate said, laughed at him, and nothing ever came of it. No charges were ever filed against either man, but the damage to their reputations in a town that small was lasting. In frustration, they painted a message on a fence outside Zamiate’s home on County Route 139, directed at the lead investigator: “We had a pig roast.
Should have roasted a chicken.” Zamiate later told reporters the sign was meant solely for the police, and he did not care what the public thought
In August 2010, on the 25th anniversary of the murder, the Seneca County District Attorney’s office offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. The family, desperate for answers, hired a former prosecutor to work directly with state police to finally conduct modern DNA testing. As of this writing, that testing has still not been completed.
The evidence sits in storage, untouched by modern forensic techniques that could potentially identify her killer with certainty. Petitions on change. org and public pressure campaigns have done nothing to break through what appears to be an impenetrable wall of resistance.
The question that haunts the O’Connell family and anyone who examines this case is unavoidable: is someone inside the system protecting the person or persons responsible?
In August 2025, on the fortieth anniversary of Kristin’s disappearance, her family and members of the Ovid community gathered for a memorial walk, retracing her final steps along Route 139. They carried signs demanding DNA testing, and they received the same answer they have gotten since 2009: nothing. Phyllis O’Connell, now in her eighties, has spent four decades waiting for justice.
She recalls the last words she ever heard her daughter speak, spoken as Kristin walked out the door of their Minnesota home for what would be the final time:“You know, Mom, I really love you.” Phyllis replied,“And I love you very much.” Kristin said,“Well, I love you too.”
Those were the last words I ever heard her say. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to rest.
I’m not going to give up.
The investigation remains open, but the reality is that someone in Ovid, New York, has spent the past four decades knowing exactly what happened to Kristin O’Connell. Perhaps it is one of the two men seen following her that night. Perhaps it is the anonymous caller who phoned in 1985 and then vanished from the story entirely.
Perhaps it is someone who has never spoken a word to anyone, not even their own family. The town that prided itself on everyone knowing everyone else’s business has proven that sometimes, the deepest secret is the one that everyone agrees to keep. If you know anything about what happened to Kristin O’Connell in August 1985, the New York State Police are still actively working this case and want to hear from you.
A family has waited forty years for answers, and they deserve the truth. The silence must break, because justice, however delayed, cannot be denied forever
