Police: Body in trunk found because of odor

July 7, 2010 8:34 PM
By MATTHEW CHAYES

After an intense two-week hunt for a missing Elmont woman, it wasn't the police helicopters or the high-tech license-plate scanners deployed in the search that finally found her body and a missing family car that both disappeared the day her younger son allegedly shot her husband and older son.

Police found the woman thanks to an abandoned car and a foul odor that sickened a quiet block in Brooklyn.

What New York City police found Tuesday while responding to a report of the smell coming from a silver Lexus sedan were the remains of a dead woman - tentatively identified as the missing woman, Rose Ormejuste, 65 - stuffed in the trunk.

Ormejuste, who would have turned 66 on Monday, died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to a source familiar with the autopsy, completed Wednesday morning. X-rays will help definitively identify the remains, authorities said.

Homicide detectives are seeking to find out how long the family car had been parked on the Brooklyn block, said Det. Vincent Garcia, a police spokesman.

Nassau police have not charged the younger son, Dario Ormejuste, with her death, but the 24-year-old is jailed without bail on two counts of murder in the June 21 shootings of the older son, Guerby, 30, and their father, Bob, 65.

Tuesday's discovery came just days after the Ormejuste family held funerals on Long Island for the two slain men.

After Dario Ormejuste was arrested in the men's deaths, and he wouldn't help detectives find his mother, police said, Nassau cops used the helicopter and plate scanners and alerted police across the region.

The missing family car had been parked next to an area where residents put their trash, police said. As the heat wave hit this week, the odor intensified, said Marvin Phillip, 37, who lives next to where the car was parked on East 48th Street, a one-way street near Avenue J. Neighbors said they'd thought the odor was trash.

Ormejuste, who is being held without bail and maintains his innocence, is due back in court Monday. His defense attorney, Richard Barbuto of Mineola, visited him in jail Wednesday. He said he has told authorities not to question his client because he's represented by counsel.

Ormejuste's niece said the family is trying to make sense of the news.

"You have part of the family that is in denial. You have part of the family that was expecting the worst but still trying to come to grips with reality," said Cassandra Cean Owens of Valley Stream. "And you have others cursing the day Dario was born."

By By MATTHEW CHAYES
Posted Thursday, July 8, 2010

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