Louise's Last Resting Place

3/5/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In 1966, Louise Pietrewicz disappeared without a trace. The mystery of her whereabouts appeared to be solved, with the discovery of a woman’s remains found in a burlap sack on Long Island.

Not long before her disappearance, Louise had left her husband of 16 years, a prosperous farmer named Albin Pietrewicz, who was said to have been abusive (pictured together on their wedding day)

October, 1966

Louise was in a troubled marriage, and after 16 years she had separated from her husband, and moved to her parents' home in Sagaponack. She took her 11-year-old daughter Sandy with her, with plans to leave to Florida. And then the 38-year-old disappeared after withdrawing close to $2,000 from her bank account. When her purse was recovered a week later on the shoulder of Route 25, with a WWII bond and her Social Security card inside, it should have raised concern on the part of the authorities. Instead they treated the case as a missing person and not a murder, and the local newspaper took no notice of it.

Detectives interviewed her husband, who claimed he was humiliated by her betrayal and didn't care if she was alive or not. Albin Pietrewicz divorced his missing wife in 1974, and remarried two years later. He died in 2000.

Southold Police, Suffolk County Police and New York State Police say they investigated the disappearance in 1960, then the case went cold.

For over 50 years, Pietrewicz’s family looked for her, unaware of a secret love affair she had with police officer William P. Boken, a married man. Louise's family suspected she was murdered because she was pregnant with Boken’s child, and they knew she would never leave her daughter behind despite being in a troubled marriage.

The decades passed, the Boken property changed hands in the 1970s, but the owners had no clue of what would be found on March 19, 2018. Inside the centuries-old farmhouse on Lower Road sonar equipment scanned the cellar floor. Within a burlap sack, buried seven feet deep police unearthed bones believed to be those of Louise Pietrewicz. William Boken lived there with his wife Judith, who was the town assessor, and their two children when Louise went missing.

It seems Louise didn't make it out of Southold after all.

William Boken in uniform (center)

However it turns out that more than one person knew where the victim was buried. Shortly before the discovery of Louise Pietrewicz's remains, Judith Terry, the former wife of the suspected killer revealed she had told one person about the murder. But it wasn't just any person, it was the chief of police at the time the murder took place.

The Suffolk Times found this information when a FOIA request provided the notes of the conversation between Boken's former wife, and Detective Kenneth Richert during an interview on March, 15, 2018. He asked if she had told anyone she had witnessed her then husband, burying a body in the basement of their home. This was related concerning the exchange:

'Judith stated that at some point, she doesn’t remember when, she told Joseph Sawicki Sr. what had happened,' Det. Richert wrote about that interview, which he and retired Southold detective Joseph Conway Jr. conducted. 'She stated that she was very close with him and his wife and was godmother to one of their children and because he was a police officer.'

The case of the missing Louise Pietrewicz was reopened after an investigation by the SuffolkCounty Times newspaper

Sawicki Sr. worked for the Southold Town Police Department for 29 years, and died in 2013. He retired as a detective in 1980, and acted as chief in the mid-1960s.

Despite the discovery of Louise's body in 2018, the circumstances of her disappearance was whispered about among the small community for years, but it didn't go any further than that. Of course no arrests were ever made, and it wasn't until the case was revisited in 2018, with an in-depth interview of Judith Terry that the discovery of the secret grave was made.

Looking back at the initial investigation, it appears that only the minimal effort was given into discovering the whereabouts of Louise Pietrewicz, which lay only seven feet beneath the surface of the basement. By using a diagram drawn by Judith Terry and her recollection as to the hole’s depth, police would ultimately find Louise’s remains.

A statement given by former state investigator Thomas Cobey in December 1969 mentions interviews with Chief Sawicki and others that failed to lead them to Louise. Bud Griffiths, a retired state investigator who had looked into the case at the request of Louise’s family, said Investigator Cobey’s partner, Dick Fairchild, had told him that Chief Sawicki was present one day 14 months after the murder when they dug in the basement and found nothing. Mr. Griffiths said no mention was made at the time of Ms. Terry telling the chief that she witnessed the burial. He said Investigator Fairchild told him that Chief Sawicki observed, but did not help with the digging efforts. 'Fairchild said they had no cooperation from the town’s P.D.,' Mr. Griffiths said.

This four-bedroom house, built in 1677, once belonged to William Boken, Pietrewicz's married boyfriend. He lived here with his wife and 2 children. Her body was found buried in the basement.

William Paul Boken died August 20, 1982 and was buried in Potter's Field, Hart Island, Bronx, New York.

The last few years of his life he was a cab driver, and since he had little contact with his family of origin, police didn't know they lived in Long Island. By the time of his death he had outlived both of his parents and all but one of his four siblings, who died in 1986.

Boken's extended family didn't learn about his death until 2013. Judy Terry learned of it in 2018, when she was 83 years old. It appears that once reassured that he was indeed dead, she felt more confident in speaking about what she had witnessed. She told detectives that she suspected Louise was interred in the basement, because of the threatening comments Boken made to her. It was something along the lines that he would kill and bury her in the same spot. Detective Sgt. Sinning wrote of his interview with Judith Terry:

Ms. Terry 'had a clear and detailed memory of the layout of the basement of the house on Lower Road.' During that conversation, she went much farther than in previous interviews, and admitted witnessing her husband bringing a body into their basement. 'I was there when he brought her into the house,' she told the detective. 'He laid her on the cement floor. I don’t know if she was dead or alive. I would assume she was dead because she was wrapped in burlap or something.' Det. Sgt. Sinning wrote: 'Judith states that she never saw Louise again.' Four days later, Det. Sgt. Sinning reported receiving a call from Ms. Terry’s husband, George, who said his wife had since recalled even more details. Mr. Terry said his wife told him Mr. Boken had demanded that she untie the binds around the burlap before he 'rolled Louise out of the burlap and into the hole.' Ms. Terry expanded on her account during the subsequent March 15 interview with Det. Richert and former detective Conway Jr. She said she saw Mr. Boken carrying the body wrapped in burlap out of the barn behind their house and that, after he began digging in the basement, he realized that he could be seen from outside through the basement windows. He then switched locations, Ms. Terry said, and dug a new hole.

Louise Pietrewicz pictured with her daughter Sandra who said her mother had been fleeing an abusive marriage c.1960s

Detective Sgt. Sinning gave Louise's daughter the clothing found with her mother's remains. It included a slip, garter and blouse. Three bullet holes marred the cloth. They corresponded with the three .38 caliber bullets found in the body. The M.E. concluded Louise died from gunshot wounds to her torso. Review of police personnel files show that Boken used sick days right before Louise's disappearance on October, 6, 1966. He resigned from the department on October 7. A year after Louise's disappearance, William Boken was arrested on suspicion of abusing his wife Judy, and was committed to a psychiatric hospital.

These clues would have immediately put another man under the microscope, and the mystery remains as to why he wasn't. Was he not prosecuted for Louise's death because he was considered mentally ill? Strangely the police blotter from 1966 is among "several years" missing from the town's archives.

In January, 2019 Louise's daughter Sandra filed a notice of claim against Southold Town and its police department, "charging the officials 'knowingly' concealed the circumstances of the death and 'thoroughly' failed to investigate who was responsible." She believes that not only did they know who was guilty of her death, they knew where she was buried all along.

Judith Terry who was the only eye-witness to the crime died in 2021, and her husband George a few months later.