Tip helps police crack 1994 East Greenbush murder

Police are now explaining how they just solved the 1994 murder of an East Greenbush woman. NewsChannel 13 first reported Wednesday that police cracked the case.

It stumped police when Wilomeana “Violet” Filkins, 81, was found dead in her apartment on August 19, 1994.

Filkins lived alone in an East Greenbush apartment. She was retired and enjoyed caring for her flowers.

Police tracked thousands of leads over the weeks, months and years that followed. However, they got a tip several years ago that a man who lived in the same apartment complex in 1994 — Jeremiah Guyette — told a girlfriend many years earlier about “that poor old woman,” and essentially confessed to her, to killing Filkins.

Acting on that tip, police went to Rosendale, New York in Ulster County to talk to Guyette. He told them he wouldn’t talk to them and wanted a lawyer. The very next day, Guyette took his own life.

Police were able to match Guyette’s fingerprint after his death, to a fingerprint left on a coffee table inside Filkins’s apartment. Now police – some of whom spent much of their career hoping to solve this case – were able to share the news with Wilkins’ family.

Filkins’ niece was one of the people who found her body. She was there Thursday.

She will discuss what it means to her and her family to have the case solved after all these years, coming up starting Live at 4 and on WNYT.com.