All homes have a history, which includes the memories, hopes and dreams of all who have lived there.

But this home in a quiet upscale neighborhood in suburban New York held something more.

In a steel drum, stored in a crawl space, was a secret that someone had hoped would last a lifetime.

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September 2nd, 1999, was moving day for the Cohen family in Jericho, New York.

Before leaving that day, Ronald Cohen noticed that the sanitation workers hadn't picked up all of his trash.

A note on a large steel drum said it wasn't removed because of its weight.

Cohen had no idea what was inside since it had been in a crawl space in his home since the day he moved in nine years earlier.

When he broke the seal, Cohen was overcome by a terrible stench inside.

He saw what appeared to be a human hand and a lady's shoe.

Local police transported the drum to the Nassau County morgue where all of its contents were carefully removed for forensic examination.

Inside were the mummified remains of a young woman.

There were also some plastic pellets, a green plastic flower stem with leaves, and a woman's pocketbook which was submerged in a mysterious brownish green liquid at the bottom of the drum.

The liquid had virtually destroyed the contents of the pocketbook which might have identified the victim.

The cause of death appeared to be blunt force trauma to the head.

It was most noteworthy to the body and the cause of death were that there were ten different injuries called lacerations to the back and upper part of her head.

There were multiple fractures to the skull and some areas the skull was broken into small pieces.

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