Louise Pietrewicz Investigation

For a daughter, there is peace and closure after mother’s remains found

For Sandy Blampied, the news that arrived Monday — that remains believed to be her mother’s were discovered buried in the basement of a house in Southold — has brought peace.

“Oh my God, this is indescribable,” she said. “This was something we had always hoped for, but when it happened I could not believe it was true.” 

After hearing the news, she spoke to her uncle, Leo Jasinski, her mother’s sole surviving sibling. “He just wept,” Ms. Blampied said. “He is 92. We always wanted him to know something before he passed.

This was his baby sister!”

After 51 years of not knowing what had happened to 38-year-old Louise Pietrewicz after she vanished in October 1966, the discovery answered a million long-held questions for her family. And it brought them a measure of real closure, something they never thought possible after so many years.

“There is closure with this, absolutely,” Ms. Blampied said. “There really is. I almost can’t believe it has happened. It’s like a dream.”

Leo Jasinski of Riverhead, Louise’s brother, is interviewed by a CBS 2 reporter at his home Tuesday morning. (Credit: Steve Wick)

For Mr. Jasinski, the discovery brought reporters to his house in Riverhead. He gave interview after interview, trying to keep his emotions in check.

“I never thought this day would come,” he said. “I really didn’t. I’m so glad. Mostly, we wanted this for Sandy, so that her mom could come home, finally.”

Even with the breakthrough, however, Ms. Blampied knows there are questions still to be answered.

“I hope they can be answered someday,” she added. “Where was she killed? Was she killed in Southold or somewhere else and her body brought there? How did she die?”

She also said she wants to know if her mother was pregnant at the time of her death. “Can that be known today?” she asked. “Is that why Boken killed her?”

Looking back across more than a half-century to Oct. 6, 1966 — when she kissed her mother goodbye and went off to school, never to see her again — Ms. Blampied said she is anxious to come to Suffolk County from her home in upstate New York to see the remains at the County Medical Examiner’s office.

She knows from police that they include remnants of a brightly colored woman’s dress. She hopes to see that, to hold it.

“I will come down and see her,” she said Wednesday. “That is so important. I want to do that. I have to.

Yes, I know it is skeletal remains. But that’s my mother, and it’s part of what I have to experience. But I am at peace. I really am. It’s a great gift.”

Photo credit: Sandy Blampied holds a picture of her mother, Louise Pietrewicz, outside her Middletown, N.Y., home Tuesday morning, one day after learning the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance had likely been solved. (Credit: Krysten Massa)

[email protected]