Crime & Safety
Murder Cold Case in Long Beach Reopened
Police to hold press conference on 1986 slaying at yeshiva high school.
An investigation into a murder in Long Beach that has gone cold for more than a quarter century has reopened, the Nassau County Police Department (NCPD) announced this week.
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Chaim Weiss, a 15-year-old Staten Island rabbinical student at Mestiva of Long Beach, was murdered at the Orthodox Jewish high school in 1986, but the case has gone unsolved. The NCPD will hold a press conference at police headquarters in Mineola May 28 to announce the reopening of the investigation in the murder.
Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, NCPD Chief of Detectives John Capece and Det. Lt. John Azzata, commanding officer of the homicide squad, will hold the press conference along with members of the Weiss Family at 10 a.m. next Tuesday. The police did not announce any new leads or developments in the case, but said that the Crime Stoppers reward in the case will be raised.
According to a 1989 New York Times account of the murder, Weiss was found dead in his dormitory room at the high school the morning of Nov. 1, 1986, after he was stabbed repeatedly by someone who was well acquainted with the dorm and its routine. Initially, the murder was considered a possible act of anti-Semitic-inspired violence after Orthodox Jewish boy who attended the yeshiva were harassed, but a police investigation revealed Weiss’s murderer knew about religious customs, based on a window that was found open in the boy’s dorm room and a lighted candle left on his desk.
According to News 12, police originally told the media that Weiss died after he was struck repeatedly in the head with a blunt object, but a day later they updated that account and said his death was due to multiple stab wounds to the head, neck and face. The medical examiner’s office characterized it as a “frenzy-type” killing, and police said a weapon was never found.
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