Man charged in decades-old beating death of a New York woman after a blurry photo of a fingerprint helps lead to a suspect
By Yash Roy, CNN
(CNN) — Known as the neighborhood grandma, 88-year-old Edna Schubert often spent her days helping children with their math homework or watching them ride their bikes on her driveway.
She lived alone in her North Bay Shore one-story house and while she had no children of her own, she treated the neighborhood children as if they were her own, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said.
When a neighbor in December 2003 spotted Schubert’s front door ajar, the exterior light still on, her window broken and papers from her Long Island home blowing in the wind, they knew something was wrong, Tierney said at a Friday news conference.
Schubert had been beaten to death.
The brutal killing shook the community and went unsolved for more than two decades until an investigation led to the arrest of 51-year-old Raul Ayala, a former neighbor of Schubert’s who has been charged with murder in her killing, the district attorney said.
Ayala’s attorney, Christopher Gioe, declined to comment on the case.
“This indictment demonstrates that justice has no expiration date,” Tierney said in a statement. “Through the relentless dedication of our retired and active law enforcement officers, coupled with advances in forensic technology, we were able to charge this defendant for the brutal murder of Edna Schubert which has haunted Suffolk County for over two decades.”
A blurry photo of a fingerprint and a persistent detective
The case received renewed attention in 2023 when retired Suffolk County police detective Pasquale Albergo sought to get the case reexamined with modern forensic technology, Tierney said.
“Detective Albergo, amongst many, never stopped thinking about this heinous murder even after his retirement, and he continued to think about ways in which we could potentially come to a positive result,” Tierney said.
During the initial investigation, detectives documented the scene and preserved fingerprint and blood evidence throughout the home. However, forensic techniques at the time were not advanced enough to identify a killer, and the case went cold.
Detectives had a blurry photograph of a latent print found on a window blind where the killer had entered Schubert’s home and, with more advanced technology, were able to run it through a database to find a match, according to the district attorney.
“Believe it or not, with modern high-definition photography, they were able to take a picture of that picture, which turned out to be the defendant Ayala’s left thumbprint,” Tierney said.
His prints were also found to be “an identical match” to another print on a door near the broken window, Tierney said.
Ayala was 29 years old when the killing happened and lived less than 200 yards from Schubert.
After identifying Ayala’s fingerprints, detectives combed through the forensic evidence, including on Schubert’s clothes, and found an unknown person’s DNA on her clothes.
Once that DNA was found, Suffolk County police in August 2024 traveled to Talmo, Georgia – where Ayala had moved – to conduct surveillance and obtain DNA from items he tossed away, including discarded lottery tickets and paper bottles.
“They were able to obtain an abandonment sample of DNA which was compared to the DNA sample left at the scene and, again, it matched,” Tierney said.
On January 16, Suffolk County police officers and Georgia law enforcement arrested Ayala, who was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment on Friday, his attorney told CNN. Ayala is being held without bail and faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole, authorities said.
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