A Tragic Moment That Changed a Family Forever
For most people, slipping on the ice while heading to school is an ordinary and forgettable event. However, for Marla Waldman Conn, it became the last memory she had of her mother. On January 11, 1974, Barbara Waldman stood at the front door of their family home in Oceanside, Long Island, waving goodbye to her three children as they made their way to the big yellow school bus. Marla slipped on the icy driveway, and her brothers laughed nearby.
“Marla, be careful, are you okay?” Barbara shouted after her. These were the last words Marla ever heard her say.
Just 20 minutes later, Barbara, who was only 31 years old, was dead. She had been sexually assaulted and brutally murdered inside her own home. To make matters worse, she was found by her five-year-old son Eric, who had returned home from his nearby school during his lunch break.
The Investigation and the Silence That Followed
Barbara was found upstairs with her hands tied behind her back. A pillowcase had been stuffed into her mouth, and she had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Despite the shocking nature of the crime, no one was ever arrested. The case remained unsolved for decades, leaving the community in suspense and suspicion.
Much of the speculation centered around Barbara’s husband, Gerald Waldman, who worked as a dentist and was treating a patient at the time of the murder. Rumors intensified when he remarried six months later. Marla recalled that her mother’s side of the family always implied that her father had killed her.
“My mother’s side of the family always implied that my father had killed her,” Marla said. “We were aware that a large part of the community accused him of having our mother killed. Processing that as a child was tough.”
After Barbara’s death, discussion about the case virtually disappeared. Marla noted that her father remarried quickly, and pictures of Barbara were taken off the wall. “She was wiped from our lives,” she said.
However, traces of her mother remained hidden away. Marla mentioned that her father kept a secret box of photographs tucked out of sight, which her brother would occasionally sneak into so he could look at pictures of their mother.
A New Hope After Decades of Silence
For years, Marla avoided asking too many questions about the murder. That changed when she became an adult and started contacting the police herself, repeatedly asking investigators to reopen the case—something they were reluctant to do.
Then, in 2022, something dramatic happened. Serial killer Richard Cottingham, also known as “The Times Square Ripper,” confessed to several murders connected to Long Island, including one involving a home invasion. The similarities immediately caught Marla’s attention.
“I called the detective, and he said that he will reopen the case to see if the DNA evidence matches Cottingham’s,” she said.
Investigators developed a full DNA profile from evidence gathered at the crime scene. Marla believed they were finally getting somewhere, but after eight long months, there was still no match to Cottingham or anyone else in the national database.
“The police told us there was nothing else they could do at that point,” she said.
But Marla refused to give up. She pushed Nassau County police to involve the FBI so more advanced DNA and genetic genealogy testing could be carried out.
Eventually, it paid off. In August 2024, investigators identified a DNA match pointing towards Thomas Generazio, a local refuse worker who had lived near the Waldman family home at the time Barbara was killed. Generazio died in 2004.
A Journey of Determination and Discovery
“When I was told there was a DNA match, I fell to the floor,” Marla said. “I was beyond baffled. He looked like a regular person.”
Over several months, Marla managed to track down a number of Generazio’s relatives, searched records from around Oceanside, and contacted his children, some of whom had never even met him.
“I made it my mission to prove that this m***** killed my mother, and he might have hurt other people,” she said.
One of Generazio’s daughters eventually sent Marla photographs of him, including one showing him wearing a coat with a fur-lined collar. The photograph appeared to match the decades-old police sketch.
Justice Served After Decades of Pain
In March of this year, Nassau County police publicly announced they had identified Generazio as responsible for Barbara Waldman’s killing. Thanks, in no small way, to Marla’s incredible perseverance and determination.
For Marla, the revelation brought a mix of relief, grief, and trauma. But knowing that the killer was gone comforted her.
“When I heard he had died, that satisfied me that he couldn’t hurt or kill anyone else,” she said. “The element of the unknown killer is gone; he is dead.”
The discovery also finally removed decades of suspicion hanging over her father’s name.
“It was a brutal murder. My mother deserved more than that.”
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