Case of Wendy Wolin

It should have been ended 50 years ago.

The case of Wendy Sue Wolin's 1966 killing should have solved the same year, when police interviewed more than 1,500 men, scanned jails and mental groups in 13 states, and searched a military ship that arrived in Port Elizabeth before it departed for Vietnam.

Rather, no charges were ever made.

Wendy's family nonetheless has no explanations about who fatally stabbed Wendy, then 7, as she stepped down the street in full daylight. But they do have a lawn.

A small exhibit of stones and flowers, financed and created by Elizabeth, now marks the place of the killing near Prince Street and Irvington Avenue. Wendy's sister and stepbrother gathered there Thursday to devote the area.

Jodi Wolin, Wendy's sister, had liked a shrine for years. Her mother, still, had concerned that lecturing or talking about the disaster would influence it. 

When authorities thought they had discovered Wendy's murderer in 1995, the crew from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" visited.

"They liked to discuss it," Wolin told Thursday. "My mama would not speak for anything — for any trips, any extras, anything. She was not going." 

Wendy was stabbed around 4 p.m. on March 8, 1966, minutes after she and her mother scheduled to quit their Pierce Manor flat together, according to police reports. Her mother, Shirley Fleischner, was going to pull her car out from a back parking lot and join Wendy in front. 

As Wendy neared the fire station on Irvington Avenue, a man wearing a green corduroy jacket and fedora moved towards her, sat down, and stabbed her in the stomach with a cheap hunting knife, The Star-Ledger recently reported. 

Three girls and a woman nearby supported Wendy into the firehouse, while the man kept striding. Wendy said to firefighters the man had slapped her, but they opened her coat and discovered her bleeding, The Star-Ledger reported. 

Wendy died at Elizabeth General Hospital less than an hour after the incident. Three other young girls said authority they had been attacked by the same man before that day, according to The Star-Ledger.

In the weeks and months after Wendy's loss, the Wolins dealt with their sadness by eliminating all remembrances of her. They quit speaking of her name completely. Wendy's mother and stepfather, whose anniversary fell on the same day they had laid to rest Wendy, never enjoyed the event also. 

"Her pictures dropped; they have tucked away," Jodi Wolin told. "Never said a word, never remembered Wendy's birthday. ... My mother was very reserved because I think she was just living in such trauma and agony." 

Wolin told she was motivated by the aid she had earned from people throughout Elizabeth and across the region. She had seen the way Wendy's death broke down their family, but she hadn't understood its effects had been so broad. 

The Union County Prosecutor's Office in October 1995 said they had discovered a suspect in the killing, bolstered by tips provided by an unknown woman who had noticed the stabbing. Police brought the man in for interviews, but he was never arrested.

Although Elizabeth authority Capt. Todd Mooney has been unofficially exploring the cold case for a few years, Jodi Wolin realizes she may never learn who murdered her sister and turned her family upside down 50 years ago. So, she told, she just proceeds. 

"You live with it," she told. "You don't get over it, ever."