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Five days after a body was pulled from New York City’s East River, detectives learned the man’s identity—but the discovery created its own chilling mystery.
Detectives learned that homicide victim Stephen Leung’s wife and daughter also disappeared days earlier. according to a sneak peek of Oxygen’s new series The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher.
“We’re very concerned because the victim’s wife and daughter are missing,” NYPD Sgt. Bill Cannon remarked in a preview for a new episode, airing Sat., Oct 4, “And potentially could be the victims of something much worse.”
What happened to homicide victim Stephen Leung?
The disturbing case began when Leung’s body was found floating in the river in November of 2000.
“When an unknown body surfaces in the icy East River, Barbara Butcher joins detectives in a race to reconstruct the victim’s identity using the few fragile clues left behind,” an episode description reads. “Pressure mounts when a report comes in that there may be more victims.”
Butcher, a medicolegal death investigator with the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, was tasked with taking the clues she discovered both from the crime scene and body itself to piece together what happened to a victim.
“When you find a murder victim in the river, it could be anything,” she commented in the preview. “A hate crime, organized crime, personal killing. It could even be a serial killer. It’s a good place to hide a body.”
The first task for Butcher and NYPD detectives was finding out the man’s identity. They got the break they needed when a woman named Teresa Leung came into the 23rd precinct to report her mother, father and sister were missing.
As NYPD Homicide Detective John Flannery remarked, “We have an idea that the body that we’ve recovered, that’s in the morgue, is her father.”
Cannon explained that investigators showed Teresa polaroid photos of what the victim was wearing and she was able to identify the man as her father, Stephen, by recognizing the pajamas he was wearing.
The identity was confirmed after she took a visit to the morgue, but authorities still had no idea where her mom and sister could be.
“In my head I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, the other two, what happened to them?’” Flannery said. “Where are they?”
To find out what happens to the Leung family and how the crime will ultimately be pieced together, watch The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher at 9/8c on Saturday, Oct. 4 on Oxygen.
