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Sandra Bonaventure eagerly anticipated the day she would become a mother, but tragically, that dream would never come to fruition. Her life was cut short, and her story remains a chilling mystery.
In a case that continues to haunt New York City, the 20-year-old’s body was discovered just seven months into her pregnancy. It was found in a black plastic trash bag, abandoned in a city tunnel—a heartbreaking scene that has left investigators searching for answers for decades.
Detective Brian MacLeod of the NYPD, who was newly assigned to the Midtown North Detective Squad in June 2002, vividly recalled the case during the Oct. 18 episode of Oxygen’s The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher. “The first case you work on is something you never forget, but when it’s a case like this, it stays with you forever,” he reflected.
That summer, Bonaventure was forging her own path. A resident of Mount Vernon, New York, she was proudly the first in her family to attend college, studying to become a special education teacher.
“Sandra was always a stellar student, achieving A’s and B’s and frequently making the honor roll,” her sister, Marline Nelson, shared. “She was a jokester who loved to dance and enjoyed music. Above all, she was my best friend.”
“Sandra always did well in school, A’s and B’s and honor roll,” her sister Marline Nelson remembered. “She was a jokester, loved to dance, she loved music. She was my best friend.”
Bonaventure was also embarking on a new chapter in life after discovering that she was pregnant with a baby boy, who she planned to name Isaiah.
“When we found out Sandra was pregnant, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her happier,” her cousin Alexandra Hyppolite shared in the episode. “She glowed.”
What Happened to Sandra Bonaventure?
But all that promise ended abruptly in June of 2022 when Bonaventure’s body was found stuffed into a trash bag and dumped in a tunnel on West 56th Street in Hell’s Kitchen.
Butcher, an experienced medicolegal death investigator with the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, could find no evidence of drag marks or blood at the scene, ultimately concluding that “she had been killed elsewhere and dumped in this tunnel.”
An autopsy the next day determined that Bonaventure had been strangled to death sometime between June 22 and June 23. There was no evidence of a struggle or defensive wounds on the body.
“It’s probably likely the this was someone she knew and didn’t fight back initially,” Butcher concluded. “Perhaps she was surprised.”
Detectives Speak to Bonaventure’s Boyfriend
Detectives were tasked with breaking the news of her death to Bonaventure’s family.
“The day I found out about Sandra I was at work. My aunt had called me and all I heard was my aunt screaming,” Nelson remembered through tears. “When I heard my aunt scream, I dropped on the floor.”
Bonaventure’s family told authorities that the father of her baby was 26-year-old Emmanuel Pierre, a graduate student from Brooklyn.
Detectives went to speak to Pierre at his home. He told authorities he was supposed to pick Bonaventure up from the train station in Brooklyn in the early morning hours of June 20, but he fell asleep. When he woke up, he said he went to the station, but she was already gone. According to his account, he assumed that she was upset with him and went home.
He told police that later that day he went to a concert and then headed out of town to Cleveland, Ohio from June 21 to June 26, an alibi that travel records confirmed. During his interview with police, Pierre also insisted that he couldn’t be sure that he was really the baby’s father.
With Bonaventure’s estimated time of death falling within the window of his trip, detectives moved on and looked into others in her life at the time, but the case soon stalled out.
Credit Card Provides New Clues
Nine months after the murder, detectives got an unexpected break in the case when they learned that Bonaventure’s credit card had been used three times in the days after her death at gas stations in Brooklyn.
They were ultimately able to trace the card back to an employee at an assisted living facility, who told them he had gotten the card from his coworker, Joshua Cayenne.
Investigators learned that Cayenne also happened to be best friends and fraternity brothers with Pierre.
Who Killed Sandra Bonaventure?
After five hours in an interview room, Cayenne cracked and finally revealed how Bonaventure met her tragic fate.
He told police that he was at his home in Brooklyn on the night of June 20, when Pierre knocked on his window and told him to come outside and meet him at his car.
“Emmanuel opens the passenger side, rear door, and Joshua looks in and he sees Sandra dead on the backseat,” NYPD Homicide Detective Steve Terrizzi recounted. “He says he threw up right there.”
Pierre told him he had to help dispose of the body and together they placed Bonaventure into the plastic bag and—after driving around for hours—dumped her inside the Manhattan tunnel.
“Emmanuel explained that she was pregnant, that he had been pressuring her to have an abortion,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Thomas Schiels revealed in the episode of the motive. “She was refusing to do so and Miss Bonaventure was even threatening to tell Emmanuel’s family that he had gotten her pregnant. He could not have this.”
Given the new evidence uncovered during the investigation, the medical examiner changed Bonaventure’s time of death to a window beginning on June 20.
Pierre was arrested and convicted in 2005 of second-degree murder. According to DNA evidence presented during trial, he was the baby’s father.
Pierre died in prison in 2024 while serving out a sentence of 25 years to life behind bars.
