In the quiet, affluent community of Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, Madelyn DeFilippi was building a happy life. At 27 years old, she was a beloved former school teacher, the wife of a urologist, and a new mother to a four-month-old son, Joseph Jr. Friends and family knew her as a warm and caring woman, but the life she cherished was brutally extinguished on the eve of Valentine's Day in 1973.
On the afternoon of Tuesday, February 13, 1973, Madelyn’s parents, Charles and Stella Rinaldi, grew worried. They had been trying to reach their daughter by phone all day but were met with a persistent busy signal. Alarmed, they contacted the landlord of the two-family home at 810 Burns Street where Madelyn lived with her family. At around 5:30 p.m., the landlord, Stanley Jeffery, used a passkey to enter the apartment to check on her. He made a devastating discovery.
Madelyn was found on the kitchen floor, the victim of a frenzied and violent attack.
Her hands had been tied in front of her with her own brassiere, and she had been stabbed 42 times in the neck and chest. In a heartbreaking contrast to the horror in the kitchen, her infant son was found physically unharmed, asleep in his crib in a bedroom. The family's Welsh terrier was also in the home, unhurt. The telephone had been deliberately taken off the hook, explaining the busy signal that had alerted her parents to trouble.
Detectives from the New York City Police Department descended on the normally peaceful neighborhood, canvassing for witnesses and searching for clues. The crime scene presented a baffling puzzle. There were no signs of a forced entry, suggesting Madelyn may have known her killer or was tricked into opening the door. The apartment had not been ransacked, and robbery did not appear to be a clear motive. Investigators believed she might have been attacked while trying to escape through a back door. The time of death was estimated to be between 11:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Madelyn's husband, a doctor at Roosevelt Hospital, had been delayed at work and was notified of the tragedy later that evening.
The investigation struggled to gain traction from the start. With little physical evidence and no obvious motive, detectives were frustrated. "We are really up against a wall,” Lieut. Joseph Carroll of the Queens homicide squad told reporters at the time. The case eventually went cold, leaving Madelyn’s family shattered and without answers. Her son, Joe, grew up in the shadow of the murder, a crime that led to an alternate life for him, shaped by the loss of the mother he never got to know. A cousin later recalled that Madelyn's parents were never the same after the murder, their grief compounded by the fact that the case was never solved.
More than 300 mourners attended her funeral Mass at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Roman Catholic Church in Ridgewood, Queens. The shocking violence of the crime left a lasting scar on the community and on those who knew her, including former students who remembered her as a teacher they had really liked. Over the decades, tips have been few. One former student’s mother recalled Madelyn mentioning that a postman had once frightened her by walking into her home uninvited, a memory that was passed to the NYPD decades later.
As of February 2026, the murder of Madelyn DeFilippi remains an open cold case with the NYPD. Her family continues to hope that someone, somewhere, holds the key to solving the crime that took a young mother’s life. The Queens District Attorney's office lists her case among its unsolved homicides, appealing to the public for help.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS or visit the NYPD Crime Stoppers website.
