One of the reasons Nassau County detectives struggled to identify the body of the pregnant woman who was murdered in the late 1960s and discovered three decades later mummified and stuffed inside a steel drum was that the victim vanished without anyone seeming to take notice. A painstaking search through missing persons files revealed no complaints which matched the victim's profile.

When the media broke the news that a home in Jericho had been harboring the drum and its gruesome contents for 30 years, police hoped that somebody would remember a young, Hispanic, pregnant woman with black hair, adorned with distinct jewelry and a religious scapular cloth, having mysteriously disappeared many years ago. Yet, no one's memory was jarred. The only phone tips the police received were dead ends.

No one ever called asking if the victim was Reyna Angelica Marroquin, the immigrant from El Salvador whom Homicide detectives finally identified on Wednesday, September 29, five weeks since her body was discovered by one of the former owners of the Jericho home, shortly after he sold the house.

The police were only able to decipher the woman's identity after performing extensive forensic tests upon several documents belonging to the victim, which were salvaged from the drum.

From these documents, police pieced together her alien registration number. "That's how we came up with her name," said Det. Sgt. Robert Edwards of Homicide. They also came up with her birthdate - Dec. 2, 1941 - making her 26 or 27 when she died from massive head trauma sometime between late 1968 and early 1969.

Also, from a faded page of an address book which was recovered, forensic scientists were able to reconstruct the phone number of a woman whom Marroquin knew.

This woman, the identity of whom police would not reveal, not only recalled and identified Marroquin, but told police that shortly before her disappearance, Marroquin divulged to her that she was afraid for her life.

After immigrating to Miami on August 31, 1966, and immediately moving to New York, Marroquin moved into the Jeanne d'Arc Residence for Women, a nun-led Catholic home on 24th Street in Manhattan. She was able to live at the establishment for a nominal amount of money.

Marroquin attended classes in her free time to learn English and job skills so that eventually she could become a productive American citizen. It was at these classes where Marroquin first met her confidante, who was a volunteer there.

Marroquin told her new friend that she was working at Melrose Plastics, a Manhattan business co-owned by Howard Elkins, the man police strongly suspect committed the murder. Elkins, a Boca Raton resident who was the first owner of the Jericho home, fatally shot himself on September 10, one day after being questioned by police.

Edwards said that as Marroquin's friendship grew with her confidante, they began speaking on almost a daily basis, often over the phone. Over a span of time, the two women carried on several conversations significant to the investigation, each one growing more ominous than the next.

"One time she told her that she was going out with her boss," said Edwards. "Then later on she calls her again and tells her that she's leaving the Jeanne d'Arc Residency because she's pregnant and she doesn't want to be embarrassed - she doesn't want the nuns to realize that she's pregnant - but that her boyfriend is putting her up in an apartment in [Hoboken] New Jersey and that he's taking care of her," Edwards continued.

In the next significant phone call, Marroquin reportedly said that she had made a "terrible mistake." Devastated that Elkins would not leave his wife Ruth and marry her instead, Marroquin had contacted her boss's spouse, telling her that she was pregnant with his baby.

According to Edwards, Marroquin told her confidante that Elkins became very angry at this, and that she was afraid for her life because he threatened to kill her.

Several days later, Marroquin placed one last phone call to her friend, saying that she was "very frightened." She asked if her friend could meet her in her New Jersey apartment.

Her friend, said Edwards, "knocks on the door, [but] there's no answer. The door is unlocked. She goes into the apartment. There's food on the stove that's warm, although the fire is turned off. And she's not around. There's no sign of a disturbance in the apartment. She waits about an hour, and [Marroquin] doesn't come home."

The confidante called police; however, authorities did not respond because Marroquin had been missing for only one hour. The confidante did not pursue the matter further.

Since the discovery of the confidant, further investigation by Newsday has revealed that Marroquin is survived by multiple family members in El Salvador, including her mother.

The investigation is continuing. DNA tests on Marroquin's unborn child will still take several weeks.