By Jeff Lipton
Detectives released the identity of the victim, Dina Mulato-Sadeghi of East 19th Street in Brooklyn, on Monday morning.
A boater who was clamming found the body in a wooded, marshy area on the shoreline of the basin, opposite Inwood Park on Bayview Avenue, at about 10:15 p.m. on Aug. 25, detectives said.
The body was taken to the morgue at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow for further examination and to determine the exact cause of death, according to Det. Sergeant Richard Laursen of the Nassau County Homicide Squad.
Investigators said they believe the woman was the victim of foul play and was murdered at the scene, and the body may have been decomposing on the shoreline for several weeks.
"We are treating it as a felonious homicide based on the injuries to the body," said Laursen, who would not elaborate on what kind of wounds were found on the victim.
Police said they are still searching for a suspect or suspects and a motive, and would not say if she was a robbery victim.
Laursen said they found the victim's pocketbook at the scene, about 50 feet away from the body. Detectives found credit cards inside the pocketbook, and traced them to an address in California, where Mulato-Sadeghi was a resident before she moved to New York at the end of December. Laursen said detectives confirmed the victim's identity by matching the fingerprints found on the credit cards with the fingerprints on file in California.
The badly decomposed body may have been on the shoreline of the basin for about two months, Laursen said. It was well hidden by the wooded area, detectives said.
"The body was there for awhile," said Laursen. "She was above the water line and so we believe she died where she was.
"The boater who was clamming found the body [in the wooded area] when nature called, and he did not want to do it in the water," Laursen said.
Police have released a photo of the victim in the hope that someone may recognize her and provide more details to police about what may have happened to her.
Detectives urge anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 244-TIPS. All calls will be kept strictly confidential, police said.
"If anyone knows anything about this at all, they should give us a call," said Laursen.
The murder is the first to have occurred in the Five Towns since November 2002 when 28-year-old Alfonse N. D'Amore was shot and killed by his brother, Eric D'Amore, 26, during a dispute at their Jefferson Street home in Inwood. Eric was found guilty and sentenced on May 17, 2004 to 24 years in prison.
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