Murder of Karina Vetrano

Karina Anne Vetrano (July 12, 1986 – August 2, 2016) was a 30-year-old American woman who was attacked, sexually assaulted, and murdered while running in Spring Creek Park in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, New York City.

She attended Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens and graduated from St. John's University with a master's degree in speech pathology.

[14] On August 7, less than a week after Vetrano's murder, another New York City resident, 27-year-old Vanessa Marcotte, was found slain on a rural stretch of road in Princeton, Massachusetts.

[16][17] On August 31, police released a sketch of a "person of interest", a man who had been seen in near Spring Creek around the time Vetrano was killed.

[18][19] On September 12, the TV show Crime Watch Daily released a home surveillance video of Vetrano running near Spring Creek Park, minutes before she was killed.

[21] A GoFundMe page created by Vetrano's family, originally meant as a $250,000 reward fund for anyone with information about the killer, reached over $290,000, with the extra money to be donated to charity.

[26] Lewis was unemployed and lived with his mother, three sisters and their children in a low-income housing project in East New York, fewer than 3 miles (4.8 km) away from the park where Vetrano was found dead.

Lewis also gave statements to police, including describing a peculiar puddle of muddy water that detectives had seen near Vetrano's body.

[27][28] Although he had no criminal record, he reportedly had a "hatred for women" and once told a teacher's aide he wanted to "stab all the girls" at his school several years earlier.

[29] Lewis also had several run-ins with police in the years before the murder, including three summons in 2013: two for violating rules in Spring Creek Park and one for urinating in public.

An NYPD lieutenant who lived in Howard Beach also remembered him lurking around in the area looking into cars and traced him from when Lewis' name and address had been taken by police during a stop-and-frisk report.

Lewis entered a plea of not guilty to murder and sexual abuse charges, and faced a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

[35] On November 14, forensic biologist Linda Razzano testified that Lewis' DNA had a one in 6 trillion chance of someone else sharing a genetic profile.

[36] The next day, Assistant District Attorney Brad Leventhal asked Judge Michael Aloise to dismiss nine of the counts against Lewis.

[41] A few days before the scheduled sentencing, however, Lewis' attorneys requested and received a delay, so they could introduce allegations of misconduct among several members of the jury which convicted him.