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(Editor’s note; The Waterbury Observer has launched a full-scale investigation into eight unsolved murders of Waterbury women, and is questioning the account of another death, in 1994, when a woman jumped from a moving van on Route 8.
In addition, the Observer, is conducting interviews with family members of the deceased, and is asking anyone who knew the women, or has any information about the murders to contact the newspaper.
The Observer is seeking answers. The newspaper is also seeking to humanize the women – many who were sex workers – to reveal that they were more than a mug shot and a murder victim. These women were daughters, sisters, wives and mothers. They loved, and they were loved.
This story is about Mary Jo Markiewicz, a 34-year-old Waterbury resident who was found stabbed to death in 1992 on the train tracks just off Chase River Road in the Waterville section of Waterbury. When this column went to print the Observer has been unable to find a photograph of Mary Jo. We are still looking.)
Story By Robert Muldoon
The Beatles song Eleanor Rigby has swirled around inside my mind for decades. It is mournful and lyrical, and when I began investigating the life of Mary Jo Markiewicz, the song haunted me--and came vividly to life.
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Before she ended up dead on the train tracks, Bob Dorr used to see Mary Jo Markiewicz almost every morning. She made an impression.
“She was a regular. She’d come for coffee and a donut served on a plate with a doily.”
Bob Dorr is a former State Senator and is now very active in the Waterbury Veterans Memorial Committee.
From 1991-1993, Dorr and Sister Anne Scappini worked for Green Community Services at the First Congregational Church, on 222 West Main Street in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was on the lower level of the church with a living room and kitchen. In the early morning, many homeless or sex workers or elderly came in for the coffee, maybe a sweater or gloves, or just relief from the cold.
“She was a simple woman who worked the streets,” Dorr said. “She was harmless, a delightful individual.”
Sister Anne had a special vocation, working with struggling women. She often sat with Mary Jo in the living room and talked about her Catholic faith. Dorr did not know what was said.
“These were personal conversations about her faith.”
Sister Anne Scappini
Sister Anne, of the Congregation of Notre Dame order, was a retired teacher from Waterbury Catholic High for Girls. About 30 people came each morning. Sister Anne made the coffee and served every donut on a plate with a doily. It may seem like a simple matter, and maybe over complicated, but that’s the way the donuts were served.
“Sister Anne treated everyone with the utmost respect,” Dorr said.
Other services were provided too, like intake for food stamps and energy assistance.
On November 27, 1992, a matchbook-sized story appeared on page B11, bottom left-hand corner of the Hartford Courant, below the fold: “Woman found dead, victim of stabbing.”
Mary Jo Markiewicz was found along the train tracks on Chase River Road in Waterbury.
Beyond name, age, and address, the bare bones of journalism, few details were offered. Mary Jo Markiewicz, 34, 43 Prospect Street was found “partly clothed” by a vagrant walking by. The brief note ended: “Markiewicz had a criminal record for prostitution.”
Police did not link Mary Jo’s murder to the 1988-89 murders of Karen Everett, 24, and Mildred Alvarado, 30, both strangled and found in Harwinton, off Campville Road. Even in violent death, Mary Jo was somehow apart.
Word on Waterbury streets spread that a “white man in a black pick-up” might have done it. But there seemed to be as much known about the killer as about Mary Jo.
But one detail was rock-solid certain.
“Mary Jo was a Catholic murdered on Chase River Road.”
For months, no one claimed Mary Jo’s body from the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office. Burial permission needed to come from the family. Mary Jo’s husband was incarcerated, Dorr said. The Department of Corrections was contacted; permission was granted.
Welfare covered only about $500. Not enough for a proper Catholic burial. But Sister Anne had some connections: Father John Bevins, rector of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Father (now Monsignor) Bevins had connections, too: a soloist and an organ player.
Mayor Edward Bergin, co-owner of the Bergin Funeral Home, was also contacted. Bergin provided six pallbearers and transportation for Mary Jo's body from the morgue to the church.
Mike Bergin was mayor when Markiewicz's body was found, and he used his contacts in his family funeral home to assist in providing Mary Jo with a proper burial.
A special High Mass for the repose of the soul of Mary Jo Markiewicz was held at the Church of the Immaculate Conception. The atmosphere in the cavernous church (now basilica) was “stunning”, candles flickering from front to back. Organ music, in full grandeur, filled the church to the highest reaches. The soloist’s songs echoed hauntingly in the near-empty space. Five solemn mourners prayed for Mary Jo: Sister Anne, Dorr, Reed Smith of Green Community Services, a secretary and a social worker. Father Bevins delivered a message of hope and salvation.
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Ah, look at all the lonely people!
Ah, look at all the lonely people!
The Basilica of The Immaculate Conception in downtown Waterbury.
The pallbearers and hearse delivered Mary Jo to her eternal rest at the Mt Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Watertown, far from the railroad tracks of Chase River Road where her life was snuffed out like a candle. Father Bevins consecrated the earth. Mary Jo’s body was committed to sacred ground.
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Sister Ann Scappini died on June 3, 2013 at age 90. Her obituary noted “she was very concerned for the poor.”
Mary Joe Markiewicz is, in stunning ways, Waterbury’s Eleanor Rigby—only she was brutally murdered and discarded. So little is known of her lonely life, same as of Eleanor Rigby, the heroine in the tragic Beatle’s song. After the death, the Courant never printed another word. The paper trail of her life, cut brutally-short, is thin as gruel. Mary Jo once was married. Maybe that did not work out as she dreamed?
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where her wedding has been
Lives In a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
Someone must have answers about Mary Jo. What else is known? If you have any photographs or memories or information about the life and murder of Mary Jo Markiewicz, please share them with the Waterbury Observer at 203-754-4328 or e-mail John Murray at waterburyobserver@gmail.com.
These are the cases we are investigating.
1) KAREN EVERETT ("Brandy") - 10/6/88 (Valley Rd Harwinton) - STRANGLED (age 24)
2) MILDRED ALVARADO - 1/19/89 (Valley Rd/Harwinton) - STRANGLED (age 30)
3) MARY JO MARKIEWICZ - 10/92 (Chase River Rd Wby) - STABBED (police originally not linking her to others) age 34
4) EVELYN L. BETTANCOURT - 1/93 - (Valley Rd/Harwinton) - SHOT (solved - copycat killing), Michael Curry, Thomaston, bragged in cell in 1995 (received 45 years in prison)
5) OLGA MARIE CORNIELES-UBIERA - 11/94 (Rte 262- 8.2 miles South on Waterbury Rd in Thomaston) - no history prostitution
6) FREDERICA SPINOLA - 12/9/94 (Rte 8 Harwinton) - RUN OVER (pushed/fell from van) (age 40). Albert S. Boyson, age 77, van driver for Kelley Transit was driver.
7) SHAWN MAE HASKELL - 8/99 partially clothed by railroad tracks in Waterbury
8) ELIZABETH GRZYWACZ - 10/7/2002 - 69 Linden St - naked, bludgeoned (age 34)
9) JESSICA MARIE MUSKUS - age 22, disappeared 7/2004, found 11/14/2006 (Campville Exit Rte8/ 300 yds from Valley Rd)
Convicted serial killer WILLIAM DEVIN HOWELL murdered at least seven women, three from Waterbury. Were there others?
10) Melanie Ruth Camalini (29) - missing 1/1/2003
11) Marilyn Gonzalez (26) - mother of 2 (2003)
12) Mary Jane Menard (40) - Substance Abuse Counselor (?) from Waterbury - 10/2003
13) Female Skeletal Remains found 12/20/2021 in Harwinton. Still unidentified.
For more information about the Observer investigation, check out
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