Cops have finally identified the dead woman with the scorpion tattoo. Now they just need to find her killer.
More than three decades after her death, authorities on Tuesday named an ill-fated woman found savagely beaten with a hammer, strangled and set ablaze in Staten Island as Christine Belusko, 30, of Clifton, New Jersey.
Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon said his office, along with the FBI and NYPD, had used forensic genealogy techniques to identify Belusko — as well as her long-lost daughter, Christa Nicole.
But authorities haven’t been able to find her daughter, who would have been about 2 years old when her mom was murdered in 1991.
“We have already notified her family of her death, and we continue to make all efforts to also locate Christa Nicole so we can let her know about who her mother was and what has been done to bring justice to this case,” McMahon said at a press conference.
“We can never bring her back, but we want Christa Nicole to know — and her family — that she was never forgotten.”
The Staten Island slaying had haunted authorities for more than three decades. But cops didn’t have much to work off.
A passerby found Belusko’s body, handcuffed and burned, in the weeds off a South Beach road just after dawn on Sept. 20, 1991, according to a story published two months later in the Staten Island Advance.
Cops determined that she’d been struck 17 times in the back of the head with a bloody 13-inch hammer — the kind used in auto body shops — that they found under her black dress-clad body, the Advance said in a 2021 story reviewing the killing.
Police hoped the name “Loyd L,” which was inscribed in the hammer’s handle, might lead them to the killer.
On Belusko’s body, authorities also found two gold chains, a ring watch, 30 cents and a pack of Newport cigarettes, the Advance said. She also sported a distinctive scorpion tattoo on her right buttock.
But even though the case captivated the public, NYPD detectives at the time could not find the killer.
NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig asked that anyone with information that could lead to either Belusko’s daughter or her killer should call 1-800-577-TIPS.
