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Five days after a body was retrieved from the East River in New York City, detectives identified the man, but this led to a chilling mystery.
The detectives found out that the homicide victim, Stephen Leung, had both his wife and daughter vanish days prior, as revealed in Oxygen’s new series The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher.
“We’re very concerned because the victim’s wife and daughter are missing,” remarked NYPD Sgt. Bill Cannon in a preview for an upcoming episode airing on October 4. “And potentially could be the victims of something much worse.”
What happened to homicide victim Stephen Leung?
The disturbing case began when Leung’s body was found floating in the river in November of 2000.
The episode description reads, “When an unidentified body appears in the cold East River, Barbara Butcher helps detectives in a race to uncover the victim’s identity using the scarce fragile clues remaining. The urgency intensifies with reports of additional possible victims.”
Barbara Butcher, a medicolegal death investigator with the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, utilized clues from both the crime scene and the body to piece together the events leading to the victim’s death.
“Finding a murder victim in the river leaves many possibilities,” she stated in the preview. “It could be a hate crime, organized crime, a personal vendetta, or even the work of a serial killer. It’s an ideal place to conceal a body.”
The first task for Butcher and NYPD detectives was finding out the man’s identity. They got the break they needed when a woman named Teresa Leung came into the 23rd precinct to report her mother, father and sister were missing.
As NYPD Homicide Detective John Flannery remarked, “We have an idea that the body that we’ve recovered, that’s in the morgue, is her father.”
Cannon explained that investigators showed Teresa polaroid photos of what the victim was wearing and she was able to identify the man as her father, Stephen, by recognizing the pajamas he was wearing.
The identity was confirmed after she took a visit to the morgue, but authorities still had no idea where her mom and sister could be.
“In my head I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, the other two, what happened to them?’” Flannery said. “Where are they?”
To find out what happens to the Leung family and how the crime will ultimately be pieced together, watch The Death Investigator with Barbara Butcher at 9/8c on Saturday, Oct. 4 on Oxygen.
