The NYPD is asking for the public’s help in solving the cold case homicide of a Kew Gardens man whose body was found in a car near Flushing Meadows Corona Park more than 26 years ago.
Police from the 107th Precinct in Fresh Meadows responded to a 911 call of an abandoned vehicle parked across from 70-89 Park Drive East near Willow Lake in Kew Gardens Hills at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, April 20, 1999.
Upon arrival, officers found a badly decomposed body of a 42-year-old man had been stuffed into the trunk of a Buick sedan. EMS responded to the location and pronounced him dead at the scene.
In June 1999, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner deemed the incident a homicide and identified the victim as Jeffrey Blackman, who lived on Talbot Street in Kew Gardens. Blackman had been strangled to death.
The abandoned Buick was registered to Blackman. Initially, there were three tips to the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline soon after Blackman was murdered, but they did not develop into leads, and the case went cold. After more than a quarter century, several tips were called into the Crime Stoppers Hotline in January 2025.
The NYPD re-released a photo of Blackman on Wednesday, hoping it would help generate more leads in the case, a police spokeswoman said.
Anyone with information regarding this cold case homicide investigation is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org or on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are confidential.
