A teenage girl found dead in a Long Island dumpster has been identified 42 years after her body was found, police announced Wednesday.
Susan Mann, of Hollis, Queens, was 15 years old when she disappeared from home in May 1980. She has now been identified as a “Jane Doe” found in a Freeport dumpster in November 1982.
No arrests or suspects were announced Wednesday by Nassau County police or were previously connected to Mann’s disappearance or the teenage Jane Doe. Cops offered a $5,000 reward for tips that lead to an arrest in the case.
Mann left home on May 17, 1980, in search of a pocketbook that belonged to her older sister, Debra, according to a Daily News article from the time. Mann was carrying the pocketbook when it was stolen and headed out on a bicycle, her family said.
“We are concerned about Suzy because she is not the type of person to run away,” the reverend at her church, Irvine Bryer, told the Daily News four decades ago.
Mann was last seen in Hollis getting into a silver Cadillac with a man in his early 20s, police said at the time.
More than two years later, a teenage employee at Cantor Glass Co. in Freeport found Mann’s body in a dumpster behind the building on Nov. 4, 1982. The location is about 10 miles east of Mann’s home in Hollis.
At the time, Nassau County investigators estimated the victim had been dead for two to four months, and there was no obvious sign she had been shot or assaulted prior to her death.
“We don’t know who she is, how she died or where she died,” then-Nassau County homicide detective Shaun Spillane told the Daily News in 1982.
Officers found hemlock needles on her clothing, indicating she was likely in a wooded area before her death. She was wearing a gold heart-shaped locket with a “K” in the center, a gold chain with an opal and a gold-colored sweater, cops said.
Originally Published: October 1, 2025 at 4:15 PM EDT
