The Murder of Joan Wertkin (Connecticut)

On a rainy night in late May 1989, a fire was spotted in a Westport, Connecticut parking lot. Within minutes, first responders realized the impossible: a body was burning in the open. Not long after and just a few miles away, a husband called police to report his wife missing.

Her name was Joan Wertkin. From the outside, she was living an enviable life in one of Connecticut’s most idyllic towns. But as investigators traced her final hours, the case turned into something far more complicated – a tight timeline, a fraying relationship, a car left where it shouldn’t have been, and questions that still echo for her family.

Discovery

It was 11:07 p.m. on Wednesday, May 24, 1989 when a man stepped out the back door of Stone’s Throw restaurant on Main Street in Westport, Connecticut. Directly across the street from the restaurant’s rear entrance sat a small Main Street shopping plaza, home to the Merritt Country Store (often referred to by locals as the Merritt Superette) along with a laundromat and several other local businesses. Behind those storefronts stretched a rear parking lot bordered in part by a wooded area.

As the man walked toward his car, he noticed something unusual at the far end of the shopping plaza’s parking lot.

At first, it registered simply as fire, but as he moved toward an open area near some shrubs and two pine trees at the rear of the lot, the shape in the flames began to take form. It did not look like discarded trash. It did not look accidental. It looked like a human body on fire.

The man turned and ran back inside the restaurant to report what he had seen. Two other men followed him back out to the spot. The three stood there together, long enough to confirm what none of them wanted to believe: it was a body. They went back inside and called 9-1-1.

According to Westport Police Department records for case number 89-8972, at 11:09 p.m. police and fire units were dispatched to the rear parking lot of the Merritt Superette.  At 11:11 p.m. Officer David Kassay arrived and saw what was unmistakably a fire on the west side of the buildings, and within it, the body of a female. Branches and pieces of wood beneath and beside her were also burning.

The body had not been concealed in any way. When first responders reached her, she was laying on her back and her left leg and right foot were actively burning. Flames were also visible beneath her shoulders and along her right side. She lay exposed in the open, despite the presence of other nearby locations that could have provided significantly more cover for a scene like this.

The fire department arrived moments later.  As firefighters extinguished the last of the flames, officers began securing the scene and documenting what they were seeing. They did not yet know the woman’s identity. They did not know how she had arrived there. But within minutes, another call was coming in, one that would connect the parking lot to a quiet home just a few miles away.

Reported Missing

At 11:18 p.m. and 2.4 miles away from the devastating scene in that parking lot, another set of officers pulled up to a home at 60 Coleytown Road in Westport. 

Craig Wertkin told officers that his wife, 38-year-old Joan Wertkin, had left the house around 9:15 p.m. to go grocery shopping and had not returned. According to Craig, it was normal for Joan to shop at night. She preferred to wait until their children were in bed before leaving the house, but he noted that she was usually gone for only about an hour. Now, more than two hours had passed.

He said she was driving a white BMW and that she had likely gone to either Grand Union or Food Emporium in town, or possibly to Stew Leonard’s in Norwalk. Craig told officers that Joan did not take her purse or wallet with her, but before leaving she removed cash from her wallet to pay for groceries.

He said she was wearing a black warm-up suit and possibly sneakers. He provided police with a photograph of Joan and was instructed to contact headquarters immediately if she returned home.

The officer who spoke with Craig made additional observations in the incident report. He noted that Craig appeared to be wearing a fresh set of clothes. The officer observed a bead of sweat forming on Craig’s forehead and described him as seeming somewhat nervous.

Meanwhile, at the scene of the fire, a Westport police sergeant was notified that headquarters had received a report of an overdue female. The narrative supplement states that the overdue female was expected to be driving a black Mercedes.

Investigators checked all the cars in the parking lot. It wasn’t a black Mercedes that caught their attention, but a white BMW in front of the laundromat. The car was parked in the very last spot on the west side of the lot and the wheels were turned north west with the car facing north. The front driver-side and passenger-side windows were partially rolled down…a little unusual since it was raining outside. 

The plates came back registered to Craig Wertkin.

Questions for Craig

At 6:30 a.m. on May 25, 1989, less than eight hours after flames were discovered in a Westport parking lot, two detectives arrived at the Wertkin residence to speak with Craig.

When they knocked, Craig wasn’t home. His mother answered the door and told officers that Craig had just stepped out to drive his father to the train station for work. She explained that Craig had called them the night before to say Joan was missing, and they had come in from New York to be with him and the children.

When Craig returned home that morning and was greeted by detectives, his first question was direct: “Did you find the car or her?” Throughout the night, Craig had called the police station repeatedly, asking whether officers had found Joan or the car. He consistently asked about the car.

Craig reiterated to the detectives that Joan had left around 9:15 p.m. the night before to go grocery shopping. He believed she had taken approximately $200 in cash with her.

Detectives asked whether he and Joan had argued before she left. Craig responded that not really, though he acknowledged they had been experiencing what he described as typical marital tensions. That night, however, he said they had a nice conversation before she went out.

He explained that after Joan left, he spent a quiet evening at home, spoke with a few friends on the phone, and then dozed off until approximately 11:10 p.m. When he woke up and realized Joan was not in bed, he checked downstairs. She wasn’t there either. The garage bay where her car should have been was empty, and that was when he called police to report her missing.

Craig volunteered that there had been a time when he believed Joan might be seeing someone else. There were occasions, he said, when she could not account for blocks of time, and their intimacy had recently declined. He even told detectives that he had reviewed their phone bills looking for unfamiliar numbers that might indicate an affair, but he did not find anything suspicious.

Even still, that morning Craig returned to the possibility that Joan was involved with another man and suggested that perhaps she had gone to see someone the night before instead of going grocery shopping.

Craig said he had considered going out to look for Joan or her car himself but decided to allow police to handle it. Because he believed she might be with another man, he said he was unsure what he would do if he located the car other than wait for her to return.

It was then that detectives informed Craig a body had been located and that Joan’s car had been found not far from it. The victim, however, had not yet been positively identified. Craig responded that he had already provided a photograph of Joan and asked why it could not be used for identification. Officers only told him that identification from a photograph was not possible.

Detectives asked whether there had been any physical violence in the home the night before. Craig said there was never any physical violence in their home.

The detectives asked Craig if they could take a look around the house. Craig stated that he believed a lawyer should review any written consent-to-search forms and declined to sign one at that time but still granted verbal permission for officers to check the place out.

The portion of the police narrative supplement describing what detectives observed inside the Wertkin home that morning is largely redacted. The report reads, “While looking around the house, nothing appeared to be out of place. However, I did notice that…” – and at that point, the redactions begin.

When the report resumes, the detective describes noticing a purse hanging from the inside front doorknob. The door was located at the foot of the stairs leading to the bedrooms; a door Joan would have passed on her way out of the house to the basement and garage. The detective specifically noted that she would have walked by the purse when she left to go shopping.

Officers eventually left the Wertkin home. Later that day at 2:15 p.m. Westport Police Sergeant Alfred Fiore called to inform Craig that the Medical Examiner had used dental charts to positively identify the body as his wife, Joan Wertkin.

Craig said he needed some time to himself. He agreed to go to the police station later that day when he was ready.

Joan’s brother and sister-in-law, Mark and Nancy Holofcener, were at home in Maryland when the phone rang with a call from Mark’s father. All they were told was that Joan was dead. What they learned about Joan and her world later left them shocked.

Joan Wertkin’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.