An Arlington woman was shot to death by an intruder in her second-story apartment. Her killer escaped from the large complex, and has still to be found over two decades later.
On Nov. 9, 1988, police responded to a call for help from a neighbor of Constance Holtzman, who lived alone in an apartment building on South Four Mile Run Drive.
When police arrived at Holtzman’s second-story apartment around 9:00 p.m., they found the door ajar and the 38-year-old lying dead in her bedroom.
Holtzman’s killer had escaped, and despite questioning the building’s residents extensively, police were not able to gather even a description of the killer.
Holtzman, a divorcee, worked at a local photo service business in Arlington. Police say she had few good friends. Most of her neighbors knew her name, but she seemed to have few close relationships in the community.
She was the kind of person who was unlikely to have enemies, and police have found nothing in her background to suggest she might end up the victim of a shooting, according to Arlington police Detective Kevin Norwood, who handles the department’s cold case investigations.
All of which makes determining a motive — a basic first step in any homicide investigation — a difficult task.
Norwood said that robbery had not been ruled out, but he also said Holtzman’s apartment was not in the kind of neighborhood where a home-invasion robbery was likely.
In cases like these, police hope that advances in technology will allow them to find new leads from old evidence. Arlington police thoroughly reviewed the entire investigation in 2001, Norwood said, and they resubmitted all of the physical evidence for upgraded tests in the crime lab. But the case remains as cold as ever.
Norwood suspects the answer, if it comes, will come from within the community where the victim lived. “Something must have happened locally, which means someone in the area might still know something,” he said.
“We might just have to wait for that loyalty to shift and make someone think they should come forward with information,” Norwood said.
Anyone with information on this case should call the Crime Solvers hot line at 1-866-411-TIPS (8477).
