The search for a suspect has concluded in the 2003 cold case of Bay Shore widow Edna T. Schubert.
On Dec. 12, 2003, Schubert was found beaten to death after neighbors entered her house that was left with the front door open. On Feb. 6, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney announced that an arrest had been made, 22 years later.
At the time of discovery there were no suspects, however, Raul Ayala has now been charged with the murder of Schubert.
Ayala was arrested on Jan. 16 in Talmo, Georgia.
He is being charged with one count of murder in the first-degree and two counts of murder in the second-degree. Ayala was 29 at the time of the crime and is currently 51. He is being held on remand, meaning in custody until his trial begins.
Earlier this morning, Ayala was arraigned, and faces lifetime incarceration without the ability of parole due to the murder in the first-degree charge. Ayala is deaf, and uses sign language to communicate.
Schubert was a retired supervisor for the NYS Dept. of Motor Vehicles in Bay Shore and a member of the Islip Town Republicans Club. Having no children of her own, Schubert considered the neighborhood children as her own. She looked after them, Bay Shore residents called her grandma.
The arrest comes after retired Detective Albergo decided to continue investigating and eventually provided additional information to Suffolk County homicide investigators. The detective found a suspect who was living in Georgia through reexamination of forensic evidence from decades ago.
This is possible because of the advancements of DNA technology and genetic genealogy. Old evidence can be reexamined with new leads or information.
“Modern forensic technology and determined detective work led to solving one of Suffolk County’s most brutal cold cases,” said an advisory from the DA’s office.
Albergo after retiring in May 2023, reached out, which resulted in a reexamination with modern technology. A photograph of a blurry latent print was reshot with a high definition camera, allowing a clearer image of the print. The original image didn’t provide a dna match, it was until the high definition image was placed into a database that a match came up.
The match that came up was from a previous arrest in 1995 in Nassau County.
Ayala lived around the corner of Schubert, less than 200 yards away. Blood from Schubert and Ayala was found at the scene of the crime. In August 2024, members of the SCPD traveled to Talmo, Georgia to survey Ayala and obtained evidence thrown out by him to gather a DNA sample. It was a match to the DNA left at the scene in 2003.
“I once again wanna thank Detective Albergo for never giving up on Mrs. Schubert, I wanna thank the other members who worked on the case as well,” District Attorney Tierney said. “I wanna thank the homicide and identification section detectives for taking a new look at this cold case, and as always, I wanna thank the Suffolk County Crime Lab for their exemplary work.”
