The Barrel in the Basement: The Murder of Reyna Marroquín

In the summer of 1999, a homeowner in Jericho, Long Island, made a discovery that would unravel a mystery buried for three decades. While exploring the basement of his recently purchased house, he stumbled upon a large, sealed plastic barrel tucked behind dusty boxes and forgotten clutter. When he pried the lid open, the stench of decay filled the air — and inside lay the body of a woman, eerily preserved in chemicals, her final moments frozen in silence.

Investigators soon learned that the victim was Reyna Marroquín, a young immigrant from El Salvador who had come to the United States in the 1960s seeking a better life. She was kind, ambitious, and eight months pregnant when she disappeared without a trace. For years, her friends in New Jersey wondered what had happened to her — until that barrel revealed the terrible truth.

Reyna had worked at a plastics manufacturing company, where she fell in love with her married boss, Howard Elkins. When she told him she was pregnant, his response was not love or responsibility, but fear. Confronted with the prospect of exposure and scandal, Elkins made a monstrous choice. He killed Reyna, sealed her body — and the unborn child they shared — inside a chemical-filled drum, and hid it beneath the floor of his home.

For thirty years, Reyna’s story remained entombed in darkness. Then, by chance, her secret came to light. Detectives traced the barrel’s origins to the factory where Elkins had once worked. When police reached him in Florida, DNA evidence was beginning to close in. Before he could be arrested, Elkins took his own life. Subsequent testing confirmed what investigators already suspected — the unborn child was his.

Reyna Marroquín’s story is a haunting reminder of how truth refuses to stay buried. Decades after her death, science and persistence gave her a voice again. Her life — and her silence — became a symbol of the countless women whose stories are hidden by power, fear, and shame.

Though justice came too late, Reyna’s name endures. Her story, once sealed in darkness, now stands as a testament to the strength of truth — and to the enduring humanity that insists the lost must never be forgotten.