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NYPD and DA's Office Assemble Team to Re-Examine Unsolved 1982 Murder

By  Murray Weiss and James Fanelli | October 9, 2015 7:20am 

 Gail Mark's death is the subject of a renewed investigation by the NYPD.
Gail Mark's death is the subject of a renewed investigation by the NYPD.
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Family of Gail Mark

NEW YORK CITY — The NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office are assembling a team of homicide investigators and prosecutors to take a fresh look at the grisly unsolved murder of a 28-year-old housewife, whose husband has again surfaced as a prime suspect.

This will be the third time investigators look into the slaying of Gail Mark, who was stabbed and strangled in the bedroom of her and her millionaire husband's duplex apartment in Murray Hill in 1982.

The latest probe was prompted by a DNAinfo New York investigative report on Wednesday detailing new developments, including a claim by Mark's sister in law that her brother was responsible for the death. In a court affidavit last month, the sister, Ann Boyarsky, said she believes her brother, Franklin Mark, hired a hit man to kill his wife.

 Dawn Mark-Blanchar and her father, Franklin Mark, pose together in an undated photo. Franklin's sister said in a recent affidavit that he hired a hitman to kill his wife and Dawn's mother in 1982. He has denied any role since his wife's death.
Dawn Mark-Blanchar and her father, Franklin Mark, pose together in an undated photo. Franklin's sister said in a recent affidavit that he hired a hitman to kill his wife and Dawn's mother in 1982. He has denied any role since his wife's death.
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Facebook/Dawn Mark-Blanchar

NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters on Thursday that advances in DNA testing may help crack the case.

"The way we could test evidence now has changed dramatically in 33 years," Boyce said after a swearing-in ceremony of new police officers in Queens.

"So we'll take a look at that investigation, see if we have evidence that we can get DNA [to make an arrest]."

Boyce said it was premature to get into specifics about the investigation.

"You don't want to get people's hopes up on a case," he said.

The NYPD's Manhattan South Homicide Squad will head up the case, according to police sources. One of the detectives who will be involved also looked into the case in 2000, the last time the NYPD re-examined Gail Mark's murder. A prosecutor from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office has also been assigned, sources said.

Franklin Mark told the original detectives on the case that in the late morning of Dec. 30, 1982, he found his wife's body lying on the floor next to their king-sized bed. Their 3-year-old daughter, Dawn, was at home during the killing. The murderer, wearing the child's "E.T." mask, locked the girl in the bathroom.

Franklin told investigators that he freed Dawn from the bathroom.

The detectives who initially worked the case immediately eyed Franklin.

But investigators never made an arrest or charged anyone. Detectives and prosecutors re-examined the murder for two years starting in 2000 after a neighbor of Franklin Mark inquired about it.

They had hoped to conduct a DNA test on the "E.T." mask but learned the NYPD's property clerk office had destroyed it six months after the murder. They also learned that a swatch of the blood-stained carpet from the crime scene had gone missing from the city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.