There’s a large filing cabinet in the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s five feet tall and completely full.
All five drawers are stuffed with witness statements, lab reports, crime scene photos and hundreds of other documents all related to one single case: Carol Ryan’s unsolved murder.
There are very few cold cases in the county sheriff’s office with this sheer amount of documentation and interviews. Yet, Carol’s case remains unsolved.
On Sept. 1, 1996, Carol was murdered in a horrific way. Someone detonated an explosive device inside of her and left her for dead on the side of the road in Jamesville.
Her killer was never found.
In the fourth episode of “Firecracker,” a syracuse.com true crime podcast about Carol Ryan’s cold case, we detail the way this investigation was characterized by starts and stops.
And we share details about three people who detectives identified as “early leads” in the weeks after Carol’s murder.
Carol Ryan was found in this driveway off Route 91 in Jamesville, N.Y. on September 1, 1996. An explosive device was detonated inside of her, and her killer was never found. Her cold case remains one of the most disturbing murders in Syracuse history. The Onondaga County Sheriff's Office provided these 1996 crime scene photos to syracuse.com.Onondaga County Sheriff's Office
Investigators first questioned Carol’s ex-boyfriend, Bobby Magee.
Neighbors heard them fighting at Grant Village in Eastwood a few days before Carol was murdered.
Bobby didn’t have a car or a license, so he had no easy way to transport Carol from Eastwood to Jamesville, where she was found after the attack.
Original lead detective Carl Kruger said they interviewed Bobby half a dozen times. They even showed him crime scene pictures in an effort to rattle him, a tactic that left Bobby “distraught,” Kruger said.
“We ended up getting enough of an alibi where the spotlight came off him,” Kruger said in the podcast. “That part of the investigation kind of fizzled out. He went by the wayside.”
Bobby died in 2012.
Carl Kruger, the original lead investigator for the case of Carol Ryan, stands where Carol was found near death in Jamesville on September 1, 1996. An explosive device was detonated inside of her, and a suspect has never been identified.
Carol had been dating a man named Walter Krukowski at the time of her death.
Her son Shawn Hamilton didn’t like Walter. He shares a disturbing story on the podcast about Walter using explosives to get rid of squirrels in his house.
But Kruger said Walter never rose high on the list of suspects.
“We looked at him for a little bit, but he really had no motivation or reason that he would’ve wanted her dead,” Kruger told syracuse.com. “They were pretty close. He was very devastated by losing her.”
Walter died in 2002.
Detectives also questioned Carol’s ex-husband, Patrick Ryan, who Shawn described as abusive. Carol and Patrick were married for 10 years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“Pat Ryan was a pretty brutal man,” said Carol’s son Shawn. “He would smack her [Carol]. She’d fight him right back, you know, but my mom was 5-foot-4 and you know, my stepfather was 6-foot-2... he was a bad man.”
Patrick was a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam and a retired truck driver for Saunders. He had remarried and started a new family years before Carol was killed.
Investigators said Patrick was “essentially cleared” by police. He died in 2006.
No physical evidence connects Carol’s boyfriend, ex-boyfriend or ex-husband to the crime scene.
Detective Alexander Hebert looks through the filing cabinet assigned to the cold case of Carol Ryan. August 17, 2022.
Today, the lead detective on Carol’s cold case believes she was killed by a stranger.
Detective Alexander Hebert was assigned to the case in 2021.
“When you start looking at investigation for homicide, you go from people who knew them, and out from there,” Hebert said. “Being that nobody close to her has been arrested at this point, my opinion would be the perpetrator didn’t know her.”
This opinion is shared by the Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick, who is deeply familiar with Carol’s case. Fitzpatrick was the DA in 1996 when she was killed, and he still is the DA today.
“If it was somebody that knew Carol and planned on killing her, I don’t think it would’ve been done at that location where detection could be so readily available,” Fitzpatrick told syracuse.com. “In my judgment, this is somebody that encountered Carol that night, and just hates women.”
District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick still hopes to nail down a suspect in the Carol Ryan murder. Carol Ryan was found near death along NY State Route 91 across from the Jamesville Reservoir September 1, 1996. An explosive device was detonated inside of her, and a suspect has never been identified. August 3, 2022.N. Scott Trimble
Nearly 30 years later, Carol Ryan’s killer still eludes police.
For the last year, our journalists at syracuse.com have investigated Carol Ryan’s case.
We interviewed Carol’s family and friends, witnesses, detectives, forensic and legal experts, and even persons of interest. “Firecracker” is the most in-depth journalistic investigation of her case.
You can listen to Firecracker, Episode Four: The Cabinet of Carol Ryan and subscribe to “Firecracker” exclusively on Wondery+. Syracuse.com is proud to partner with Wondery+ to debut this podcast for a national audience.
If you have any details about this case, contact the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office at 315-435-3051. To submit an anonymous tip to the Sheriff’s Office, text TIPONON and your tip to 847411.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting Syracuse.com with a subscription.
Katrina Tulloch shoots videos and writes stories for Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact her anytime: Email • Instagram • X • Facebook • 518-810-5022
Samantha House contributed to this report.
More coverage on Carol Ryan’s cold case
• Carol Ryan’s murder still unsolved after 27 years; hope hinges on new DNA technology
• Carol Ryan’s cold case: Horrific Syracuse murder remains unsolved 26 years later
• After 20 years, CNY woman’s brutal murder remains unsolved