After a fisherman found Carol Ryan naked and dying in a driveway on Sept. 1, 1996, he called 911 and first responders rushed her to Upstate University Hospital.
Dr. Mary Jumbelic, a board-certified forensic pathologist, examined Carol before and after she died in the emergency ward.
She went on to serve as Onondaga County’s chief medical examiner from 1998 until 2009.
Doctors and detectives had to work together to figure out what kind of weapon had been used to hurt Carol.
“There was so much tissue damage that it defied a reasonable explanation,” Dr. Jumbelic told syracuse.com. “Was she shot and then she was hacked? Was it an ax? A sword? What exactly happened here?”
The truth was worse than anyone imagined. Someone detonated an explosive device inside her and left her for dead in Jamesville, N.Y.
In the third episode of “Firecracker,” a syracuse.com podcast about Carol Ryan’s cold case, we share disturbing new information from Carol’s autopsy report.
Onondaga County Sheriff's Department detective Alexander Hebert holds the autopsy report in Carol Ryan's cold case. There is a large filing cabinet in the sheriff's office that houses hundreds of documents related to the case. N. Scott Trimble | strimble@syracuse.com
Carol’s injuries were so grisly that the ER workers who tried to save her were given counseling.
Kevin Rudd was a former surgical technologist at Upstate. He had that night off, but he remembered what his colleagues told him about working to save Carol.
“They were all telling me how horrific it was,” Rudd told syracuse.com. “It was elbow-to-elbow in that operating room. They had so many different teams working together, on trying to piece her back together.”
We also spoke to former Onondaga County Sheriff Eugene Conway, who was the head of the Criminal Investigations Division in 1996. He initially oversaw the investigation of Carol’s homicide.
“This may sound selfish, but a crime scene that’s pristine is certainly going to be more helpful to law enforcement than a crime scene in which the victim’s been moved,” Conway said on the podcast. “The doctors did certainly everything they could. But in those efforts, you always risk losing evidence on the person.”
Getting Carol into the ambulance could’ve lost evidence. Cleaning Carol’s wounds meant possibly losing evidence. Flushing her system for surgery meant possibly losing evidence.
And nearly 30 years later, Carol Ryan’s killer still eludes police.
You can listen to Episode Three: Level of Violence and subscribe to “Firecracker” exclusively on Wondery+.
If you have any information about Carol Ryan’s case, contact the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office at 315-435-3051. To submit an anonymous tip, text TIPONON and your tip to 847411.
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Katrina Tulloch shoots videos and writes stories for Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Contact her anytime: Email • Instagram • X • Facebook • 518-810-5022
More coverage on Carol Ryan’s cold case
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• After 20 years, CNY woman’s brutal murder remains unsolved