Family Uses Social Media To Draw Attention To A Cold Case

Patchogue, NY—For thirty years the family of murdered Suffolk County detective Dennis Wustenhoff waited for the case to be solved and the perpetrator of the 1990 bombing outside their family home in Patchogue to be brought to justice. Only three weeks, however, after starting a social media campaign to bring new awareness to the case, Melissa Wustenhoff Scelsi says some of the biggest developments in years in the cold case have brought renewed hope and optimism to the grieving family: last week the Suffolk County police announced the FBI will review the case and a $10,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to an arrest.

Scelsi says the idea to start a Facebook group came to her last month, when the winter weather reminded her of the February day when her father died in a bomb explosion when he started his unmarked police car outside the family home. She was ten years old.

“I was sitting at home thinking, why have I never thought of this before? Social media can be so powerful. And I don't want him to be forgotten." Scelsi was amazed at how quickly the group grew and the media attention that has now been newly given to the case.

"A lot of people didn’t realize the case wasn’t solved, since you would think that a police officer's murder" would have been quickly closed. Scesli, along with her mother Fran, her brother Kevin and her sister Jennifer have been vocal about not feeling that the case was pursued vigilantly enough, possibly because of the circumstances of the case—Wustenhoff was suspetcted of having an affair with an another officer's wife, and that officer was an early suspect.

The family is trying to show that Dennis Wustenhoff was more than one mistake he made.

"All you see is in the news is that one image. Everyone thinks of him just as the guy who had an affair but he did so many things for so many people," Scelsi remembers.

She feels newly confident in the investigation, she says, after speaking with theSuffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart who told her she had no problems exposing mistakes the department may have made in the past. "My brother is a police officer, and I support cops," Scelsi says, but theorizes that the public is hungrier for accountability than in years past and that helped her family's story go so viral across social media.

Scelsi is getting messages all day long, not only about her own unsolved tragedy but about so many others from across the country.

"In the last three weeks so many things have come out of this and I’ve met so many people online who’ve sent me their stories and their own unsolved cases."

Scelsi feels that she has a calling now to help others navigate through the difficulties of advocating for cold cases and wants to be involved in possibly guiding others after this case is finally closed.

"We are lucky we can make all this noise."

And as for what her father would think if he could see what his children were doing in 2020, she says “I think he would be so happy, so proud. He'd say 'those are my kids.' We have a part of Dennis in us and he would do the same for any of us."

"He would say don’t give up."