MILFORD, Conn. — From the moment a crime is committed to the moment a case goes to trial, prosecutors, investigators, and inspectors pick details apart and put them back together again. At the center of it are the people impacted the most -- a victim’s family members.
For the first time since his sister's murder in 2006, Erik Terranova sat down with FOX61 News to tell his story.
"I always talk about it as like putting on a new pair of glasses. I felt like that day I looked at the world a whole different way," said Terranova, Alexandra Ducsay's older brother.
It’s the first time in anything involving his sister’s death, or the case to bring her murder to justice, that he felt at peace and in control.
"For me, peace is really important at this point," he said. "I take the example of my sister. She was such a peaceful person. She would never hurt a fly. She would probably open the window to let the fly loose."
Ducsay was 26 years old when her mother found her brutally beaten to death in her family’s basement in Milford on May 19, 2006.
"I’ve been doing this for 27 years now," said Kevin Lawlor, Deputy Chief State's Attorney of Operations. "That was the worst crime scene I think I’ve ever seen."
Then a prosecutor in Milford, Lawlor said there initially wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest.
"I know who did it. My family knew who did it. But proving it is part of the American justice system," Terranova said.
Ducsay's family said they had a gut feeling her ex-boyfriend Matthew Pugh killed her. But without enough evidence to prove it -- her case went cold and dragged on for years.
"Years and years of this dragging on and this individual still being in the streets… it caused a lot of stress and anxieties to my family, to possibly other families," Terranova said.
An aspiring actress, who once played a small role in "Law & Order", Terranova described his sister, affectionately known as Zandra, as someone who was religious, charitable, and full of life.
"At Christmastime, she had her own drive where she would bring presents to the kids in Bridgeport," Terranova said. "She would actually deliver them on Christmas Eve to their houses one by one by one and we would fill up a truck full of them."
Lawlor said he witnessed just how many lives she touched through working so closely on her case.
"It really shows you how many lives are touched by one individual person and when you can solve one of these cases how many lives you do touch by trying to bring justice on behalf of that one person and so many other people can feel it," Lawlor said.
Ducsay and her family finally saw justice served in her case when Pugh was convicted of her murder, but it took the family, investigators, and prosecutors years of looking out for different resources to find exactly what they needed to put him behind bars.
"Resources are so important. If you have the resources, you can just get that little crack, just find a little crack of knowledge, crack of facts, evidence, information," Terranova said. "That can blow your whole case wide open and it did in our case. We were really struggling for information and as soon as a few things started coming together, it really snowballed into a pretty solid case."
Terranova said just as Zandra was a person of faith, he kept his faith in the people investigating his sister’s case.
"We’re not in charge of evidence, prosecution, that type of thing," Terranova said. "We have to put our faith into other people to get this process done for us so that justice is served."
Terranova said he found control in the situation by keeping up with the investigation into her murder.
"Whether its reward money or talking to as many people putting in a lot of time, those are the important things to really get as much information on this as possible," Terranova said.
Zandra’s face was on a cold case playing card as the two of clubs and circulated through prisons.
"Resources are the key and we were able to devote more resources through the cold case unit here," Lawlor said. "The governor’s office was extremely generous by allowing us to post a governor’s reward, which I believe was $50,000. That was, in fact, paid out in this particular case."
Pugh's cousin claimed the reward and provided crucial testimony in the case-- his testimony helped put Pugh behind bars for 60 years.
"It took years, but that’s what gave my family the peace to actually start moving on and where we could start to heal," Terranova said.
There are still many cases that are unsolved in Connecticut — and Terranova knows exactly how it feels to wait for justice and closure.
"The old saying that time does heal the wounds-- it’s true. You will feel better. It’ll never go away. They’ll never come back. You’ll always miss them. You’ll always have a little bit of a void, but that void gets smaller because ultimately life is short and hopefully you will see them again," he said.
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