Heartbroken dad of raped and murdered New York jogger Karina Vetrano reveals he had a ‘bad feeling’ after she left and tried in vain to catch her
Philip Vetrano, who regularly went running with his daughter, was recovering from an injury at the time of her death
THE father of Karina Vetrano, who was found raped and strangled in a park in New York, has spoken of the “bad feeling” he had the day his daughter was found dead.
Ms Vetrano, 30, was jogging through the borough of Queens on August 2, when she was sexually assaulted and strangled to death.
The avid jogger would usually run the trail with her father, but on the evening of her murder she went alone as her dad, Philip Vetrano, was recovering from an injury.
In an interview on , which is scheduled to air in the US on Tuesday, Mr Vetrano revealed the “bad feeling” he had on the day his daughter was murdered.
He said: “She asked me to go for a run and I said I couldn’t go.
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“And about 25 minutes later I got a bad feeling. I knew something was wrong. Like something was wrong.”
Mr Vetrano admitted that his daughter, whose killer is yet to be found, was missing less than half-hour after she went on her final jog.
Ms Vetrano was reported missing by her father when she didn’t return from her regular run at about 5pm, local time.
Police have since recovered DNA evidence, which the Queens district attorney this week asked the state to approve in the hopes it would help police develop additional leads in the case
“This tragic murder had been exhaustively investigated using every tool available, but it remains unsolved,” District Attorney Richard A. Brown said in a letter to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services released Thursday.
During Thanksgiving last month, Mr Vetrano — who is a retired firefighter — said that while everyone was celebrating the holiday season, he wouldn’t be doing the same this year.
“We’re not going to celebrate. There’s nothing for me to celebrate,” he told the New York Post.
“We have a grandchild, only seven months old, who was only two months old when Karina, you know, died.
“There’s going to be trigger days, I’m sure, Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries. They’re going to be harder than normal, but normal is hard.
“I’m going to stay in the house. I’m going to treat it like a regular day. No celebration, no festivities. Probably just me and [wife] Cathy. I’m going to probably be [spending time] alone.”
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