A year after Schenectady killing, family seeks answers

PHOTOGRAPHER: Steven Cook

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Members of Brett Wentworth’s immediate family met Monday on Lake Luzerne.

It was a location near a bridge there that the family knows well. It’s where Wentworth enjoyed swimming as a youth.

The family was there to spread some of his ashes at that bridge and to celebrate his life, his mother, Barbara Conary, said Tuesday.

The occasion was marking one year since he was killed in his Schenectady apartment. It’s a killing police have yet to solve.

“There’s not much else you can do at this point,” Conary said Tuesday. “I do know the police are doing everything they can, and I truly feel that they will find his murderer.”

Wentworth, 41, was found dead April 12, 2010, inside his Wendell Avenue apartment. An autopsy concluded that his death was a homicide. It also concluded that he had been killed sometime the day before,

Family members have worked with police over the past year to get the word out about Wentworth’s killing, hoping that anyone with information would come forward.

In December, they held a press conference at the police station and handed out fliers at places where police believed it might be useful. They included a six-to-eight-block area around Wentworth’s 1019 Wendell Ave. apartment and places with easy bus access from the neighborhood.

The family and police also announced a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Wentworth’s killer.

Asked about the December effort recently, Assistant Police Chief Brian Kilcullen said it was useful in helping to generate leads.

Kilcullen also said the case has its own difficulties, with opportunities for witnesses fewer because it happened inside the apartment, not on the street. There was also a fairly small circle of individuals he spent any significant amount of time with.

But, Kilcullen said, the case remains active.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact the city police crime tips line at 788-6566.

The one-year mark since Wentworth’s death comes during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. The annual Rose Garden Ceremony of Remembrance is scheduled for today at noon in Schenectady’s Central Park.

Conary said she had hoped to attend the rose garden ceremony, but a family commitment will prevent her from doing so.

The family did, however, attend last Friday’s state crime victims’ memorial brick dedication ceremony in Albany.

Conary called that ceremony wonderful.

“They did such a beautiful job,” she said.

Wentworth suffered from schizophrenia, his mother said. Family members have described him as someone who didn’t have much means but who would save up what he had to ensure he was able to get family members something when the holidays came around.

Among them was his daughter Sabrina, who lives in Connecticut with her grandmother Dorothy. Dorothy asked that the family’s last name not be used. Wentworth lived in Connecticut for a time.

He last saw his daughter the February before he was killed. He hadn’t been able to make it down for Christmas, so they celebrated it then, Dorothy said. They played games together and had fun.

Sabrina is now in sixth grade and is creating a scrapbook of her father, Dorothy said.

Sabrina also chose to write The Daily Gazette an email with her thoughts on her father. In the email, Sabrina expressed sorrow that no one had yet come forward with information that would lead to someone being caught, even after a reward had been offered.

If she was a billionaire, she wrote, that would be the reward she would offer.

“My dad was priceless,” she wrote. “Some where someone knows something please come forward for a sad daughter who wishes her dad could still be here.”

She also noted that she will graduate from sixth grade in June, without him being there, “but he will be the brightest star shining from above the night I graduate watching over me and smiling proud of my hard work.”