Family Renews Hunt for Woman’s Killer : Brother, Two Sisters Offer Reward in San Diego County Mystery

A year after his sister was murdered here, Andrew Solecki arrived to spread the word in San Diego County that his family is willing to pay $10,000 for information that helps find her killer.

“We all know this is a long shot but we just can’t let this thing die. We don’t know what else to do other than the reward,” said Andrew Solecki, who traveled here from the family’s home in Buffalo, N.Y.

Accompanied by two younger sisters, Solecki, 32, has spent the week since he arrived stuffing flyers into mailboxes and dropping them off at businesses near the isolated rural road where Theresa Solecki’s body was found.

Found Strangled

“A newspaper deliveryman found her under her car, naked, beaten up and strangled,” Solecki said last week.

He and his sisters--Irena Solecki, 23, of Buffalo, and Donna Solecki, 28, of Denver--spent 12 hours on the road that day, passing out the flyers that tell about the reward and give a description of their dead sister.

Theresa Solecki, at 29 the third oldest child in a family of seven, was killed Jan. 11, 1984, near Vista, about 10 miles north of San Diego.

The night she died, Theresa had called her sister, Irena, who was living with her at the time, to say that she was spending the night with a friend who was ill. Because her friend’s phone was out of order, Theresa made the call from a nearby phone booth.

“She went down the hill to make a phone call . . . and they found her 1 1/2 hours later seven miles out in the rural area,” Andrew Solecki said.

“It’s been a year now and we haven’t gotten anybody under lock and key, so us brothers and sisters and mom and dad decided to put together the reward and find out who killed our sister,” he said.

“At this point, they (investigators) have some things to work with but they need that little piece of information--that one piece--to fit the puzzle,” he said. “Hopefully, we can find the person and bring him to justice.”

The Sheriff’s Department has received a few calls since it renewed its appeal to the public for help after the Soleckis arrived, homicide Sgt. Rick Figueroa said.

“They’ve offered some information, but the information still has to be checked out,” he said. He declined to say how many calls the department has received or what the callers reported, but said he was optimistic that the case will be solved.

Andrew Solecki, like his two sisters, took time off from his job to make the trip here. His last vacation was spent at Theresa’s funeral in Buffalo and on a trip across the country to pack her belongings and take them and Irena back to Buffalo.

Even if the reward brings no new leads, Solecki said, the 3,000-mile trip was worthwhile.

“We wanted to get the word out that we haven’t forgotten.”