Veronika Murray

Veronika Murray is a 21-year-old woman whose 2014 murder becomes a pivotal link in the investigation of a later series of killings. Found in West Pullman, only a few blocks from her home, she had been engaged to Clifford Sorenson. Her death initially remained an open case; years later, its timing, location, and the fear she had expressed before disappearing helped Zoe Bentley reconsider who might have been responsible and how the killer’s methods developed.

Identity and Circumstances

The known details of Veronika’s life are closely tied to the case file and to the accounts of people around her. She was engaged to Clifford Sorenson, whose plumbing business operated in West Pullman. The evidence does not provide an extensive account of her life beyond that relationship and the circumstances preceding her death, but it establishes that she lived near the place where her body was found and that her disappearance left questions that remained unanswered for years.

Veronika’s case entered Zoe Bentley’s attention through a review of unresolved murders. On April 21, 2014, Veronika was found in an alley in West Pullman. The report identified strangulation as the cause of death and noted indications of postmortem sexual activity. She had been dead for an estimated six days, but the body appeared to have been left in the alley the night before it was discovered. The case remained open, with no killer identified.

Fear Before Her Death

In 2016, Zoe contacted Clifford after learning from the police report that Veronika had been engaged to him. When he later spoke to Zoe, he recalled that Veronika had seemed tense and afraid before she disappeared. He connected her agitation to his own routine: she was angry that he continued going fishing and left her alone in the evenings. He did not say that she had plainly explained the source of her fear; rather, he remembered her unease and a complaint about being left by herself.

Clifford also recalled Veronika saying that some apples did not fall far from the tree. At the time, the remark had not resolved what was troubling her. Zoe later interpreted it as a possible reference not to Clifford and his father, but to his brother, Jeffrey Alston, and their mother. Zoe raised the possibility that Jeffrey’s behavior had frightened Veronika and that her reluctance to be alone reflected a fear connected to him. This was an investigative hypothesis, not a confirmed account of what Veronika meant or what she had experienced.

Connections to the Investigation

Veronika’s murder acquired a wider significance because of its proximity and timing in relation to another disturbing pattern. Her body was found in West Pullman, and three months later pets began disappearing in the same neighborhood. Zoe treated that sequence as circumstantial evidence worth investigating: Veronika’s death preceded the disappearances, took place nearby, and involved a body left exposed long enough for decomposition to become an issue for the killer.

Zoe proposed that the killer might have been forced to abandon Veronika’s body because of its decay, then sought a way to prevent that problem from recurring. In this reconstruction, experimentation on animals led him to embalming as a means of preserving and displaying later victims. Tatum Gray and Lieutenant Martinez considered the scenario plausible and agreed that investigators should examine the forensic evidence for links between cases. The theory offered a causal bridge between Veronika’s murder and subsequent crimes, but the evidence presented it as a reasoned reconstruction rather than a fact independently established at that point.

Retrospective Significance

Veronika’s case also helps separate different strands of the investigation. Tatum Gray argued that Rod Glover might have killed two women in 2008 and later manipulated Zoe, while insisting that the person killing and embalming women could be someone else. That distinction kept Glover’s apparent connection to Zoe from automatically explaining every later murder, including Veronika’s. Her unresolved case therefore remained central even as investigators reassessed the identity and methods of the killer.

The renewed attention to Veronika’s fear brought the inquiry toward Jeffrey Alston. Zoe used Clifford’s recollections, the family history she had learned about, and the possibility that Jeffrey had been absent during important periods to challenge the assumption that Veronika’s warning concerned Clifford. She also told Clifford that investigators suspected a connection between Veronika’s death and Susan Warner’s, and that Susan might have been a client of the plumbing business. Clifford checked the records and confirmed that Susan Warner had been a client and that Jeffrey had visited her home three times. That confirmation strengthened the investigative connection, but it did not by itself prove who killed Veronika.

Veronika’s narrative role is thus both personal and evidentiary. Her engagement and remembered anxiety give the case a human context, while the alley near her home, the timing of the pet disappearances, and her ambiguous remark become clues that can be reconsidered as the investigation changes direction. Her death is not presented as a mystery solved through one decisive revelation; instead, it gradually alters the shape of the inquiry, linking an open 2014 murder to a broader pattern and directing suspicion toward a previously overlooked relationship.