The discovery of Ben Rifkin’s body in Cold Spring Park on April 12, 2007, is the moment the case begins to take shape: an eighth grader who had left home for school was found dead less than an hour later, and the park’s familiar paths became the setting for a murder investigation. Paula Giannetto, out jogging, came upon the body and alerted the authorities.

Place and Circumstances

Cold Spring Park covered sixty-five acres of pine woods adjoining the school grounds. Jogging paths crossed and branched through the woods before joining a trail that circled the park. Andrew Barber knew the trails from his own morning runs. On April 12, 2007, Ben’s body lay in a small gully off one of the lesser paths, near the foot of a tree. The wooded setting was close to school, but the branching trails made the spot secluded.

Giannetto encountered Ben at 9:07 a.m., the time recorded when she stopped her jogging watch. He had left home for the short walk to school less than an hour earlier. At first, she did not recognize that he was dead and rolled him over, hoping he had fainted or was sick. She then saw the blood on his shirt, backed away, and ran. Her attempt to help therefore became the circumstance that revealed the killing.

The Body and the Initial Evidence

The murder-scene photographs later shown to Andrew presented Ben lying face up, but that was not how Giannetto first found him. He had been face down, with his head downhill and his feet above it; after she rolled him over, he remained in the position depicted in the photographs. The medical examiner would explain that the slope could account for the unusual flush of his face, caused by blood draining toward his head. The distinction between the body as first found and as later photographed mattered to the reconstruction of the scene.

Ben had been stabbed three times in the chest. One wound was fatal on its own. The wounds and damage to his shirt indicated a jagged-edged weapon, which had not been recovered. There were no defensive wounds. Investigators also noted a single clear fingerprint in Ben’s blood on a plastic tag inside his unzipped sweatshirt, a location consistent with someone having seized the garment. The print matched neither Ben nor Giannetto, giving investigators a specific clue while leaving the person responsible unidentified.

The Investigation Begins

The discovery set off an immediate chain of official calls. Andrew, then First Assistant at the District Attorney’s Office, recalled first hearing from CPAC, the state police unit, followed quickly by calls from the Newton police and the duty district attorney. He could not be certain of their exact order, but explained that he was notified of every murder in the county as standard procedure. The call reached him around nine that morning, immediately after the body was discovered.

The discovery thus establishes both the case’s physical starting point and the first investigative uncertainties: a precise time and location, a witness whose actions altered the body’s position, a weapon still missing, and a fingerprint whose source was not yet known. The ordinary setting of a morning jog and a familiar park trail gives way to evidence that demands reconstruction, while the initial facts leave the identity of the killer unresolved.