The Killing at the Cattle Car: The Unsolved Murder of Emile Zaniboni

Murder Sheet

MurderSheet

True Crime, Murder, Unsolved Case, Killing, Murderer, Cold Case

3.8 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Emile "Bob" Zaniboni never came home one cold winter's night, over half a century ago. The next morning, his family discovered him murdered in the Cattle Car Restaurant he owned and operated alongside New York State Route 22, between Pawling and Wingdale. He'd been shot three times with a .22 caliber weapon, and his restaurant had been ransacked.

To this day, the crime remains unsolved.

In this episode, the Murder Sheet takes a closer look at this cold case. We also speak with Abbott Brant, who covered the crime as part of the Poughkeepsie Journal's deep dive into area cold cases.

Read Abbott's reporting here:

The Zaniboni case: https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/southern-dutchess/2017/01/24/police-seek-clues-1971-pawling-homicide-cold-case/96987956/
The Wingdale gas station murder: https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/2017/08/22/cold-case-wingdale-man-found-dead-wappinger-gas-station-45-years-ago/589190001/

Read Rasheed Oluwa's article for the Poughkeepsie Journal here:

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/114945117/

Other sources include:

The Poughkeepsie Journal (Jan. 11, 1971)
The Kingston Daily Freeman (Jan. 11, 1971)
The Troy Record (Jan. 11, 1971)
The Poughkeepsie Journal (Jan. 17, 1971)
The Berkshire Eagle (August 8, 1998)
The Berkshire Eagle (July 16, 2008)

If you have any information on the Zaniboni case, please call the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Dover at (845)-677-7300 or (845)-877-3660. Please refer to SJS # 3025018. Your call can be kept confidential.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	New York State Route 22 cuts past a lonely spot in Duchess County.
0:12.2	The day we visited, a brisk afternoon in late January, the sky was a deep blue.
0:19.2	A hardened layer of snow clung to the ground all around us.
0:24.2	Across the way, a field stretched up into a forested crest.
0:30.6	We'd driven over an hour to reach this place, without any certainty that we'd find it.
0:37.5	A search of newspapers.com only revealed that the cattle car restaurant sat somewhere
0:42.5	between Wingdale and Pauling, along Route 22.
0:47.3	That was too vague for our navigational abilities, so we dug deeper.
0:53.2	Sitting in our apartment in Brooklyn, I plopped myself onto the Pauling border
0:58.4	using Street View on Google Maps.
1:01.7	Then, it was just a matter of dashing along Route 22 for what felt like a hundred clicks.
1:07.3	I zoomed until I saw a small building.
1:10.8	The low slung structure looked familiar, like it might be the same one captured in the
1:15.6	black and white photo in the cattle car restaurant.
1:18.6	The only snapshot of the eatery I could find online.
1:22.9	Kevin and I weren't sure it was the right place until we got there though.
1:26.5	It looked quite different after all.
1:29.6	Today, it's a landscaping business. Outfront, it's got a sign,
1:34.7	flag poles, and a frozen walled in pond. A testament to the proprietor's craftsmanship.
1:41.8	But if you stand across the street, you can glimpse the ridge of trees in the distance
1:46.5	behind the building, the criss-cross of the electrical buyers.
1:51.5	You can see the cattle car, a changed building,
	...

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