A guilty plea was entered for 75-year-old Donald Mars Thursday, almost 58 years after the body of 10-year-old Betty Lou Zukowski was found in the Westfield River in West Springfield.
Mars, a convicted sex offender, initially had a not guilty plea entered on his behalf in 2022, when he was charged with first-degree murder in connection with Zukowski’s death.
Hours after the change in plea, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni held a news conference going over the case, joined by both law enforcement as well as cousins of the victim.
“On Thursday, May 26, 1966, Betty Lou Zukowski left her family's home on Front Street in Chicopee around 6 p.m., after receiving a phone call that she told her mother was from one of her girlfriends,” Gulluni said. “That was the last time her family saw her.”
The child was reported missing that evening, kicking off a massive search effort.
Four days later, her body was found by a group of boys fishing in West Springfield, near the intersection of Westfield and Dewey streets, in a section of the river by Robinson State Park.
Her cause of death: multiple blunt force injuries to the head, a skull fracture and terminal drowning.
Several police departments, as well as state police and the district attorney’s office, took part in the investigation.
A composite sketch of a suspect wearing glasses was later drawn, based on accounts from two witnesses, one of whom may have been the last to see Betty Lou alive.
Investigators believed the girl had known the person who killed her.
Gulluni said that after being called at home, Zukowski left and met up with this person, and ended up in West Springfield after riding in a vehicle “operated by a known person.”
The investigation continued for decades, before a new push in 2021, involving the DA’s Unsolved Homicide Unit and West Springfield Police Department. Part of it involved following up on a lead that emerged in 1997, linking Mars to the case, but yielded no arrest.
Investigators reviewed more than 50 years’ worth of evidence and interviewed key witnesses, such as the defendant’s ex-wife, along with his then-95-year-old mother, Marilyn.
“Marilyn relayed that the defendant, her son Donald, admitted to her years ago that he had thrown a rock and killed a little girl,” the district attorney said. “The defendant’s ex-wife confirmed that the defendant suffered several nervous breakdowns that required hospitalization during their marriage. Sometime around 1987, as the defendant was either experiencing or in initial recovery from a breakdown, he told his wife that he had to be quote, ‘honest with her.’ The defendant’s admission included that he and an unnamed friend killed Betty Lou, that she was killed with a rock, and then quote ‘dumped’ in the area of Robinson State Park.”
More information was gathered, including confirmation of a years-old detail in the case – a blue-gemstone ring believed to have been worn by the suspect, described by one of the past witnesses.
Mars’s ex-wife confirmed the Chicopee Comprehensive High School ring matched the description. Donald, a student at the school, told her he had lost his at some point.
In 2022, two investigators attached to the case, Massachusetts State Trooper Thomas Sullivan and West Springfield Police Sergeant Thomas Svec, journeyed to Bedford, where Mars was situated in a Veterans Administration building.
Mars allegedly went back and forth on acknowledging parts of the case, denying involvement at some points while taking responsibility during others.
It culminated in a scene in which Mars appeared to re-enact attacking the child with a rock.
“The defendant then, in a wrenching moment, without prompting from the investigators, acted out the crime,” Gulluni said. “He stood up, hunched over, and made a striking motion downward, four times with his left arm, and then admitted that he hit Betty Lou with a rock. He sat down again and became very emotional, sobbing loudly. Trooper Sullivan then asked the defendant whether the rock was quote ‘a little bigger than a softball,’ And the defendant replied, ‘Yes.’”
Mars was 17 at the time of the attack.
More than a half-a-century later, he was indicted by a grand jury before a guilty plea to a charge of involuntary manslaughter was entered. His guilty plea was accepted by a Hampden Superior Court judge.
Mars was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison followed by two years of probation and registration as a level 3 sex offender.
In a statement read before the court, one of the victim’s cousins, Frazer Pajak, thanked all of those involved in solving the case.
Pajak, who recounted being a pallbearer at Betty Lou’s funeral, said at the end of his statement “You all have given peace for our family.”
