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Police Continue To Investigate Killing Of Elderly Bronx Woman

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police in the Bronx continue to search Monday for the killer of an elderly woman, who may have made the mistake of displaying expensive jewelry.

Police are trying to crack the case of a weekend murder of 88-year-old Evelyn Shapiro with a platoon of detectives and posters offering a reward for leads in the case.

Shapiro will be especially missed at the Ginsberg Senior Center in the Pelham Parkway Houses. It was in her building, just inside her fifth floor apartment, where she was found dead Saturday morning.

"It's crazy. I don't know how they do that. It's crazy," neighbor Suzanne Diaz told CBS 2's John Slattery.

"A very friendly person, a very friendly person," neighbor Richard Santana said.

Michael Campbell lives across the hall from where Shapiro lived and speculated about what may have happened.

"I heard she was carrying up groceries and somebody might have followed her up pushed her into the apartment and hit her with something on the head," Campbell said.

The door was ajar and the apartment was ransacked. Her daughter found the body. The suspected motive is believed to be robbery, police said.

"They say she wore a lot of jewelry and that she did. She wore a lot of gold," neighbor Lillian Lopez said.

After more than 50 years of living in the area, she told neighbors she'd seen the area change.

"She wore her jewelry anyway. She really didn't really care," Lopez said.

In the senior center, there are security cameras, but in the residential buildings, there are no cameras at the entrance or in the hallways.

"We need cameras. We need cameras. Everybody that live over here, most of the people who live here are elderly. We need cameras," said Theresa Vaez.

Security is such a hot-button issue that tenants have called an emergency meeting for Tuesday night.

At a supermarket across from the crime scene, a manager told CBS 2 detectives looked at six hours of surveillance pictures and came up with no leads.

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