Christa Nicole Belusko was only 2 when her mother's body was found on Staten Island in 1991. Her whereabouts have been unknown since.
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Holding out hope for a cold-case miracle: Detectives, kin try to learn missing daughter’s fate
Several questions have festered in the minds of family, friends and investigators in the ongoing search for a girl whose mother was found murdered more than 30 years ago on Staten Island.
Was she left with someone who raised her as their own? Was she abandoned somewhere and became a product of the system? Did she too fall victim to the individual who killed her mother? If she is alive, what kind of life is she living? And what questions might she have about her upbringing?
The deceased, 29-year-old Christine Belusko of Clifton, New Jersey, went unidentified for decades, known only for her unique scorpion tattoo. Her body was discovered along the side of a ditch on Seaview Avenue in Ocean Breeze. She was not carrying identification.
Then, in 2021, DNA technology revealed Christine’s identity, which is when investigators learned about her daughter.
The missing, Christa Nicole, was 2 at the time. She would be 35 years old today.
Several women have come forward over the past 20 months claiming they could be Christa.
But most, if not all of them, have been ruled out. Either by DNA test, refusal to take a DNA test or other reasons. One woman who met with detectives was a different race than the age progressed photos of the missing released to the public.
“You get your hopes up and you think it’s going to be a great day,” said David Nilsen, chief investigator for the Richmond County District Attorney’s Office. “But there’s a lot of confused people out there.”
They’ve questioned multiple people who had been known to babysit Christa before her leaving New Jersey, which did not prove fruitful.
They deployed several research-based tactics in their search for Christa, but ran into “roadblock after roadblock,” said Nilsen.
They checked on a Social Security number Christa Nicole was assigned at birth to see whether she had ever used it to file a tax return, or, if someone who had access to it for childcare purposes was using it on their own tax return for a child credit.
“It was dead end after dead end,” he said, “which is a little bit of an indicator she could’ve been killed.”
They tracked down people who registered for new Social Security numbers for children after Christine was killed, thinking that maybe a babysitter or person Christa was left with had done so, not knowing what the original number was.
They searched records of unidentified remains of children found weeks before and after Christine’s death, based on Christa’s approximate weight. “She wasn’t an infant, she was a child, so there’s a big difference,” said Nilsen, referring to the fact that baby’s found deceased more often are newborns.
All to no avail.
They researched adoption records around the time of the murder, but were in part faced with the challenge of not knowing the county in which Christa Nicole might’ve been last cared for. And there were other hurdles in that regard.
“With adoption records, there’s a lot of private stuff that goes along with that; it’s not like you can just ... look at public records,” explained Nilsen. “None of that stuff was public and a lot of information is sealed. And you’re assuming they knew what her government name was.”
At this point, he said, they’re more so relying on the chance that Christa — if she’s still out there — submits her DNA into a database where her mother’s DNA also has been registered.
Said Nilsen: “We are working some different angles forensically speaking.”
While at the same time, investigators are holding out hope for a miracle.
“It would be great if someone said, ‘I was watching Christa (at the time) and no one ever came to claim her, so I raised her,’” said Nilsen. “That would be great. That’s what we were hoping for when we aired this whole thing out.”
In November, the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children posted an article about the ongoing search for Christa Nicole. They released an age-progression image of what she could look like today.
“We know that these images can help lead to answers, even in cases that are decades old,” said Angeline Hartmann, director of communications at NCMEC. “We ask everyone to share this image of Christa Nicole. You never know who might have the key to bringing her home.”
Francis said that while he’s all but given up on the idea of his sister’s killer being identified, “the most important thing for me is to bring Christa Nicole home.”
The search for Christine’s killer remains an active investigation. If you have any information about her case, please reach out to the Richmond County District Attorney’s Office at 718-556-7085. All calls can be kept confidential.
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