In 2021, Tamara Sinclair posted on a local Rochester, New York, Facebook page called “Remember when ?” Among its usual posts where members reminisce over long-closed diners and share faded photographs from days gone by, Tamara’s post stood out. She asked if anyone remembered the 1975 murder of her mother, 27-year-old Norris “Snookie” Evans.
“My sister was on Facebook and then she just threw that out there,” Daryl Evans told Dateline.
A crime author came across Tamara’s post and offered to help her access the Rochester Police Department’s case documents. Tamara says what she read forever altered her understanding of her mother’s death.
Norris “Snookie” EvansA LIFE CUT SHORT
Dateline obtained the same report from the Rochester Police Department. The initial entry states that at 11:24 p.m. on May 23, 1975, Rochester Police dispatch received a phone call reporting “family trouble” at a home on Kron Street in the city’s 19th Ward. According to the report, Officer Paul Camping was dispatched to the scene, where he knocked repeatedly on the front door to no response. Finding the house dark and quiet, he left.
The report notes that an hour later, at 12:33 a.m., police received another call: this time from Snookie’s husband, Lewis Evans. Officer Camping returned to the scene and found Lewis “standing outside in an incoherent condition.” He told the responding officer he had just returned home from work at Rochester Products, a local manufacturing company, when he discovered his wife. Snookie was found dead in the living room, “lying face down with her ankles tied together with a white cloth,” according to the police report.
Rochester Police Department
The report also notes that a kitchen knife and a cast-iron frying pan were strewn on the floor, and the living room TV was on. Although the home appeared ransacked, there were no signs of forced entry. Lewis told police at the time that $1,100 in cash was missing from a metal box in the living room.
The medical examiner’s office determined Snookie had multiple stab wounds and noted she had been nearly decapitated. The estimated time of death was placed between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m.
Tamara was just 3 months old when her mother was killed. Daryl was only 2. Their half-brothers on their father’s side were 4 and 6. They were all found inside the home, unharmed.
Although Tamara and Daryl have no memories of their mother, the descriptions they’ve heard over the years are consistent: a sweet, devoted parent.
Growing up, Snookie was close to her sister, Ellen Evans. “We walked to school together, eat lunch together. We just did everything together,” Ellen told Dateline. “She was the one who kept me grounded. She was the calm.”
Gina Alves, married to Snookie and Ellen’s cousin at the time, fondly remembers her friendship with Snookie. “Norris is just so sweet. I really loved her,” Gina told Dateline. “Through her pregnancy, with — what they call him, Tiger — Daryl, he was the cutest baby, and then she got pregnant with her daughter. She was just so excited, you know, ‘Oh, I got a girl! I got a girl!’”
Tamara Sinclair
Gina says Snookie called her the night she died and asked if she wanted to play cards. “I’ll never forget that I was watching [The] Andy Griffith [Show] and she said, ‘Well, why don’t you guys come over?’” Gina said, choking up. She didn’t end up going. “So then, you know, that happened to her, and I always wonder, maybe if we would’ve went over there, maybe that wouldn’t have happened to her.”
Ellen told Dateline she remembers the exact moment their father told her what happened to Snookie. “I slapped him. I slapped him so hard and told him, ‘You’re lying. You’re lying,’” she said.
THE INVESTIGATION
The Rochester Police Department launched an investigation into Snookie’s killing that would span years, chasing lead after lead.
According to their report, Rochester police first looked into those with histories of violent burglaries in the area. They investigated at least 10 people who fit the description, checking fingerprints, administering polygraph exams, and checking alibis without making an arrest.
Ellen Evans told Dateline the family had its suspicions. She had introduced Snookie to Lewis Evans, the brother of Ellen’s estranged husband. “At first they were happy together,” she said. But as the relationship evolved, Ellen says it became clear to her that Snookie had grown scared of Lewis. “And all of a sudden, he was jealous, and he didn’t want us to hang out together.”
Police also spoke with Ellen and Snookie’s cousin Ronald Purdue, who said he received a call from Snookie the morning of her death. “The victim stated to him that she was very depressed and she wanted to get away from her husband, as she was no longer in love with him,” the police report states. “She went on to say that because she was afraid of her husband she was afraid to leave.”
Two days after his interview, Ronald called the Rochester Police Department and said he had additional information. A sergeant was dispatched to his residence to interview Ronald and his wife. According to the police report, Ronald said Snookie’s grandmother had asked young Daryl if he knew who hurt his mommy, to which the toddler responded, “Daddy hurt Mommy.”
Tamara Sinclair
The couple told investigators they didn’t believe any money had been stolen from the house, because Lewis “never left that kind of money around the house for any reason,” according to the police report. They also stated that given the trouble in the relationship, if Snookie “knew the money was in the house she would have taken it and left him.”
At the time of Snookie’s death, Lewis was also involved with a woman named Gail Bloodsaw, according to the police report. When she spoke to police in 1975, she told them she had been going out with Lewis since November of 1974.
The report notes that Gail said Lewis called her three times between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the evening of May 23, 1975. She assumed he was at work because of the machine noise in the background. She also told them he had visited her after work at approximately 12:30 a.m. — around the same time Lewis had placed a call from Kron Street.
The police report includes notes from a later interview with Gail Bloodsaw, as well, who the report now described as Lewis’s common-law wife. When she was re-interviewed in 1977, Gail told reporting officers that she had lied to police in her earlier interview and that Lewis had not visited her that night. As she was being interviewed at the station, Lewis arrived and appeared to be “very upset,” according to the report. “Mr. Evans was advised that the Police were just trying to find out who killed his wife & Mr. Evans stated that he did not want the police to do anything regarding the case,” the report states. While at the station, investigators asked Lewis “if he would be willing to speak with Inv. officers about the incident & he refused,” the report notes.
During that same 1977 interview, according the police report, Gail was asked if she had ever forged Snookie’s name on documents, and she replied that she had forged Snookie’s signature during a hospital visit in March 1975 in order to use her health insurance. The police report states that a handwriting expert from the Physical Crimes Unit then examined samples and determined that Gail had also forged Snookie’s signature on a life insurance policy Lewis took out on himself on May 15, 1975, eight days before Snookie’s death. When informed of the finding, Gail said “she believes she may have forged Norris[’s] name to the policy but does not recall doing so,” the report stated. According to the Rochester Police Department, there was not “sufficient evidence to say with certainty the document was forged.”Dateline reached out by phone to Gail Bloodsaw Evans for comment on the events of 1975. She responded, “We have no input on that,” and ended the call.
John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company provided investigators with an explanation of two life insurance policies involving Snookie. Dateline obtained a copy of the letter from the Rochester Police Department.
The first policy was one Snookie had taken out on herself in 1971. In 1973, she changed the policy to update it to her married name and changed the beneficiary from her mother to her husband, according to the letter. The second policy was the one Lewis took out on himself on May 15, 1975. The letter stated that policy included “Family Insurance” of $1,250 on each of his children, and $1,000 on his wife. The policy also included “Decreasing Term Insurance on the Insured’s wife in the amount of $10,000 for 25 years.” John Hancock noted Lewis Evans was the beneficiary in the event of the death of his wife. The company, “knowing of no reason why payment should not be made in accordance with the Beneficiary Designation of record, paid the policy proceeds to Mr. Evans,” the letter states.
In one of his interviews with police in the days following Snookie’s death, Lewis “denied killing his wife and stated that he spent the entire night, from 3:30PM. to 12:08 AM at work (Roch. Prod.)” According to the report, Lewis’s timecard from Rochester Products shows he clocked in at 3:54 p.m.The report also shows that investigators interviewed Lewis’s supervisor who said he relieved Lewis twice on the night of May 23, 1975: during a meal break at 7:55 until about 8:30 or 8:40 p.m., and again from about 10:00 to 10:30 p.m.Co-workersinterviewed by police reported seeing him playing cards at the plant after 11:00 p.m.The report notes that Lewis’stimecard shows he clocked out at 12:08 a.m.
After speaking with witnesses at the plant, “we cannot implicate Evans as being involved in his wifes [sic] death as we can find no-one to say he left the building,” the police report states.
Rochester police interviewed two of Lewis’s male relatives: his half-brother Leroy Barnes and their cousin Jessie Martin. The three were very close, Ellen said. Neighbors frequently saw them outside Lewis’s home at 5 Kron Street, according to the case report.
Leroy and Jessie were at Lewis’s house the afternoon of May 23, 1975, helping him paint his car, they told police at the time. Jessie told police he walked home when Lewis left for work and stayed there the rest of the night. Leroy said he went to the park until about 7:30 p.m., after which he went to a series of bars and nightclubs, which several alibi witnesses confirmed. Both Leroy and Jessie refused polygraph tests, according to the report.
The file also details that a neighbor visited Snookie from about 7:15 to 7:30 p.m., around the same time she called Gina to ask if she wanted to play cards. A different neighbor walked by around 7:45 p.m., and saw Snookie sitting on her front porch.
That was the last time anyone reported seeing Snookie alive.
Two other neighbors were on a nearby porch from about 11:30 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. Other than Officer Camping’s first arrival, neither of them saw anything out of the ordinary at 5 Kron Street, the police report says.
Ellen Evans and Gina Alves told Dateline the family was convinced of Lewis’s involvement. “I don’t know if he physically did it, or there was something that was going on that he had a part in,” Gina said. ”But the whole family just felt that.”
DECADES COLD
Tamara Sinclair
When Snookie’s children, Tamara and Daryl, read the contents of the police report in 2021, they saw their mother’s death in a new light. The siblings told Dateline they had remained in their father’s care, and despite rumors in the extended family, were largely kept in the dark about their mom’s case.
“I only knew that she was killed, and that it was someone she knew, because there were no signs of forced entry,” Tamara told Dateline.
Both Tamara and Daryl can only remember a handful of times Snookie was mentioned as they were growing up. They also say their father kept them away from their mother’s side of the family.
“I rarely heard him speak about her personality as a mother, how she nurtured us, cared for us, or what she was like in daily family life after Daryl and I were born,” Tamara wrote in a follow-up email to Dateline. “I wish I had more of those kinds of memories and stories.”
“You hear tidbits of information growing up,” Daryl said. But after reading the police report, he says, everything came together. “I really saw a clear picture of who, what, when, why, where.”
Tamara and Daryl told Dateline that after reading through the police report, they called on the Rochester Police Department to look into the case again. It was assigned to Investigator Seth Carr of the Major Crimes Unit in 2022.
“The truth is, I kid you not, I walked into Captain Umbrino’s office, and I told him this case should be on Dateline,” Investigator Carr said. “The kids being involved in trying to figure out what happened to their mother, even with the understanding that that may result in their father being implicated. You know, it’s an interesting dynamic.”
Over the next couple of years, Investigator Carr conducted several follow-up interviews, including with Lewis Evans. According to Carr, Lewis gave the same response to every question: “I have nothing to add and nothing to take away.”
Carr says he’s considered whether the timing of the 11:24 p.m. anonymous phone call to police could have been intended to steer investigators toward a period when certain people in the case had stronger alibis. “There’s certainly a possibility that that’s not a coincidence,” he said. “That this phone call is made and their alibis are strongest at that time, because maybe the goal is to make the police department believe that the crime occurred at that time.” Considering a time-of-death window wider than the estimated 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. period opens up new potential scenarios, he added.
No one has been charged in connection to the case and no suspects have been named in Snookie’s death. “It’s fair to say Jessie Martin, Lewis Ev[a]ns, and Leroy Barnes (deceased) all remain persons of interest in the case,” Carr said in a follow-up email.
When Dateline contacted Lewis Evans about Snookie’s case, he responded: “I don’t know anything about that. Have a good day.” He has declined further calls.
Dateline also attempted to contact Jessie Martin for comment. His wife answered the phone and said he was unavailable to speak with us. Dateline asked her to pass along our message but we have not heard back.
THE WAY FORWARD
Regarding the case status, Rochester Police Captain Frank Umbrino and Investigator Carr agree: someone must come forward for the case to progress. Although several forensic samples were pulled from the crime scene — including hair, blood, and fabric — they were not preserved properly to undergo modern forensic testing, Capt. Umbrino told Dateline. “We would need somebody that has direct knowledge of who did the murder, who orchestrated the murder, and they would have to be willing to get up on a stand and testify,” he said. “That’s the only thing that’s going to push this case forward.”
Ellen Evans has lived 51 years without her sister. The grief never left. “For years I’d cry,” Ellen said. “Her young life was cut short. She had so much to give.”
Tamara Sinclair has lived all but three months of her life without her mother. She says she wakes up every day and thinks about her. She wishes she could call her and tell her about her own children.
When asked what justice might look like, Tamara wasn’t sure. “I would have accepted accountability and an apology,” she said.
“If the truth could just come out,” Gina Alves said. “I just think that one way or another, you just can’t get away with things.”
There is one positive outcome to the siblings’ search for answers. Back in 2021, Gina stumbled across Tamara’s Facebook post asking if anyone knew what happened to her mother. She and Snookie’s cousin separated decades ago, and she hadn’t seen Tamara and Daryl since they were children. After seeing the post, they reconnected.
“All these years I’m wondering what happened to Snookie’s babies,” she said. “And then I actually got to see Tiger and I got to see Tammy, and all I could do was just hug them and hug them and hug them.”
“I always felt that Snookie was their guardian angel,” she said. “She watched over her babies all these years.”
Tamara Sinclair
If you have information about the Norris “Snookie” Evans case, you can submit a tip to Rochester NY Unsolved or call the Rochester Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit at 585-428-7157. To leave a tip anonymously, please call Rochester Area Crime Stoppers at 585-423-9300.
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