Police look for new clues in cold murder case

July 22, 1983 was a grisly day for the neighbor who went to check on Joseph Magaskie and his wife, Helen, after not hearing from them for a few days.

The front door of the couple’s home in Dundalk was cracked open, according to Baltimore County Police. Almost all the rooms were plundered. The couple lay dead on the bathroom floor. Someone had stabbed them.

Niece Tiffany Chalmers remembers the day all too well, the confusion and devastation it caused.

“My whole life, we always wondered what happened and why,” she said in a video released this week by police.

She still wonders why. So do the police — 41 years later.

The police released the true-crime-style video highlighting the cold case and asked for help in identifying the killers. Metro Crime Stoppers is offering up to $2,000 for information that helps police. Tips can be submitted anonymously on the Crime Stoppers website or by calling the organization’s hotline at 866-756-2587.

Joseph operated a car dealership called Auto Liquidators, police wrote in a blog post, but sold it a few months before his death because of financial issues. He sold many community members their first car, police said, and was well known in the community.

Chalmers, the niece, said he was like Frank Sinatra, the life of the party, but also regularly interacted with “shady characters” at his dealership.

He stored his money in the house, she said, which the family thinks was the key to the murder.

“Please come forward and lift that burden from your heart,” she pleaded. “Just give us closure and peace so that we know what happened to our loved one.”

View the video at dundalkeagle.com.