Her name was Karina Kubiak. She was a 28-year-old middle school teacher for The Dover Academy, an elite private school on West 51st Street. Like the other victims of the West Side Strangler, Ms. Kubiak was single and killed on the West Side of Manhattan.

Ms. Kubiak grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, graduating from Greenwich High School and received her BA in education from UConn in 2014. According to Dover Academy school officials, Ms. Kubiak had been employed there for the past three years. At the school, she was generally well liked by faculty and students, and no problems were ever reported. In the last yearbook, Ms. Kubiak was listed as “favorite teacher” by the seventh grade and she ran the after-school theater club. She lived in a studio apartment on West 85th Street, paid her bills on time and primarily associated with other professionals in her neighborhood.

Preliminary canvasing of Ms. Kubiak’s friends and associates by this reporter found everyone in shock.

“I can’t believe Karina would go into the park at night alone,” said a female English teacher at The Dover Academy. “She and I were good friends. We’d eat lunch together once or twice a week. Someone must have forced her into the park. I can’t imagine her going in alone, not her, she was pretty straight-laced.”

Ms. Kubiak’s profile, history and where she was found have baffled the police. Her behavior two nights ago doesn’t fit her profile. Preliminary toxicology reports showed high levels of methamphetamine in her system which supports the theory that she went into the park to buy drugs.

“How does someone go out on a Monday night, get messed up on meth and then function the next morning in a classroom with twelve-year-olds?” said a Dover Academy French teacher who knew the victim. “You know how rough middle-school kids are? The last thing in the world I’d want is to deal with twelve- and thirteen-year-olds with a hangover. That would be a living hell.”

Because Ms. Kubiak’s death may be connected to the West Side Strangler and because she was killed in the park, the Central Park Precinct is now being brought into the larger WSS investigation.

“According to the medical examiner, the way she was killed, the method of strangulation, appears to be similar to the other Strangler victims,” said NYPD lead detective, Heather Kim. “There are two distinct differences between this new murder and the other six. Ms. Kubiak was killed outside while all the other murders were inside each victim’s domicile. Secondly, the six previous West Side Strangler victims were all killed on the fifteenth of the month. Karina Kubiak was killed sometime between the night of June 1st and the early morning hours of June 2nd. That doesn’t fit the previous pattern. However, given the seriousness of this crime, we can’t rule anything out.”

The question that remains in everyone’s mind—will the West Side Strangler strike again in two weeks on June 15?