A Long Island City woman is facing extradition on a warrant charging her with a cold case murder in Louisiana in 1984.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, in a statement issued by his office on Tuesday, said Leila Mulla, 47, of 11th Street, is facing charges of second-degree murder, criminal conspiracy and simple robbery in the death of 29-year-old Baton Rouge businessman Gary Kergan.
Brown said Mulla, a registered nurse who was an exotic dancer at the time of Kergan’s murder, was arrested at her apartment on Monday and was to be arraigned in Queens Criminal Court as a fugitive from justice.
Brown said investigators have determined that Kergan was last seen accompanied by Mulla on Nov. 28, 1984 outside a Baton Rouge nightclub where she worked as a dancer. His vehicle was later recovered with what appeared to be blood in the trunk.
Kergan’s body was never found, according to NOLA.com, the website for the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans. The website also said Mulla and Louisiana resident Ronald Dunnagan, now 64, were were arrested in connection with the death in 1984, but that prosecutors dropped the case when a body was not found.
Kergan, who published reports said owned a chain of Sonic drive-in restaurants with his brother, was declared legally dead in 1986.
The blood found in Kergan’s car, a pink Cadillac, was recently retested by the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab and determined positively to be his.
Authorities said when Louisiana detectives searched an apartment shared by Mulla and Dunnagan a few days after Kergan’s disappearance, they allegedly found the residence to be abandoned and evidence of a violent struggle.
Baton Rouge police credited both the NYPD and Brown’s office with assisting them in the investigation.
