By Michael Shain
Police were investigating the suspicious death over the weekend of a 94-year-old Queens Village woman, who lived with her son.
Jane Wiklowski, known as Jenny, had lived in the house on Musket Street since the houses there were built in 1955, neighbors said.
A call from Wiklowski’s son, Kenneth, a former chemistry professor at Hofstra University, according to the school’s web site, first brought the Fire Department at around 6 p.m. Saturday night. Police arrived shortly after, apparently responding to a call from medics after they entered the house. Neighbors reported that crime scene technicians and detectives soon descended on the home, canvassing the block for people who knew the woman and her son and photographing the interior of the house.
Officials declined to give details about what was discovered in the house. A spokesman said they were waiting for the medical examiner to determine a cause of death before releasing any information.
Neighbors said the son, who lived with his mother, was driven away in the back of a police car but was not handcuffed. Police reported no arrests in the case.
The son, a professor at Hofstra from 2000-2008, according to a school spokesman, is an accomplished inorganic chemist, a graduate of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, with more than a dozen scholarly papers to his name.
More than 18 hours after the incident, a police officer was stationed outside the home to prevent anyone from going inside.
Jenny Wiklowski, the widow of a former NYPD mounted cop, had been in poor health lately and was confined to a wheelchair, neighbors said. She rarely left the house, they said, and the son was not well known on the block.
“I’ve lived here 25 years and talked to him maybe three times,” said a neighbor who asked not to be identified.
Jenny had two older children as well, according to neighbors. But both died a number of years ago, they said.
