Soon after Eugene Mallove of Pembroke was found murdered in Connecticut, outside his childhood home, the local police said they had talked to a couple of suspects and expected to have fingerprint and DNA evidence within a month.

That was eight months ago, and the police said last week that they are no closer to solving the case. Some of that DNA evidence - the best hope of tying someone to the scene - still hasn't come back from Connecticut's state lab. The police haven't recovered any of the items taken from Mallove, a watch, cell phone and credit cards, said Lt. Timothy Menard of the Norwich, Conn., police. And despite pleas to the public for help, no one has called.

The case has frustrated the police, Menard said. It's devastated Mallove's family, widow Joanne of Pembroke, son Ethan of Winchester, Mass., and daughter Kimberly Woodard of Seattle.

Ethan, 25 and a new dad, works on the case daily, often instead of sleeping, brainstorming theories and possible leads. He shares his suggestions regularly with the family's attorney, Jim Rosenberg of Concord, and the Connecticut police. The only distraction Ethan allows himself is his 3-month old son, named Eugene after Ethan's late father.

"'Consumed' is too small a word," Ethan said in an interview last week. "I want justice. I want to know who did this and why. That's been front and center for me."

Mallove, 56, was found on the lawn outside his childhood home at 119 Salem Turnpike in Norwich, Conn., just before 11 p.m. on May 15, beaten around the head and neck. He had been cleaning the property with plans to rent it, and a friend has told Connecticut reporters that he was with Mallove until 7 p.m. When the friend passed by the house an hour later, he noticed Mallove's green van was gone.

Mallove's van was located the next morning about 15 minutes away, in a remote parking lot of Foxwoods Resort Casino. A few have theorized that Mallove, a scientist, was killed because he was a tireless champion of cold fusion, a controversial cheap and clean alternative energy source.

The police, however, believe Mallove was a victim of a robbery gone bad because several items, although of little value, were taken.

Menard said this week the case is particularly challenging for a few reasons. Mallove was found outside, where evidence is more likely to be contaminated or lost. Also, there is not an obvious connection between Mallove and his killer or killers as there is in homicides between family members, lovers or business partners.

"He was a victim in the truest sense of the word," said Menard, referring to the random, unprovoked nature of Mallove's murder. "This is the worst kind of case for us, and it's the kind we try hardest to solve. Not just for ourselves, but for the family as well."

The Mallove family is counting on that, but they're concerned that as more time passes the harder it will be to find Eugene Mallove's killer or killers.

Joanne Mallove shivers at the thought of coming home to an empty house every night and thinks about the night she learned her husband wasn't coming back. Late on the night of May 15, a family friend from Connecticut called to tell her a person had been found on the lawn outside Mallove's childhood home, but the friend wouldn't tell Joanne if it was a man or woman. She also didn't offer much about the person's condition. Three hours passed before Joanne learned for sure that the body was her husband's and that he was dead. It was the Pembroke police who finally came to her door and told her.

"I had forced myself to come to that conclusion (that is was Mallove on the lawn), but I was hoping I was wrong," Joanne said. The police officers stayed with her through the night. "They were all very comforting, but there was no comfort," she said.

Joanne waited until morning before she called her children. "They were going to be in hell, so I wanted to give them a few hours of sleep,"she said.

Kimberly and Ethan, both married, came home and lived with their mother for the summer. Now she is back on her own, teaching music in Manchester and trying to resolve long-term questions like whether she can afford to stay in the Pembroke home she and her husband built for their retirement. To her relief and surprise, her employers at the music school where she works have replaced the health insurance her husband had carried.

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