A New Account in a Murder Case Closed 21 Years Ago Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Jennifer Negron was murdered in 1992, just after she turned 16. Two men were arrested and convicted of kidnapping her. Jennifer Negron died on New Year's Day, 1992, a week after she turned 16, her beaten, stabbed body found near dawn on a corner in East New York, Brooklyn. She was the first recorded homicide victim in a year when conveyor belts of violence carried about 2,000 people to their deaths in New York. Only a few received public attention, and no trace of any newspaper coverage of her killing can be found. The first coherent account of what happened to Jennifer, who did it and why she was killed, is emerging only now, more than 21 years later - even though the case was marked closed a few days after she died with the arrest of two men accused of dragging her into a car outside her building and driving her off to be killed. Recently, a man who said he was visiting Jennifer's building that night and who was never interviewed by the police, spoke at length with me. If the narrative of this man, Mario Cabrera, is to be believed, Jennifer's death was the result of two intimate betrayals, and has led to the convictions of two men who had nothing to do with the crime. Instead of those two men, Mr. Cabrera said, a teenage boy - a would-be suitor of Jennifer's - lured her into a car because her mother owed money for crack-cocaine that he had been supplying her. Jennifer's mother checked into a rehabilitation center before the killing, Mr. Cabrera said, because she knew that she would be facing serious trouble if she did not pay the debt by the new year. Mr. Cabrera, who goes by Tito, and whose relatives lived for 21 years in the same building as Jennifer's family, at 851 Hegeman Avenue, said he confronted Jennifer's mother, Elsie Jimenez, in the days after the killing. "I said it was her fault," Mr. Cabrera said in an interview. She said, yes, she knew. She knew it was her fault. She said that it was because of the money she owed for these drugs. He added: "She knew they were coming. She told me so. She didn't know they were going to do what they did. Citing the account of Mr. Cabrera and other evidence, lawyers for the two men convicted in 1993 of the kidnapping, Everton Wagstaffe and Reginald Connor, said on Thursday that they would be filing a request that the conviction integrity unit of the Brooklyn district attorney's office reinvestigate the case. Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor, who said they had never met until they were brought to court, have maintained their innocence since their arrests. A charge of murder was dismissed by the trial judge before the case went to a jury. Both men were sentenced to 12 1/2 to 25 years in prison. Mr. Wagstaffe remains incarcerated after more than 21 years; Mr. Connor served nearly 14 years and is on parole. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, did not respond to a request for comment. The prosecution's case rested on the testimony of a single witness, a deeply troubled woman with drug problems who had been kept in protective custody before the trial to ensure her appearance. The woman, a regular informer for detectives in the 75th Precinct, said she saw Mr. Wagstaffe struggle with Jennifer, drag her from the front of the building around 3 a.m. and force her into a car where Mr. Connor and a third man were waiting. A motive for a crime is not required by law, and none was offered. Nor did any fingerprints, hair, blood, semen or other physical evidence ever link the two men to the kidnapping or death of the girl. Mr. Cabrera's version of events may explain why: The people he described being with Jennifer that night bore little or no resemblance to the two convicted men, who were older and heavier. He agreed to talk after being contacted by me last year, and we met on three occasions. He also dictated an affidavit to the lawyer for Mr. Wagstaffe, but refused to sign it, without explanation. Over the last year, Mr. Cabrera has arranged meetings with me and not appeared for them. Email: dwyer@nytimes.com Twitter: @jimdwyernyt