TOWN OF WALLKILL — Megan McDonald was friendly and generous, with a quick smile and a kind heart, and 16 years ago someone killed her.

The killer's identity remains a mystery.

“On Friday, it’ll be 5,844 days without her,” said McDonald’s sister, Karen Whalen. “There has not been a day gone by when we haven’t thought about her.”

On March 15, 2003, someone who lived nearby found McDonald, fatally beaten, in a muddy field off Bowser Road in the Town of Wallkill. Her car, a 1991 Mercury Sable GS, was found a couple of days later parked outside Kensington Manor apartments. The case remains unsolved.

McDonald was 20. She was a waitress at The American Grill and took classes at SUNY Orange, and she had just moved into a new apartment on Karen Drive in Middletown.

State police plan to roll out billboards, social media posts and a press release on Friday to coincide with the anniversary, in hopes of moving someone to come forward.

They know the case resonates with the community: McDonald’s former classmates at John S. Burke Catholic High School in Goshen, the people she knew from living, working and socializing in Scotchtown and elsewhere in the Town of Wallkill. The case resonates with cops, too, said state police Investigator Brad Natalizio, and this is the community’s case.

McDonald had a way of connecting with people.

“She just saw through things, and made you feel better,” Whalen said.

“She was always smiling, so she made you feel warm and comfortable in her presence,” said her mom, Elizabeth McDonald.

Megan McDonald loved the color red, and loved orange cats, like the kitten she found in the street and named Simba, and the kitten they got to keep him company, Nala.

The people who love McDonald have so many memories of her: wearing bib overalls, with tiny Nala tucked in the pocket. Pouring milk for children at the Guild of St. Margaret soup kitchen in Middletown. At that last Christmas in 2002, making her distinctive happy “purring” sound as she opened a red package. Her “mega-kilowatt smile.”

“We always talk about her,” Elizabeth McDonald said. “We think about — what would she be doing now? Where would she be in her career now? Would she be married and have kids, like so many of her friends do? Her hopes and dreams were shattered, and she was taken so young.”

Megan McDonald loved the "Chicken Dance" and wanted it played at her wedding.

“She knew it was ridiculous and over the top and silly,” Whalen said, “but that was her."

“Somebody has been sitting on this for 5,844 days,” Whalen said. “It’s time.”

Elizabeth McDonald said she hopes people realize that until someone comes forward, the person who killed her daughter is still out there.

“There’s still a lot of people out there who still love and care for her,” she said. “We’d like to see a resolution for her, so she can have some peace.”

hyakin@th-record.com