Authorities are offering a reward for information in the 1982 unsolved murder of a 40-year-old woman and physician's assistant found murdered in New York City -- the possible work of a serial killer.

Patricia Shea was found strangled in Prospect Park, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, in July 1982, amid a string of similar cases that baffled the New York City Police Department at the time.

Shea, a physician's assistant from Rockaway, Queens, was last seen July 25. She had told friends around 11 p.m. that night that she needed to visit an elderly patient who lived in an apartment adjacent to her own, DNAinfo.com reported.

Shea was found a day later, strangled with a piece of nylon rope and lying next to a man's shirt in an area of Prospect Park.

New York City Police are now offering a $2,000 reward for any information on the crime, according to the website.

It's not known whether new leads or advances in forensic evidence led to a renewed interest in the decades-old case. The NYPD did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

"People were just crazy about her in the Rockaway area. She was just a wonderful woman and she was so young," Shea's sister-in-law, Mary Pat, told the website.

Shea's murder was one of five similar homicides in New York City at the time. While police never established a link between her murder and that of the strangling deaths of four other women, they also never ruled out the possibility a serial killer was responsible.

Click for more from DNAinfo.com