00:00:06
Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
00:00:08
And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.
00:00:11
[Music]
00:00:24
This is Morbid.
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What is that squishy thing that you
00:00:27
have? Uh so this is What is it called?
00:00:31
a stress ball?
00:00:32
It's called like NeeDoh or something. Uh
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yeah, it's like a stress ball, but I
00:00:36
actually got it for the kids for like a
00:00:39
stocking stuffer, I think.
00:00:41
Yeah. It's like this little teardrop of
00:00:43
a thing that's like filled with gel
00:00:45
almost, and you can squeeze it and mess
00:00:46
around with it as much as you want, and
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it just turns back into that shape.
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Throw me it.
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Caught it.
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Oh. Yeah. Can I have one? Yeah. Oh wow,
00:00:57
you can have one.
00:00:57
can like really stretch this. Oh wow, I
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could work some anger out on this.
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Yeah, it's literally called NeeDoh.
00:01:05
Nee n e e doh. There's a lot of dough
00:01:07
here on me.
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Yeah, it does.
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Sorry, that was a really aggressive
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throw.
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Luckily, I played softball, man.
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Same, but
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not as well.
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No, these things are great. I recommend
00:01:19
a stress ball for everybody. I think it
00:01:21
should be They should be passed out in
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the United States right now.
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Yeah, honestly.
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Actually, yeah, I think. Honestly, um as
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you know, this comes out so much later
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than anything, but our hearts really go
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out to anybody affected by that plane
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crash. It is We are only a couple days
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out from
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the
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helicopter
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slamming into the passenger plane, the
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US Airways passenger plane in DC at
00:01:47
Reagan
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Airport.
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And it has been
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weighing on my mind so heavy cuz it uh
00:01:56
like victims' names, people are being
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identified. I mean, there's still people
00:02:00
They're still doing the recovery right
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now.
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so many kids. It is so many kids. A lot
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of them were from like the Boston
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skating uh
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club like locally.
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Um six victims were from only a couple
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of towns over from us, I think, so
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it's
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it's like really It's gut-wrenching.
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It's I can't wrap my brain around it,
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and I can't wrap my brain around the
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response to it. Yeah. I can't wrap my
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brain around how it happened. I just
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feel for everybody for I feel really,
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really horrible for everybody involved,
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and it's like
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breaking my heart. Every time somebody
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gets identified, it just like shatters
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me. So
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it really stuck and if you're in the DC
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area, I'm sure you're just like feeling
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it extra hard.
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Feeling the weight of that. And if you
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know any of the people that were
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involved, like [ __ ] I'm so sorry. So,
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so, so, so sorry.
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Because holy [ __ ] this seemed entirely
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avoidable. Yeah, 100%.
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Yeah, it's been a real bummer. We would
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be very remiss not to say anything no
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matter how late this comes out, so we
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just wanted to touch on that.
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sure.
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Um unfortunately, I don't have anything
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happier to talk about.
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I'm trying to think if there's any like
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a exciting thing to throw out there. Oh,
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I think I don't I mean, it looks like
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it's confirmed, guys. I'm going to
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switch gears entirely just to get us
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into like a at least a neutral space
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here. Little palate cleanser. Uh
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I think Matthew Lillard is going to be
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in Scream 7, everybody.
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It looks like he There's a lot of
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reports saying he is, and he did a
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little video where he wrote my mom and
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dad are going to be so mad at me on a
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piece of paper.
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And I
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don't know how to properly contain my
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excitement.
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he comes back with his wonderful sweater
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that he wore in that scene.
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beige sweater.
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sweater. I hate beige, but I love that
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sweater.
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was torn to [ __ ] He's going to have so
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many scars on his face. Oh, he's going
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to come back gnarly and thinking when he
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he comes back. It's going to be awesome.
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And Do you think you So do you think
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he's going to come back current, or do
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you think it's going to be a flashback
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kind of deal? I think I will feel a
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little cheated if it's a flashback deal.
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deal, no, same. Um that would not be my
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favorite thing.
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That would not be my favorite thing
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either.
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you're listening right now, don't do
00:04:16
that to us. Don't do that. I don't think
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anybody would be happy with that.
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No, we need him to come back like
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I've been saying this since I've been
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saying since the dawn of time that Stu
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lived through that whole thing. John
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keeps telling me I'm crazy, but I can't
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wait to go downstairs and rub this in
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his face.
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No, I was sick the other day, and
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whenever I'm sick, I watch Scream
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because it's a comfort movie. It's how
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Elena raised me. Um and he he moans
00:04:38
after the TV said it. He groans. He goes
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uh He does a little groan, yeah.
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Literally. Yeah. That's the exact noise.
00:04:45
uh
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Yeah, so he's alive. He is, and he's
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He's going to be in Scream 7, guys, so
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to come out?
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I'm ready for it. February next year, so
00:04:56
only like a straight up a year from now.
00:04:58
[ __ ] that's crazy. I I hope it's early
00:05:01
February.
00:05:01
February It It is the latest it could be
00:05:04
without being the last day of
00:05:05
the 27th. Wow. Wow. I'm
00:05:10
manifesting that it's early February.
00:05:11
You're like Like close.
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Close, but no cigar.
00:05:15
Close, but no cigar.
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It's a short month. Yeah, you know.
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Yeah, there you go. I made a really good
00:05:21
coffee today. I'm in my at-home barista
00:05:23
era.
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Yeah, you are. You You made a really
00:05:27
yummy one for me this morning. I
00:05:28
appreciate it.
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I got new beans, and they're a lot
00:05:31
better.
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Yeah, the beans were beaning.
00:05:33
were beaning. I've been making this
00:05:34
cookie butter latte thing, everybody.
00:05:36
It's the [ __ ]
00:05:37
You literally just like smear cookie
00:05:39
butter around a cup, and then you put
00:05:41
like a tablespoon of it in your little
00:05:43
like glass that you're going to brew
00:05:44
your espresso over, put that put some
00:05:47
milk in your cup over ice, that espresso
00:05:50
shot in there, that's it. It's that
00:05:51
simple. It's that [ __ ] simple.
00:05:53
It's so good. It's like a morning treat.
00:05:56
It is. It's delicious. I love it. I
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don't need to go get coffee anywhere
00:05:59
anymore cuz Ash just brings me one.
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I'm great. I'm very blessed.
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Yeah, never stressed.
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Still Still very stressed.
00:06:07
I literally as soon as I said that, I
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was like, I'm still very stressed. Still
00:06:11
the most stressed, but very blessed.
00:06:14
a whole new appreciation for baristas,
00:06:15
though, because that [ __ ] is not easy.
00:06:17
Yeah, it's not.
00:06:18
It's a science. I had to order like so
00:06:20
many accoutrements Accoutrements my
00:06:22
[ __ ] I was like, oh good, espresso
00:06:23
machine, that's it. It was like, buy
00:06:25
these other five things if you want it
00:06:27
to taste good.
00:06:27
Yeah.
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It's like it's own thing there. Yeah,
00:06:30
but my coffee bar is cute, so So that's
00:06:32
all that matters. Well, that's all the
00:06:34
good things we can think of, coffee,
00:06:36
NeeDoh, and Yeah. Matthew Lillard.
00:06:38
That's a great thing. It's a rough thing
00:06:40
sandwich, is what it is.
00:06:42
Yeah, and um we're going to be talking
00:06:45
about an unsolved murder today. This one
00:06:48
is
00:06:49
This is a very interesting case. It
00:06:52
breaks your heart on so many different
00:06:53
levels because we're going to be talking
00:06:55
about the murder of Jeanette DePalma.
00:06:58
And I do remember this one. Yeah, it
00:07:00
happened
00:07:00
it. It was like a It was like the late
00:07:03
'60s, early '70s. So I'm sure you've
00:07:05
heard it like Yeah, I remember passing
00:07:07
it. Yeah, so like I don't remember the
00:07:08
details. It's wrapped up in an era of
00:07:11
satanic panic, and that played such a
00:07:14
crucial role in this case to the point
00:07:16
where Jeanette's memory really gets lost
00:07:19
and kind of clouded Yeah, I can
00:07:22
definitely see that.
00:07:23
which is really shitty.
00:07:24
Yeah. Um but we're going to tell it
00:07:26
obviously the best we can, and Dave did
00:07:29
a really great job with this one making
00:07:30
sure to get There's so many people that
00:07:33
thought they knew Jeanette and said all
00:07:34
these things about her, but then her
00:07:36
family and close friends said things on
00:07:38
the complete opposite spectrum.
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Yeah. And obviously, they're the people
00:07:41
that really knew her, so I'm glad that
00:07:43
he was able to gather a lot more of
00:07:45
those quotes.
00:07:46
Yeah.
00:07:46
So let's get into it. Who was Jeanette
00:07:49
DePalma? She was born August 3rd, so
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she's a Leo, 1956 in Jersey City, New
00:07:55
Jersey, and she was the sixth of seven
00:07:57
children Woah. born to Florence and
00:07:59
Salvatore DePalma. Uh Florence was a
00:08:01
homemaker, and Salvatore was an auto
00:08:04
mechanic. Right around the early 1960s,
00:08:07
the family moved to Springfield
00:08:08
Township, New Jersey, which is a just a
00:08:09
quiet suburb. It's about 30 miles away
00:08:11
from New York City.
00:08:13
It seemed like a perfect place to
00:08:15
Florence and Salvatore to raise their
00:08:16
kids. It was quiet. It was far away from
00:08:19
a very increasingly violent city life.
00:08:21
One resident said there were no gangs to
00:08:23
speak of in Springfield, but there were
00:08:25
a few interesting characters in town.
00:08:27
This is iconic.
00:08:28
There was Tilly, an extremely short
00:08:31
woman with one huge breast. Oh.
00:08:33
There was the lady who swept the
00:08:34
moonbeams off her driveway all night
00:08:36
long, I'm obsessed. as well as the
00:08:38
mailman who ended up living in a
00:08:39
dumpster. Wow. I said, I love an
00:08:42
eccentric group of people.
00:08:43
Hell yeah. Sign me up.
00:08:44
Sign me up.
00:08:46
What an array there. What an array,
00:08:48
indeed.
00:08:48
a smorgasbord of humans. Yes, that's
00:08:50
That is a That's a town. That's a That's
00:08:52
a group of people.
00:08:53
It's weirdly giving like Stars Hollow.
00:08:56
Yeah. You know?
00:08:56
It really is. Yeah.
00:08:58
I I want to know more about I want to
00:09:00
know especially the the lady who's
00:09:02
sweeping moonbeams off her driveway.
00:09:04
Yeah. All night.
00:09:05
never sweep a moonbeam off my driveway.
00:09:07
Tell me a story.
00:09:09
I know.
00:09:10
So the DePalma family had always been
00:09:12
close-knit and relatively private, which
00:09:15
immediately caught their new neighbors
00:09:17
off guard. One of their former neighbors
00:09:18
said, "Something wasn't 100% right with
00:09:20
that family. They were weird."
00:09:23
And to make matters worse, by the early
00:09:25
1970s, Sal and Florence became the
00:09:27
center of several rumors around the town
00:09:29
because the police were constantly being
00:09:31
called to their house. Former Patrolman
00:09:34
Ed Kish said, "Sal and Florence would
00:09:36
get into a fight, somebody would call
00:09:37
us, but by the time we got there,
00:09:39
Florence would turn us away."
00:09:41
Sounded
00:09:42
like a lot of domestic disputes were
00:09:44
going on between the parents.
00:09:46
Rachel Sajeski, Sal and Florence's
00:09:48
granddaughter, also remembered the
00:09:49
DePalma house as one of constant turmoil
00:09:51
and chaos, and she said her grandfather
00:09:53
Sal was {quote} "rotten" to her
00:09:55
grandmother.
00:09:56
Oh. So there was a lot going on.
00:09:58
That makes me sad. Yeah, yeah. In time,
00:10:00
it wasn't just Sal and Florence that
00:10:02
fueled the rumors around town, though,
00:10:03
but the children.
00:10:04
A former teacher in town, Margaret
00:10:06
Vandrawski, said, "Judging by what I
00:10:08
heard from the other students, Jeanette
00:10:10
was a little on the wild side."
00:10:12
She acknowledged what a lot of people
00:10:14
considered wild in the '70s and late
00:10:17
'60s is pretty different from today's
00:10:19
standards. So, she added, "I don't think
00:10:21
wild meant anything other than that.
00:10:23
Jeanette was not the perfect Christian
00:10:24
child that her mother believed her to
00:10:26
be."
00:10:26
Yeah. Which like Which like Who is at
00:10:29
that age?
00:10:29
Relatively, that's not wild.
00:10:30
Exactly. Ed Kish also commented that
00:10:33
Jeanette was what they would have
00:10:35
referred to as a party girl. He said, "I
00:10:37
can recall quite a few instances where I
00:10:39
had to pull that kid out of the backseat
00:10:41
of some guy's car over at Bryant Park."
00:10:43
Oh, man. In my words, she was living her
00:10:45
best life.
00:10:46
I was going to say, you you know about
00:10:47
that.
00:10:47
She's being a teenager. Yeah. Let her
00:10:50
live. Yeah. While some of those who knew
00:10:52
Jeanette back then remember her in the
00:10:54
terms of rumors around town, those who
00:10:56
knew her best completely rejected the
00:10:58
characterization that was being painted
00:11:00
of her as like this wild party girl out
00:11:02
of control.
00:11:04
Her best friend, Gail Donahue, said, "I
00:11:06
don't think that was Jeanette at all. I
00:11:07
mean, she and I both had crushes on
00:11:09
these two Italian guys in Berkeley
00:11:10
Heights, but I wasn't even allowed to
00:11:12
date until I was 16." So, there.
00:11:14
She's like
00:11:15
Yeah. She liked people, but it wasn't
00:11:17
like that.
00:11:17
Yeah. Jeanette's sister, Cindy, was more
00:11:20
to the point in refuting the town
00:11:21
elders' opinions. In no uncertain terms,
00:11:23
she said, "This cop seems to be feeding
00:11:25
people bullshit." I love how it's just
00:11:28
like to the point.
00:11:29
Yeah, she's like No, that's just
00:11:31
[ __ ]
00:11:31
That's a bunch of [ __ ] That's a
00:11:32
sister right there.
00:11:33
That is a sister.
00:11:34
Florence, Jeanette's mother, also agreed
00:11:37
but disagreed, excuse me, with the
00:11:38
opinion that her daughter was this crazy
00:11:40
wild child. When Jeanette's body ended
00:11:42
up being found in 1972, Florence told
00:11:45
reporters, "My daughter was more a
00:11:46
Christian than anything else. I think
00:11:48
the most important thing she loved to do
00:11:50
was lead children to Jesus. She loved to
00:11:53
help the kids out with their problems."
00:11:55
Well, that sounds nice.
00:11:56
Yeah. Which I was at least partially
00:11:58
true, because when she wasn't at school,
00:12:00
Jeanette actually worked part-time at
00:12:02
the community office of the
00:12:04
uh Evangel Church in a program that was
00:12:06
supporting at-risk youth in the area.
00:12:08
Damn.
00:12:08
So, she was giving back to the
00:12:10
community.
00:12:11
And it's really [ __ ] up that
00:12:12
everybody's like, "Oh, I had to pull her
00:12:13
out of the backseat of a car and, you
00:12:15
know, I heard from other students that
00:12:17
she was so cuckoo."
00:12:18
Yeah, and it's like she was doing more
00:12:19
for her community than most teenagers
00:12:21
are, to be honest.
00:12:22
Literally helping at-risk children, but
00:12:24
okay.
00:12:24
Yeah.
00:12:25
Even Detective Sergeant Sam Calabrese,
00:12:27
the lead detective on Jeanette's case,
00:12:28
told reporters that Jeanette, quote,
00:12:30
"had no record of trouble with
00:12:31
authorities." See, so that's all just
00:12:33
like hearsay.
00:12:34
So, it's like she can't have been too
00:12:36
wild because there's literally no
00:12:38
reports.
00:12:38
Yeah. Unless she was like a
00:12:40
criminal genius, criminal mastermind out
00:12:42
here getting away with everything.
00:12:45
And also giving back to her her
00:12:47
community. At the same time. Yeah.
00:12:49
Yeah.
00:12:50
It's really unclear why the locals in
00:12:51
Springfield have such dramatically
00:12:53
different memories of Jeanette DePalma,
00:12:55
but it's very highly possible that in
00:12:57
the 50 years that have passed since her
00:12:59
murder, the rumors surrounding her death
00:13:01
have tainted the recollection of those
00:13:03
who didn't really know her very well.
00:13:05
That absolutely makes sense. And just
00:13:07
like with a lot of female victims of
00:13:09
crime at the time, people were quick to
00:13:11
question the victim's behavior Oh, yeah.
00:13:13
straight-up blame the victim for what
00:13:15
happened instead of placing the sole
00:13:17
blame on the person who committed the
00:13:18
heinous crime in the first place.
00:13:20
favorite pastime.
00:13:21
Yeah. But to those who were closest to
00:13:23
her, Jeanette was a pretty ordinary
00:13:26
teenager. Her cousin, Linda, said, "We
00:13:28
were hippie Jesus freaks who smoked
00:13:29
weed. We used to smoke and listen to
00:13:31
rock music. Janis Joplin was her
00:13:33
favorite." Damn. Hippie Jesus freaks
00:13:36
listening to rock music and smoking.
00:13:38
Like that's literally what you pretty
00:13:40
much picture for teenagers of the '60s
00:13:42
and '70s.
00:13:43
Absolutely.
00:13:44
not so much the Jesus freak part of it,
00:13:46
but honestly, probably, yeah. Fairly
00:13:48
common. Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:50
And when it came to the rumors of
00:13:52
Jeanette being promiscuous or engaging
00:13:53
in heavy drug use, people started saying
00:13:55
that kind of thing. Lisa just rejected
00:13:57
those claims with an
00:13:59
uh with an emphatic hell no.
00:14:01
Cuz like uh-uh.
00:14:03
Now, in 1970, Jeanette convinced her
00:14:05
parents to let her transfer from Union
00:14:07
Catholic School to the public school,
00:14:09
which was Jonathan Dayton High School.
00:14:11
Former teacher, Margaret Vandrawski, the
00:14:13
one we were talking about before, she
00:14:15
said, "The impression that we had was
00:14:16
that Jeanette's mother was convinced of
00:14:18
her daughter's religious nature and had
00:14:20
removed her from Union Catholic because
00:14:22
kids in the public school needed her
00:14:23
example more." Wow.
00:14:26
Which is nice, but like
00:14:28
it doesn't sound like this teacher was
00:14:30
Jeanette's teacher because she literally
00:14:32
said like, "From the account of other
00:14:33
students and the impression that I had."
00:14:36
I'm like So, did you know her firsthand?
00:14:38
like did you ever talk to her?
00:14:40
Yeah.
00:14:41
Uh it appears her memory could be
00:14:42
clouded by the passage of time because
00:14:44
she only knew Jeanette by sight and
00:14:46
reputation. And then on the flip side of
00:14:48
that coin, a close friend of Jeanette's
00:14:50
from school, Grace Petrelli DeMuro,
00:14:52
said, "She never mentioned to me that
00:14:54
she was religious or devoted to a
00:14:55
Christian lifestyle. Although, if being
00:14:57
a good Christian meant being a good
00:14:59
friend, looking out for you, helping you
00:15:01
if she could, that's what I saw." Aw,
00:15:03
that's nice.
00:15:04
Yeah. But how weird. It's so wild that a
00:15:06
lot of people are like Very conflicting
00:15:09
ideas. Complete opposite ends of the
00:15:11
spectrum, but it's the people who were
00:15:14
not close to her are like, "Oh, this
00:15:16
Want to hear this fact about Jeanette?"
00:15:18
And then the people who actually knew
00:15:19
her are like No, like
00:15:21
She was a good friend and she was pretty
00:15:23
fun to hang out with. She liked Janis
00:15:24
Joplin. She liked Janis Joplin. Like
00:15:26
that's it's like that seems more
00:15:29
the real thing. I think a lot of people
00:15:32
in town had opinions of the family as a
00:15:34
whole, and Jeanette kind of got
00:15:37
scapegoated in a way there.
00:15:38
Yep. I think so, too. And I also think,
00:15:40
and we'll come to find out, that the
00:15:42
rumors, like I said in the in the
00:15:44
beginning of this, the rumors
00:15:45
surrounding the nature of her death
00:15:47
really
00:15:48
made an imprint on people's
00:15:51
Colored in what what the image of her
00:15:54
now is.
00:15:54
Yes, exactly.
00:15:56
Since Jeanette's case gained a certain
00:15:58
amount of notoriety once details became
00:16:00
public, it's difficult to discern the
00:16:02
real Jeanette DePalma from the murder
00:16:04
victim of local legend, which is really
00:16:06
sad.
00:16:06
really sad. But relying more on the
00:16:08
information from her friends and family,
00:16:10
again, she just seemed like an ordinary
00:16:12
teenager.
00:16:13
Yeah, who was a good friend, a good
00:16:14
example, did some stuff for her
00:16:16
community, helping at-risk kids. Yeah.
00:16:19
She sounds like a cool girl. A cool
00:16:21
chick. She loved music. Like we know she
00:16:23
loved Janis Joplin. She loved clothes.
00:16:25
She was into her style. She liked boys.
00:16:27
And like other teenage girls, she
00:16:29
allowed her parents to believe the best
00:16:30
in her, even if that wasn't always what
00:16:32
was true at the time.
00:16:33
course. Who among us? Retweet. Her
00:16:36
friend, Grace, said, "The thing about
00:16:37
Jeanette was this. When you first saw
00:16:38
her, you assumed this preconceived
00:16:40
notion of her being this tough, fast,
00:16:42
wild girl. But when you would start
00:16:44
talking to her, she was so sweet,
00:16:46
honest, and funny, but she didn't take
00:16:48
anyone's crap." Good for her.
00:16:49
Yeah. [ __ ] yeah. Like maybe she had a
00:16:51
duality that literally none of you could
00:16:53
understand.
00:16:54
Yeah, maybe that's what it was.
00:16:55
Maybe she was so far ahead of her time
00:16:56
in that she could That you just couldn't
00:16:58
grasp that she could be multifaceted.
00:17:00
Exactly. She could lean on both sides of
00:17:01
her personality.
00:17:03
Well,
00:17:04
in the early summer of 1972, Jeanette's
00:17:06
cousin, Lisa, who she was always really
00:17:08
close to, ended up running away from
00:17:10
home.
00:17:11
It was not the first time that Lisa had
00:17:12
run away. So, the family assumed that
00:17:14
she would come back in a few days, and
00:17:16
they figured it was best not to tell
00:17:17
Jeanette cuz they didn't want to upset
00:17:19
her for no reason.
00:17:20
But after a month passed and Lisa still
00:17:23
hadn't returned, Sal and Florence
00:17:25
decided finally to sit Jeanette down.
00:17:27
This was on the morning of August 7th,
00:17:28
and they told her what was going on with
00:17:30
her cousin.
00:17:32
Lisa later remembered hearing about
00:17:33
Jeanette's reaction and said she was
00:17:35
pissed. She was very angry that her
00:17:37
parents had waited so long to tell her.
00:17:39
So, she left the table and stormed off
00:17:41
back to her room. Oh, man. Which like I
00:17:42
don't blame her. I'd be pissed if they
00:17:44
kept that from me.
00:17:46
But as a punishment for her behavior
00:17:48
that morning, Jeanette's mother gave her
00:17:49
additional chores to do, even though she
00:17:52
actually had plans to meet up with some
00:17:53
friends that afternoon. I think it was
00:17:55
like a
00:17:56
you know, you got an attitude thing.
00:17:57
You're You can't act like that in the
00:17:58
house.
00:17:59
you stormed off into your room. Now you
00:18:01
get an extra chore. Right. So, according
00:18:03
to her friend, Gail Donahue, their plan
00:18:05
was to meet up at Echo Lake Park with
00:18:07
two boys from school, and they'd both
00:18:09
really been looking forward to it. So,
00:18:10
Gail was upset when Jeanette called and
00:18:12
had to cancel. Gail said, "I'm not a
00:18:14
bully, but I bugged her to come over
00:18:16
because she put me in this position, and
00:18:17
she told me, 'All right, I'll hitchhike
00:18:19
over.' And that was the last time I
00:18:21
heard from her."
00:18:22
Oh, no.
00:18:23
Yeah.
00:18:24
Now, there are, again, varying accounts
00:18:26
of what happened that afternoon, but
00:18:28
they all end the same way.
00:18:30
According to Jeanette's sister, Cindy,
00:18:32
Jeanette asked her if she actually would
00:18:33
come with her to Gail's house in
00:18:35
Berkeley Heights, about 8 miles away.
00:18:37
Cindy said, "Jeanette was seeing a guy
00:18:38
named Tommy who I had never met. She
00:18:40
wanted to meet up with him at Gail's
00:18:42
house before work." At the same time,
00:18:44
though, Cindy was having trouble with
00:18:45
her own boyfriend and said she didn't
00:18:47
feel like going out, so she declined.
00:18:50
But then, on the flip side of the coin,
00:18:52
when asked about this, Gail Donahue
00:18:54
denied Cindy's version of events and
00:18:56
said she didn't remember anybody named
00:18:58
Tommy that Jeanette was seeing,
00:19:00
and said Jeanette had never said
00:19:01
anything about even bringing Cindy with
00:19:03
her this afternoon. She said Cindy was a
00:19:05
year younger, and they didn't really
00:19:07
hang out with her often. Huh. So, again,
00:19:10
Very conflicting.
00:19:11
50 years had passed by the time a lot of
00:19:12
these people started talking or
00:19:13
continued talking about this. So,
00:19:16
your memory's not going to serve you
00:19:17
perfectly well, but
00:19:18
No, I mean, no. Like my memory is
00:19:21
terrible. I barely remember what I had
00:19:22
for breakfast this morning. I could not
00:19:24
remember any kind of intricate de-
00:19:28
I don't know. Cuz I always think about
00:19:29
it, I'm like, but if it's like an event
00:19:31
like this, does it help your memory or
00:19:33
hurt it? You know what I mean? Cuz it's
00:19:34
such a tragic and
00:19:36
life- tainting event, you know?
00:19:39
Yeah. I don't know. It's just
00:19:41
interesting like
00:19:43
some people are like, "Oh, she was going
00:19:44
to meet Tommy." And then other people
00:19:46
are like, "I'd never heard of Tommy.
00:19:47
Like who are you talking about?" But who
00:19:49
knows? I mean, people have secrets that
00:19:50
we don't know about
00:19:51
That's very true. While they're living.
00:19:53
Like the memory of Jeanette herself, the
00:19:55
time that's passed has clouded a lot of
00:19:56
people's memories of the day she went
00:19:58
missing. But the details could have been
00:20:01
more important than just trivial plans
00:20:03
of teenage girls. Given the
00:20:05
circumstances in which Jeanette would be
00:20:07
found, the existence of this secret
00:20:09
boyfriend actually could have been a
00:20:10
pretty significant piece of the puzzle.
00:20:12
Yeah. But unfortunately, throughout the
00:20:14
investigation and the years that
00:20:15
followed, no one could actually settle
00:20:17
on whether or not she had a boyfriend.
00:20:19
Ah,
00:20:20
that's so hard cuz it's like
00:20:22
you want like it makes
00:20:24
I get so scared of like teenage years
00:20:26
with you know what I mean? Cuz you're
00:20:28
like you want to maintain such
00:20:30
consistent communication, but sometimes
00:20:32
kids throw up roadblocks.
00:20:34
Oh, and they can shut you out
00:20:35
completely.
00:20:35
shut you right out and that's like my
00:20:37
biggest fear.
00:20:38
It's like not having that consistent
00:20:39
line of communication where they feel
00:20:41
like they can tell you anything. I think
00:20:43
luckily the these days you're in a lot
00:20:45
better of a situation because the amount
00:20:46
of [ __ ] you can put on those kids now.
00:20:48
you can track their ass everywhere. I
00:20:50
like what parents in the 60s and 70s,
00:20:52
how the [ __ ] did they do it?
00:20:54
it was the wild west out there.
00:20:55
Cuz if your kid wasn't telling you what
00:20:57
they were going or saying, "Oh, I'm
00:20:58
going to go do this." But actually they
00:20:59
went and did that, which how many of us
00:21:01
do as teenagers?
00:21:02
Oh, yeah. They were it's like they just
00:21:04
went around the dark side of the moon.
00:21:06
You just lost communication and
00:21:08
hopefully comes back.
00:21:09
You can't see them, can't hear them, and
00:21:11
you're just like, "Oh, I hope they come
00:21:12
around the other way."
00:21:13
Yeah, it's scary.
00:21:13
Yeah. But those that believe Jeanette
00:21:16
did have a boyfriend at this time
00:21:18
couldn't remember a name or any details.
00:21:20
Mhm. Which, you know, doesn't help.
00:21:22
No. So anyway, after finishing her
00:21:24
chores that afternoon, Jeanette told her
00:21:26
parents that she was scheduled to work a
00:21:28
shift that night. And she made another
00:21:30
call to one of her friends and then
00:21:31
grabbed her purse, told her mom she was
00:21:33
going to walk the 3 miles to the train
00:21:34
station in Summit and had to work. Okay.
00:21:37
From there, she actually planned to take
00:21:39
the train to Berkeley Heights to go see
00:21:41
Gail to follow through on their plan.
00:21:43
Which, you know, Florence obviously
00:21:45
didn't know. She was concerned enough
00:21:47
about her daughter walking the 3 miles
00:21:49
to the station by herself, but she did
00:21:51
agree to let her go.
00:21:52
Had she known that Jeanette's actual
00:21:54
plan was to hitchhike to Gail's house,
00:21:56
obviously Florence never would have let
00:21:57
Jeanette leave the house that day.
00:22:00
Now, one of the last people believed to
00:22:02
have seen Jeanette that day was her
00:22:03
friend Donna, I believe it's Balatis,
00:22:05
who lived a few houses down. According
00:22:07
to Donna's husband now, John Resensky,
00:22:10
Jeanette stopped at the house on her way
00:22:12
to Berkeley Heights and tried to get
00:22:14
Donna to go with her.
00:22:15
He said Jeanette was having a fight with
00:22:17
her boyfriend and was looking for a ride
00:22:18
somewhere.
00:22:20
According to Resensky,
00:22:22
Jeanette even went so far as to ask
00:22:24
Donna's mother for a ride, which
00:22:26
Jeanette's friends later said would have
00:22:27
been pretty unlikely because I guess
00:22:29
Donna's parents didn't really like
00:22:31
Jeanette. Oh, okay. But whatever the
00:22:33
case, Donna's mother refused. So
00:22:34
Jeanette left the Balatis house and
00:22:36
continued down the road in the direction
00:22:38
of Berkeley Heights
00:22:39
Okay. intending to continue hitchhiking.
00:22:42
Mhm. Later that night, several hours
00:22:44
after Jeanette should have returned
00:22:45
home, Sal and Florence DePalma started
00:22:48
to worry because she wasn't in the habit
00:22:50
of coming home late regardless of where
00:22:51
she had been. And on the occasions where
00:22:53
she would have been late, she always
00:22:55
called them.
00:22:56
So after a few hours of waiting, they
00:22:58
decided it was time to start reaching
00:23:00
out to some of Jeanette's friends and
00:23:01
classmates to find out if anybody had
00:23:03
seen her or heard from her that
00:23:04
afternoon.
00:23:05
But none of the people they spoke to had
00:23:07
heard from Jeanette at all. Oh. Now,
00:23:09
when their phone calls failed to produce
00:23:11
any information, the DePalmas gave in
00:23:13
and they reported Jeanette missing to
00:23:15
the Springfield police.
00:23:16
To their surprise though, they were told
00:23:18
that they would have to wait a full 24
00:23:21
hours before reporting their daughter
00:23:22
missing. That's
00:23:24
that's wild to me. Nothing about that
00:23:26
makes sense.
00:23:27
No. Ed Kish said it was strange how
00:23:29
runaway situations were not handled the
00:23:31
same way back then as they are today.
00:23:33
Back then, runaways did not garner much
00:23:35
attention because they left willingly
00:23:36
and running away from home wasn't a
00:23:38
criminal offense.
00:23:40
That's so scary. Just like so many
00:23:42
aspects of the case, there are also
00:23:43
discrepancies around the DePalmas call
00:23:45
to the police.
00:23:47
Sal and Florence maintained that they
00:23:48
reported their daughter missing when
00:23:51
they called the police. But according to
00:23:53
several retired Springfield police
00:23:55
officers who were with the department at
00:23:56
the time, Sal and Florence quote claimed
00:23:59
that Jeanette had run away when they
00:24:01
reported her missing. Oh. So there's
00:24:03
major discrepancies there.
00:24:04
Yeah, and it's like where's the record?
00:24:06
Exactly. Where any of the records?
00:24:08
That's a big question.
00:24:09
That's the thing. Clearly the rumors
00:24:11
around town about the DePalma family and
00:24:13
Jeanette's behavior started affecting
00:24:14
the case almost immediately.
00:24:16
Even as they took down the report, the
00:24:18
responding officers noted that Sal and
00:24:20
Florence were giving short and vague
00:24:23
answers.
00:24:24
Former officer Don Schwartz said, "There
00:24:26
was talk in the station house that they
00:24:28
weren't very cooperative. It was like
00:24:29
let's keep this quiet and not be out in
00:24:31
the public with it. The family didn't
00:24:33
really come out right away and give
00:24:34
interviews or anything as far as I know
00:24:36
at least."
00:24:36
Okay. Which is like they don't have to.
00:24:39
Maybe they don't want to. Also, they're
00:24:41
already the center of a lot of rumors in
00:24:44
town. This is probably the last thing
00:24:45
that they want getting out is that their
00:24:46
daughter's now missing. You know, like
00:24:49
you're going to the police, the people
00:24:50
who are going to help you here
00:24:52
and hoping for the best.
00:24:54
I'm sure they don't want to just fuel
00:24:56
it. Mhm. And you don't know what you
00:24:59
would do unless you're in that position.
00:25:01
Yeah, and also at the time of Jeanette's
00:25:03
disappearance, again like late 60s,
00:25:04
early 70s, parents weren't encouraged to
00:25:07
react as quickly as they would be today.
00:25:10
And it wasn't customary for ordinary
00:25:12
people to reach out to the media and
00:25:13
arrange press conferences or other media
00:25:15
events.
00:25:15
different now.
00:25:16
That's something that happens more often
00:25:18
now. Yeah. But of course, even though
00:25:20
the the behavior of parents in the wake
00:25:22
of their kids' disappearances always
00:25:23
pretty relevant to investigators, we all
00:25:26
know that people deal with stress in
00:25:27
different ways. It's so tough.
00:25:29
It doesn't always seem rational. It
00:25:30
doesn't always make sense, but it
00:25:32
doesn't mean they're guilty always.
00:25:34
the thing. It's like
00:25:35
it is 100% human nature, not a great
00:25:38
part of human nature, to look at how
00:25:41
somebody's reacting to something and
00:25:43
deduce what you will deduce from it.
00:25:45
That is human nature.
00:25:46
Nobody's a bad person for, you know,
00:25:48
being like I don't know. They seem We
00:25:50
all do it. We all do it. Again, not our
00:25:54
best our best, you know, little quirk
00:25:56
that we have as a species, but there it
00:25:58
is. But also we know that it is not
00:26:02
always helpful and it is not not always
00:26:04
indicative of what they are actually
00:26:06
feeling. People in shock act crazy.
00:26:10
Mhm. They will just straight up shut
00:26:12
down and it looks like nothing is
00:26:14
bothering them when in fact their entire
00:26:17
nervous system has just gone into orbit.
00:26:19
really just the body's response to this
00:26:21
trauma.
00:26:22
Because our bodies self-preserve in
00:26:24
these situations. We're designed to do
00:26:27
that.
00:26:27
We are. And everybody's body does it a
00:26:29
little different or they react to it a
00:26:31
little different or they allow their
00:26:32
body to do it in a certain way. Right.
00:26:35
So it's like
00:26:36
I know it's easy to do that and again,
00:26:38
human nature. And sometimes it's dead
00:26:39
on. Oh, yeah. Sometimes how they react
00:26:42
to it and you go that's [ __ ] up and
00:26:43
then yeah, it was [ __ ] up.
00:26:45
can't be the only thing we rely on.
00:26:47
Chris Watts is a perfect example.
00:26:49
Haunting.
00:26:49
I watched that man's haunting [ __ ]
00:26:52
little interviews and I said that man
00:26:55
knows something. Yeah. I knew it the
00:26:57
second there is a science to some things
00:26:59
like you know, body language and all
00:27:01
that ticks that people do. But it's such
00:27:04
a tight it's a
00:27:05
it's a dangerous and tight line to walk.
00:27:08
Yeah, for sure. Exactly.
00:27:10
I'll get off my soapbox now. I know,
00:27:12
it's it's it's that's not even a
00:27:13
soapbox. I feel like
00:27:14
No, it's just and it comes up a lot.
00:27:16
straight up. Yeah.
00:27:17
But regardless of how cooperative
00:27:19
Springfield police remember Sal and
00:27:21
Florence being at the time, they were
00:27:22
never considered suspects and no one
00:27:24
investigation-wise ever really thought
00:27:26
they had anything to do
00:27:28
So that tells you anything they they
00:27:30
weren't the reason that their daughter
00:27:32
ran away.
00:27:32
they knew anything.
00:27:33
Exactly.
00:27:34
Yeah.
00:27:34
The rumors about the DePalma family also
00:27:36
might have contributed to the relatively
00:27:38
underwhelming response from the
00:27:40
community once word got out that
00:27:42
Jeanette was missing. That's pretty
00:27:44
shameful.
00:27:44
It's really sad.
00:27:45
That's pretty [ __ ] shameful of the
00:27:47
community. She's a teenager. That
00:27:49
literally just missing. disappeared into
00:27:51
thin air. And then when you find out
00:27:53
what did happen to her, you're like,
00:27:55
"Cool that nobody was searching."
00:27:57
Yeah.
00:27:58
Years later, William
00:28:01
Nelson said, "It was my understanding
00:28:03
that Jeanette just ran away." assumed or
00:28:05
had heard that Jeanette ran away rather
00:28:07
than she actually disappeared.
00:28:09
Yeah. Mary Starr, another neighbor at
00:28:11
the time, heard the news framed in
00:28:12
similar terms. She said, "I did hear the
00:28:14
rumor that Jeanette was running away.
00:28:16
Jeanette would not have surprised me if
00:28:17
she had run away from home. Jeanette
00:28:19
would have been more inclined to go
00:28:20
against her parents, I think." Huh. See,
00:28:23
even more
00:28:25
more mystery. Cuz it's like
00:28:27
everyone's got a different idea of what
00:28:29
she would or wouldn't have done. Even if
00:28:31
it was a case which I'll tell you right
00:28:33
up at the top, it's not. She didn't run
00:28:35
away. That's not what was happening.
00:28:37
But it's like so many people could have
00:28:39
pictured her running away.
00:28:40
Yeah, it's just very
00:28:42
I just feel bad that she's been
00:28:43
categorized in such a way after she's
00:28:46
unable to defend herself.
00:28:48
And especially when like you don't know
00:28:49
who she is. Yeah, and when it's clear
00:28:51
that like obviously she was dealing with
00:28:53
a lot at home. I mean, the like no
00:28:55
matter what, the police were getting
00:28:56
called to that house frequently and
00:28:57
she's, you know, like their own
00:28:59
granddaughter said that Sal was pretty
00:29:02
awful to Florence.
00:29:03
Yeah, like that's She was seeing that
00:29:04
and dealing with that. You should have
00:29:06
empathy for her. Yeah, and it doesn't
00:29:08
really seem like
00:29:09
a lot of people did at all.
00:29:10
She's a child. She's still a kid.
00:29:13
And like this is a teenager. No matter
00:29:15
what, she's troubled if that's going on.
00:29:17
And if that's the case, then she does
00:29:18
need help and everybody needs to be
00:29:20
cuz no matter what, even if she did run
00:29:22
away, she could still be in danger. Like
00:29:24
she's a kid on the run.
00:29:25
Absolutely. Yeah.
00:29:27
It's unclear why rumors of Jeanette
00:29:29
having run away persisted as long as
00:29:31
they did. According to authors Mark
00:29:33
Moran and Jessie [ __ ] Florence and
00:29:35
Salvatore DePalma made no reference to
00:29:37
Jeanette having run away during several
00:29:39
interviews that they gave to the
00:29:40
Elizabeth Daily Journal and the Newark
00:29:42
Star-Ledger, each time insisting that
00:29:44
their daughter had simply left home to
00:29:46
visit her friend in Berkeley Heights.
00:29:49
But either way, the rumors absolutely
00:29:51
affected the response to her
00:29:52
disappearance. After several days passed
00:29:55
with no word from Jeanette or the
00:29:57
Springfield
00:29:58
Police Department either. Like they
00:29:59
called, reported their daughter missing.
00:30:02
The Springfield Police Department said,
00:30:03
"Okay, you have to wait a full 24 hours
00:30:05
before we're going to do anything about
00:30:06
this." And then more days passed and
00:30:09
they didn't do anything.
00:30:11
It makes no sense. So Sal and Florence
00:30:13
ended up organizing their own search
00:30:15
party for their daughter. But by then it
00:30:17
was too late.
00:30:17
Yeah. Which is like The first 48 hours
00:30:20
are like the most That's why that always
00:30:22
astounded me that it was like we have to
00:30:23
wait 24 Let's cut that in half.
00:30:25
Yeah. Let's Let's cut our time that we
00:30:27
could find them in half.
00:30:28
When do you know when that was that they
00:30:29
established that the first 48 are the
00:30:31
most crucial? It had to have been after
00:30:33
this time period because clearly nobody
00:30:35
was following it. Cuz that's actually
00:30:37
such a good point.
00:30:38
Yeah.
00:30:38
Cuz you're literally just chopping it in
00:30:40
half.
00:30:40
Throwing those 24 hours to the wind. So
00:30:43
this is
00:30:43
this is according to Google's AI. There
00:30:46
isn't a single definitive date marking
00:30:47
when the first 48 hours concept was
00:30:49
established as crucial in
00:30:50
investigations, but it's generally
00:30:52
considered to have gained widespread
00:30:54
recognition and application with police
00:30:55
practices over the course of the late
00:30:57
20th century. Due to advancements in
00:30:59
forensic science That makes sense. and
00:31:01
investigative techniques that
00:31:02
highlighted the importance of immediate
00:31:05
evidence collection in the initial
00:31:07
stages of a crime investigation.
00:31:08
the beginning they were like
00:31:10
like that it became that it came to a
00:31:11
point where they were like
00:31:13
[ __ ] we should probably pay attention.
00:31:15
It would be awesome if we collected
00:31:17
evidence right away. Now. Like it's just
00:31:21
like who came who was like who was like
00:31:23
light bulb moment?
00:31:25
Whoa, if evidence doesn't get to be
00:31:27
disturbed and decayed, it might be more
00:31:29
helpful. We might do better at this.
00:31:32
Who Who Who
00:31:34
before that was like we should just let
00:31:36
evidence get tainted for a little while.
00:31:38
Yeah. And then we can just work harder
00:31:40
to try to figure out who did it.
00:31:41
A lot of people actually. A lot of
00:31:44
people were in that boat. Like what an
00:31:46
aha in that boat I meant to say. What an
00:31:48
aha moment for that person to be like,
00:31:50
"Wow, the earlier we do this, the easier
00:31:52
our job is." And the funniest thing to
00:31:54
think about too is that not funny but
00:31:56
like ironic that they were probably met
00:31:58
with pushback. 100%. It's like the first
00:32:01
person who was like, "Hey, we should
00:32:03
wash our hands if we work in a
00:32:04
hospital." And people were like throw
00:32:06
that guy in jail.
00:32:07
It's a [ __ ] crazy person. He wants us
00:32:09
to wash our hands.
00:32:11
Well, this is about to take a very I
00:32:13
mean it's already very sad, but it's
00:32:14
about to take an even sadder turn.
00:32:16
So on the morning of September 19th, a
00:32:19
resident of the newly built Baltusrol
00:32:21
Gardens, I looked up how to say that, so
00:32:23
don't come at me. It was an apartment
00:32:24
complex. One of the residents opened the
00:32:26
back door to her apartment for her dog
00:32:28
who immediately darted out of the
00:32:30
apartment in the direction of a nearby
00:32:32
quarry.
00:32:33
Unbeknownst to its owner, that dog would
00:32:36
return a short time later carrying in
00:32:38
its mouth a badly decomposed human arm,
00:32:41
which it dropped in the yard just before
00:32:43
heading back into the apartment. Holy
00:32:45
[ __ ]
00:32:46
Again, unbeknownst to the owner.
00:32:49
Oh my god. Just moments after the dog
00:32:51
had entered the apartment, the building
00:32:53
superintendent stepped outside and made
00:32:55
her way down the steps onto the lawn,
00:32:57
where she then found the arm lying in
00:32:59
the grass.
00:33:01
Officer Don Schwart recalled, "The call
00:33:02
came in around 11:00. Dispatch radioed
00:33:05
me that this woman had found an arm on
00:33:06
the lawn of her apartment complex where
00:33:08
she lived. I honestly thought it was a
00:33:10
prank. I figured it was going to be a
00:33:11
mannequin's arm because this lady was
00:33:13
always being harassed by a few kids that
00:33:15
lived in that apartment complex. But
00:33:17
when he arrived at the complex, he
00:33:19
quickly realized that this was not any
00:33:21
kind of prank. He said, "I looked at it
00:33:23
and I said to myself, this is human. I
00:33:25
could see the fingernails and the color
00:33:27
of the skin."
00:33:28
Oh my god.
00:33:29
So Officer Schwart grabbed his camera
00:33:31
and took several photos of the arm
00:33:33
before returning to the car to report
00:33:35
that what he had found and requested
00:33:37
additional officers be dispatched to the
00:33:38
scene ASAP.
00:33:40
The superintendent told the officers she
00:33:42
thought it was entirely likely that her
00:33:45
dog, who she also let out earlier that
00:33:47
morning, had found the arm in the woods
00:33:49
and brought it back to the yard. But
00:33:51
when the officers saw the dog, they knew
00:33:53
that probably wasn't what what had
00:33:55
happened. Schwart said, "The lady
00:33:56
brought me over to a puppy."
00:33:58
So he he didn't think that that puppy
00:34:01
would have been able to carry the arm
00:34:02
most likely. Okay. I guess. Yeah.
00:34:05
Although it was unlikely that her dog
00:34:06
had found the arm, the notion that a dog
00:34:09
had found it and dropped it in the yard
00:34:11
did seem like the most likely scenario.
00:34:13
So the officers went door to door
00:34:15
looking for other large dogs until they
00:34:17
finally found one resident with a large
00:34:19
Dalmatian. Schwart said, "That tenant
00:34:21
told me she had let her dog out to run
00:34:23
earlier that morning and we we
00:34:24
determined that this Dalmatian had most
00:34:27
likely brought the arm home from
00:34:28
wherever it had been roaming." Okay. So
00:34:30
the officers packed the arm into a
00:34:32
cardboard box and returned to the
00:34:33
station. All of them considering whether
00:34:36
or not they just found Jeanette DePalma,
00:34:38
part of Jeanette DePalma.
00:34:40
That afternoon, the on-duty members of
00:34:42
the Springfield Police Department broke
00:34:43
up into small teams and they started
00:34:45
combing the wooded area behind and
00:34:47
around the apartment complex, including
00:34:49
the Houdaille Quarry.
00:34:51
Located a short distance from the
00:34:52
apartment complex, the Houdaille Quarry
00:34:54
was this large open area that actually
00:34:57
at the time was being mined for
00:34:59
greenockite, which is a mineral a
00:35:01
mineral rich with cadmium, I think it
00:35:04
is. Okay. It was also a spot known to be
00:35:06
popular with teenagers and other locals,
00:35:09
including the Springfield Police who
00:35:10
actually used the area for target
00:35:12
practice. Oh. Schwart said, "We were
00:35:14
over by the quarry searching the bed
00:35:15
that had been laid out for Interstate 78
00:35:18
when we found the upper portion of the
00:35:20
arm."
00:35:21
So they found the other part of it. Once
00:35:24
they found the upper portion of the arm,
00:35:25
investigators assumed that the rest of
00:35:27
the remains couldn't be far. So they
00:35:29
spread out across the quarry and kept on
00:35:31
searching.
00:35:33
A little after 6:00 p.m., remember that
00:35:35
arm was found earlier in the morning at
00:35:37
about 11:00. It took them until 6:00
00:35:39
p.m.
00:35:40
Schwart and one of the other officers
00:35:42
found Jeanette's badly decomposed body
00:35:44
about 400 yards from the road at the top
00:35:47
of a steep cliff that the locals
00:35:49
referred to as the Devil's Teeth.
00:35:52
So that ended up gaining a lot of
00:35:54
traction later, even though it's
00:35:57
literally just a made-up name for a
00:35:59
[ __ ] cliff Yep. by locals. Wow.
00:36:03
Jeanette's body was laying face down at
00:36:05
the top of the steep incline just a few
00:36:07
feet from the edge actually.
00:36:09
She was found fully clothed in a blue
00:36:10
T-shirt and tan pants and a pair of
00:36:12
flip-flops were lying on the ground
00:36:14
nearby.
00:36:15
Schwart said, "I immediately remembered
00:36:17
that this was the description of the
00:36:18
clothing Jeanette DePalma was wearing on
00:36:20
the day she went missing."
00:36:21
Also on the ground near the body was a
00:36:23
woman's pocketbook. Detectives at the
00:36:25
scene opened it hoping that they might
00:36:27
find something inside to identify the
00:36:28
body, but it contained nothing of note.
00:36:30
Okay. Jeanette's remains had been
00:36:32
exposed to the element at that point
00:36:37
Six weeks had gone by.
00:36:39
Wow. So they were badly decomposed by
00:36:41
the time they were discovered. Remember,
00:36:43
she went missing in August.
00:36:45
Holy [ __ ]
00:36:45
Yeah.
00:36:46
To make matters worse, the parts of the
00:36:48
body that were uncovered, primarily her
00:36:50
feet, ankles, and head, had been eaten
00:36:52
away by animals and insect activity.
00:36:55
Other than that, there were no apparent
00:36:57
signs of trauma or an immediately
00:36:59
recognizable cause of death at that
00:37:01
point. But still in a press conference
00:37:03
the following day, Assistant Union
00:37:05
County Prosecutor Michael Mitsner told
00:37:07
reporters, "Jeanette's death is being
00:37:09
treated as a homicide by the police."
00:37:11
But they confirmed they had no leads.
00:37:14
Zero.
00:37:15
Of all the details of the case that are
00:37:17
shrouded in rumor and myth, none are
00:37:19
more heavily debated and controversial
00:37:22
than the scene where Jeanette's body was
00:37:24
found.
00:37:25
According to Don Schwart, "There was a
00:37:27
wooden cross over her head that was made
00:37:28
out of two sticks. There were also some
00:37:30
stones arranged around the top of her
00:37:32
head in the shape of a semi semicircle,
00:37:35
almost like a halo." Okay.
00:37:37
Which would have been strange.
00:37:38
Absolutely. Schwart was just one of the
00:37:40
officers at the scene who found the
00:37:42
arrangement of sticks and rocks to
00:37:43
appear intentional. To Howard Thompson,
00:37:46
who arrived at the top of the hill
00:37:47
shortly Schwart, the objects around
00:37:49
Jeanette's body looked like {quote}
00:37:51
"witchcraft."
00:37:52
Oh.
00:37:53
Personally, I don't know any witches
00:37:55
that do anything like that, but okay.
00:37:58
A few minutes later, a number of
00:37:59
detectives arrived at the top of the
00:38:01
hill and effectively took over the
00:38:02
investigation from that point forward.
00:38:05
Schwart said, "Once the detective bureau
00:38:06
came on the scene, we were pushed aside
00:38:08
and everything became secretive. They
00:38:10
treated the rest of us patrolmen like a
00:38:11
bunch of dunces."
00:38:14
Anyway, Silence is deafening. Yeah.
00:38:16
Because of the steep incline, detectives
00:38:18
opted to remove Jeanette's remains by
00:38:20
using a stretcher lowered down the cliff
00:38:22
face by means of a rope and pulley
00:38:24
system. So this was tough. Yeah. Once on
00:38:26
the ground, Dr. Bernard Ehrenberg
00:38:28
pronounced the victim dead and the body
00:38:30
was taken by ambulance to Sullivan
00:38:32
Funeral Home for an autopsy.
00:38:34
During the autopsy the following day,
00:38:36
Dr. Ehrenberg had the body x-rayed for
00:38:38
any evidence of bone fractures or any
00:38:40
other skeletal damage, but it seemed
00:38:42
like there was none.
00:38:44
There also appeared to be no external
00:38:46
signs of physical trauma. There's no
00:38:48
bullet hole, no knife wound that they
00:38:49
found. So ultimately Ehrenberg concluded
00:38:52
that the body was too badly decomposed
00:38:54
to determine the cause of death. That
00:38:56
sucks. But suspected that strangulation
00:38:59
could have been the cause.
00:39:00
Okay.
00:39:01
That evening, Jeanette's body was
00:39:03
identified by a dental comparison, which
00:39:05
is just
00:39:07
whenever that happens, that adds such a
00:39:09
layer of like
00:39:12
sadness.
00:39:13
Well, like the reason I said that sucks
00:39:14
is like just to not know what happened
00:39:16
to her and like her family, Absolutely.
00:39:19
And that must be tough. To not have it
00:39:21
be 100% concrete.
00:39:23
Yeah, you just don't know. You're just
00:39:24
left to wonder. You'd wonder for the
00:39:26
rest of your life, exactly.
00:39:28
Now according to Ed Kish, the autopsy
00:39:30
was poorly performed by Dr. Ehrenberg,
00:39:33
who Kish felt was not trained or
00:39:34
experienced enough to conduct
00:39:36
pathological exams. Oh, good. Yeah,
00:39:38
awesome.
00:39:39
That's great. Kish said, "Bernie
00:39:40
Ehrenberg was not competent enough as
00:39:42
far as I'm concerned to have been
00:39:44
conducting forensic autopsies." Wow. And
00:39:47
he might have been right because it does
00:39:48
appear that the autopsy wasn't held to
00:39:50
any rigid standards and a lot of the
00:39:53
samples and tests conducted at the time
00:39:55
have since been lost.
00:39:57
Wow. Like completely lost.
00:39:59
how that happens. So there's no hope of
00:40:01
determining whether she had, you know,
00:40:03
drugs in her system, alcohol in her
00:40:05
system, anything like that at the time
00:40:06
of her death. Wow.
00:40:07
not saying like that she did drugs, but
00:40:10
But you don't know if somebody like
00:40:10
poisoned She was poisoned. Yeah,
00:40:12
exactly. drugged her, did anything like
00:40:13
that.
00:40:14
Exactly. There's that's a huge piece of
00:40:16
the puzzle missing.
00:40:17
How do you lose samples like that?
00:40:20
Couldn't tell you. We couldn't if we
00:40:22
tried.
00:40:23
In the morgue. We couldn't have lost
00:40:25
that [ __ ] if we tried. Yeah. Well, in
00:40:28
the absence of any evidence or viable
00:40:30
leads, the investigation and press
00:40:31
coverage quickly turned to the more
00:40:33
sensational and dubious aspects of the
00:40:36
case.
00:40:37
Within a week of the discovery, the
00:40:38
local press started reporting that the
00:40:40
police were, quote, "investigating the
00:40:42
possibility that black witchcraft and
00:40:44
Satan worship were involved in
00:40:46
Jeanette's death."
00:40:48
Or you could just look for a murderer.
00:40:51
Yeah. You could do that.
00:40:52
Because usually that's who kills people.
00:40:56
I mean, 99.99999,
00:40:59
if not 100% of the time,
00:41:02
it's a murderer.
00:41:03
who murders people. It's not a
00:41:05
ritualistic sacrifice. It's not
00:41:08
just they want to murder somebody.
00:41:09
hiding in the woods. It's not the devil
00:41:12
reincarnate. It's When had how many
00:41:15
like how many times has it been a random
00:41:18
witch coven hiding in the woods that has
00:41:21
been responsible for a murder? I would
00:41:23
say approximately zero.
00:41:24
Like let's let's be like real here.
00:41:26
Like be so for real right now.
00:41:27
Like be so for real and start looking at
00:41:30
actual suspects instead of this
00:41:32
[ __ ]
00:41:32
That did not happen. This is only going
00:41:34
to get
00:41:35
why this is unsolved is exactly why. Oh,
00:41:38
just wait. Just wait. It's exactly why.
00:41:41
According to one article in the Daily
00:41:43
Journal of Elizabeth, searchers who
00:41:44
found the girl's body said pieces of
00:41:46
wood were crossed on the ground over her
00:41:48
head and more wood framed the body like
00:41:50
a coffin.
00:41:52
No one ever said that.
00:41:53
just going to say, where did that come
00:41:54
from?
00:41:55
These rumors and reports were often
00:41:57
contrasted with quotes from Jeanette's
00:41:58
own parents describing their daughter as
00:42:00
somebody who, quote, "tried to lead
00:42:01
others to Jesus."
00:42:03
The black magic angle, though, was
00:42:05
quickly associated with the murders of
00:42:07
the List family in nearby Westfield,
00:42:09
which had happened less than a year
00:42:11
earlier. In that case, if you're not
00:42:13
familiar, five members of the List
00:42:14
family were shot and killed by the the
00:42:16
father of the family, John List, who
00:42:18
went on the run after committing those
00:42:19
murders.
00:42:21
In the search of the List home,
00:42:23
investigators found a, quote, "number of
00:42:25
books on witchcraft" in 16-year-old
00:42:27
Susan List's bedroom and were, quote,
00:42:29
"trying to determine if the crimes had
00:42:31
any link to a coven or witchcraft group
00:42:34
thought to exist in that area."
00:42:36
Nope, just her mentally ill father.
00:42:39
Yeah, and it's like killed the entire
00:42:40
family. Like let's not make a joke of
00:42:42
it.
00:42:43
Because you're being like, "Oh, it's got
00:42:44
to be witches."
00:42:45
Must be witches. It's just it's usually
00:42:47
just a man.
00:42:48
It's usually just a man and like that's
00:42:50
statistically true. Like can we stop
00:42:53
with like the
00:42:54
the fakery here?
00:42:56
It doesn't help anything. It makes cases
00:42:58
like this remain unsolved for decades.
00:43:02
of it all. And it makes their family and
00:43:03
their loved ones
00:43:05
have to wait wait for so long, if
00:43:08
forever, to get answers. When they could
00:43:10
have got It's just makes me mad. Like do
00:43:12
actual detective work. Yeah. Stop
00:43:14
looking to the forces of the dark world.
00:43:17
That's silly. And there's no time for
00:43:19
silly. No.
00:43:20
Like come on. Silliness is for fiction
00:43:23
stories.
00:43:24
Now, any belief that Jeanette's death
00:43:26
was related to the List case would soon
00:43:27
be abandoned, but the witchcraft angle
00:43:30
would remain the central piece of this
00:43:32
case.
00:43:33
And that's where we get to the satanic
00:43:35
panic of it all. So let's talk about
00:43:36
that for a little bit.
00:43:38
Throughout the '80s and early '90s, a
00:43:40
wave of what we now refer to as satanic
00:43:42
panic swept across North America, fueled
00:43:45
almost entirely by rumors and widespread
00:43:47
religious fears.
00:43:49
In a very broad sense, satanic panic was
00:43:51
what's known as moral panic or this
00:43:54
widely shared fear among a group or
00:43:55
society that some negative influence
00:43:58
poses a threat to the safety and
00:43:59
well-being of one particular group. In
00:44:02
this case, apparently New Jersey. Yeah.
00:44:04
The majority of New Jersey. Just New
00:44:06
Jersey. The majority of these panics
00:44:08
usually surround kids or young adults
00:44:11
and they tend to come out during times
00:44:12
of generational shifts and social
00:44:14
transformations.
00:44:16
In the case of satanic panic in North
00:44:18
America, rumors and false reports of
00:44:20
these ritualistic child abuse at schools
00:44:23
and day care centers fueled the belief
00:44:26
that secret groups of witches and devil
00:44:28
worshipers existed across America and
00:44:30
were involving young people in their
00:44:32
rituals for evil purposes.
00:44:34
Yeah, for sure. We found that to be the
00:44:35
case in a lot of a lot of these Yeah.
00:44:38
cases, right? Even though there was
00:44:39
actually no evidence of any such groups
00:44:42
or activities existing in the US and
00:44:45
tons of tons of people were swept up in
00:44:47
false and completely outrageous claims
00:44:49
that in some cases led innocent people
00:44:52
to become outcasts in their community or
00:44:54
led people to even be jailed for long
00:44:56
periods of time based on rumors and lies
00:44:59
and just Tom [ __ ] foolery.
00:45:02
Ridiculous. Be so for real.
00:45:04
Yeah.
00:45:05
Now, the origin of the satanic panic of
00:45:07
the 1980s is actually most often traced
00:45:09
back to the book Michelle Remembers,
00:45:12
which was a supposedly true account of
00:45:14
satanic ritual abuse, which was
00:45:16
published in 1980.
00:45:18
And while it's true that Michelle
00:45:19
Remembers kicked off the widespread
00:45:21
fears of ritual abuse, it's fair to say
00:45:23
that the roots of the panic can also be
00:45:25
found in America's suburbs in the 1970s.
00:45:29
According to the independent scholar
00:45:30
Sarah Hughes, the panic was part of a
00:45:32
backlash to social movements in the late
00:45:34
1960s and '70s that challenged white
00:45:37
patriarchal norms. Mhm. In simple terms,
00:45:40
to older generations, the culture among
00:45:42
young people in the '60s and early '70s
00:45:45
was so foreign and posed such an
00:45:47
existential threat that they just had to
00:45:49
attribute it to some outside nefarious
00:45:51
dark influence.
00:45:53
And theories about this supposedly evil
00:45:55
influence reached into suburban homes
00:45:57
were ultimately supported by the release
00:45:59
of movies like Rosemary's Baby, The
00:46:01
Exorcist, the whole nine. Yeah.
00:46:04
Just basically depicted the lives of
00:46:06
ordinary Americans being upended by
00:46:07
witchcraft, satanic influence, and
00:46:09
demons. Demons.
00:46:12
It's never a demon.
00:46:13
In suburban New Jersey, it wasn't just
00:46:15
the discovery of Susan List's books
00:46:17
about witchcraft that ultimately took
00:46:19
Jeanette DePalma's case in a strange
00:46:20
direction. The books were part of a
00:46:22
series of events, actually, that spurred
00:46:25
the fears of Satanism in this area.
00:46:27
Because the year before Jeanette's
00:46:29
death, the drowning death of 20-year-old
00:46:32
Patrick Newell in Vineland, New Jersey,
00:46:34
about an hour south of Springfield,
00:46:36
shocked the region when it was initially
00:46:38
reported on.
00:46:39
The case prompted one reporter to ask,
00:46:41
"Is it really possible that the pleasant
00:46:43
town of 48,000 people could harbor Satan
00:46:46
cults?"
00:46:48
Wow. No.
00:46:50
The answer is no. Well, the reason she
00:46:52
they asked that is because early in the
00:46:53
summer of 1971, Patrick's body was
00:46:56
discovered floating in a pond in
00:46:57
Millville, New Jersey. His hand and feet
00:47:00
were bound with adhesive tape and upon
00:47:02
investigation, two of Patrick's closest
00:47:04
friends,
00:47:05
Richard Williams and Wayne Schwaitzer,
00:47:07
told police that Patrick Newell, quote,
00:47:10
"belonged to a Satan worshiper sect" and
00:47:12
felt that he had to die violently in
00:47:14
order to be put in charge of 40 leagues
00:47:17
of demons.
00:47:20
I
00:47:21
I don't know what to say. I don't know
00:47:23
what to say about that.
00:47:24
I'll tell you more about what they said
00:47:26
so you can you can just sit tight. Yeah.
00:47:28
So they said he enlisted the two of them
00:47:31
to aid him in a, quote, "satanic ritual"
00:47:33
where he would be the sacrifice and they
00:47:35
would push him in the pond and allow him
00:47:37
to drown so that he could
00:47:39
die violently and be in charge of this
00:47:41
league of demons.
00:47:43
During the investigation, police did
00:47:45
find a, quote, "considerable amount of
00:47:47
literature on satanic cults and
00:47:48
witchcraft" in Patrick Newell's bedroom.
00:47:51
And they also learned that, among other
00:47:53
things, this is very sad, he had
00:47:54
previously attempted suicide on multiple
00:47:56
occasions and this is trigger warning
00:47:59
for animal cruelty. Oh. He had, quote,
00:48:01
"sacrificed hamsters by shaking them up
00:48:04
in a wooden box into which sharp nails
00:48:06
had been driven." Oh my god. Yeah.
00:48:10
Awful.
00:48:11
Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
00:48:13
investigators learned that, quote, "hard
00:48:15
drugs were involved in a party prior to
00:48:17
the killing."
00:48:19
So what you're seeing here is that this
00:48:21
actually really doesn't have anything to
00:48:23
do with, quote unquote, Satanism or
00:48:25
black magic or any of that dumb [ __ ]
00:48:28
that people want to label it with. It
00:48:29
has to do with mental illness and drugs.
00:48:33
drug abuse. situation.
00:48:34
Yeah. Drug abuse. Like there's plenty of
00:48:37
factors here and I can tell you that
00:48:38
Satan isn't one of them. He's absolutely
00:48:41
not.
00:48:42
Patrick Newell's death was ultimately
00:48:44
listed as a, quote, "suicide with
00:48:45
assistance" and would likely have been
00:48:47
assumed to be a very tragic result of
00:48:50
drug abuse {slash} mental illness had it
00:48:52
not been for Reverend Harry Snook,
00:48:54
pastor of the Chestnut Assembly of God.
00:48:57
Snook spent a lot of his time doing
00:48:58
outreach to local teens and adolescents
00:49:01
preaching in what was described as a,
00:49:02
quote, "fervent Pentecostal style of
00:49:05
old-time religion." So very like
00:49:08
theatrical and shouty, like
00:49:11
That's it.
00:49:11
scare tactic-y kind of preaching. That's
00:49:13
literally nightmarish. It is. It's very
00:49:15
scary. It's what you would picture, I
00:49:17
think, in a lot of horror horror movies,
00:49:19
you know?
00:49:20
He claimed that he, quote, "talked with
00:49:22
half a dozen or more young people who
00:49:24
confessed to having taken part in devil
00:49:26
worship rots." I like how you went back
00:49:28
to like your preacher voice there.
00:49:30
That's my preacher voice. Uh
00:49:31
no, I no. I I don't believe him.
00:49:35
I think he's
00:49:36
one I think you scared these kids.
00:49:39
Yeah, I just don't believe him.
00:49:41
I think unfortunately this is the only
00:49:43
thing they're allowed to do so they
00:49:45
don't get to use their imagination
00:49:46
elsewhere. So you're giving them the
00:49:49
perfect place to use it. And you're
00:49:51
heard of the Salem witch trials?
00:49:53
That's exactly exactly what it reminds
00:49:56
you of.
00:49:56
You know where that started? Bored kids.
00:49:58
Yeah, bored kids being influenced by
00:50:02
religious trauma essentially.
00:50:04
Yeah. Exactly. But he wasn't the only
00:50:06
one who claimed that Satanism had
00:50:07
infiltrated the region. Reverend Joseph
00:50:11
Donchez, I believe, a pastor at the
00:50:12
First Presbyterian Church quote
00:50:14
estimated the number of young devil
00:50:16
worshipers in Vineland at between 80 and
00:50:19
90.
00:50:20
Oh, okay. I don't know what fact that's
00:50:22
based off of but he said I'd I'd say 80
00:50:24
or 90 give or take, you know?
00:50:26
Let's take this guy into one of those
00:50:28
contests where you get to guess the
00:50:30
amount of jelly beans in the jar and you
00:50:31
get something special.
00:50:32
Yeah. He sounds really good at it.
00:50:34
I think he might be. Cuz he can he can
00:50:35
pick out the devil worshipers.
00:50:36
Yeah, just like 80 or 90 yourself. Just
00:50:38
like the jelly beans.
00:50:40
It's unclear where either of these bozos
00:50:42
got their information because like I
00:50:43
said earlier there has literally never
00:50:45
been evidence of an organized group of
00:50:46
devil worshipers active in the United
00:50:48
States.
00:50:48
No. Uh but in most crimes where ritual
00:50:51
sacrifice or other occult symbols are
00:50:53
involved it's obviously the result of
00:50:55
mental illness unfortunately drug abuse
00:50:57
or teenage pranks.
00:50:59
Exactly or just somebody knowing that a
00:51:02
bunch of bozos will latch on to it if
00:51:05
they put a pentagram at a crime scene.
00:51:08
Yeah. And that it will take them
00:51:09
completely in the wrong direction
00:51:11
leaving that person to scoot scoot scoot
00:51:14
away and never get looked at.
00:51:16
Exactly. I mean let's
00:51:18
It's like you're giving them you're
00:51:19
giving them a route to take.
00:51:21
to rub some neurons together and see
00:51:23
what like it's so easy.
00:51:25
it a shot.
00:51:26
easy. It's literally the look over here.
00:51:28
Yeah, it is. tactic
00:51:29
It is. And everybody looks over there.
00:51:31
It's the Jada Pinkett Smith Hall. Look
00:51:33
over there. Yeah, stop looking over
00:51:35
there. This person's running away and
00:51:36
they're getting away with it now. Well
00:51:38
in fact Snook and John Donchez
00:51:40
themselves and even the investigators in
00:51:43
Patrick the Patrick Newell case
00:51:44
acknowledge the prominent role that drug
00:51:46
abuse played in the lives of these
00:51:48
supposed devil worshipers who did that.
00:51:50
So it's like let's blame it on what is
00:51:53
actually the root cause here and
00:51:54
actually try to do some work on that.
00:51:56
Yeah. Maybe. Exactly.
00:51:58
Instead of being like it's the devil.
00:51:59
And it's like no they're just seeing
00:52:01
things cuz they're on many drugs.
00:52:03
Yeah, exactly. Maybe you should help.
00:52:05
Maybe.
00:52:05
Make this not a thing not an epidemic.
00:52:07
Yeah.
00:52:08
In November 1971 Richard Williams and
00:52:11
Wayne Schweikert pleaded guilty and they
00:52:13
were both sentenced to a maximum term of
00:52:15
10 years at the correction center at
00:52:17
Yardville for their role in Patrick
00:52:19
Newell's death.
00:52:20
However, while their sentence may have
00:52:22
effectively brought that case to a close
00:52:24
the supposed influence of satanic and
00:52:26
occult beliefs would just go on to
00:52:28
spread around the state and become the
00:52:30
defining aspect of Jeanette's murder at
00:52:32
least as far as the police and the press
00:52:34
were concerned.
00:52:35
Yeah.
00:52:36
Although the cases of Patrick Newell,
00:52:37
the List family and Jeanette DePalma
00:52:39
weren't linked in literally any evidence
00:52:41
or any fact they still became associated
00:52:44
with each other because in the absence
00:52:47
of evidence at all or a suspect
00:52:49
investigators turned to the more
00:52:51
sensational rumors of devil worship and
00:52:53
this youth culture that had as far as
00:52:56
adults could tell gotten completely out
00:52:58
of control. Yeah, it was nuts. It's also
00:53:01
unknown whether it was Don Schwartz or
00:53:03
one of the other officers at the scene
00:53:05
but somehow the news about the supposed
00:53:07
evidence of witchcraft at the site where
00:53:08
Jeanette's body was found was leaked to
00:53:10
the press which just renewed the and fed
00:53:13
the fears of the occults being in
00:53:15
suburban New Jersey.
00:53:16
In no time at all Jeanette's murder was
00:53:18
being mentioned alongside other evidence
00:53:20
of the occult in the area
00:53:22
including police having found quote
00:53:25
burning candles and a bowl of blood and
00:53:28
feathers and pigeons with their necks
00:53:29
snapped at a nearby reservation.
00:53:32
And elsewhere in the area somebody said
00:53:34
they found a dead goat that they
00:53:35
believed had been sacrificed. This is
00:53:38
always what happens in these cases.
00:53:40
It's crazy.
00:53:41
mentioned this must be the devil
00:53:43
worshipers all of a sudden people are
00:53:45
finding dead animals. Yep.
00:53:47
It's so true.
00:53:48
They weren't finding them before. The
00:53:49
same thing happened
00:53:50
it gets mentioned all of a sudden dead
00:53:51
animals all over the place.
00:53:53
The same thing happened close by to us.
00:53:55
Was it Mariana Ruda? Yeah, yeah. She was
00:53:58
killed by
00:54:00
a monster of a human being.
00:54:02
Literally monster.
00:54:03
And everybody claimed it was like the
00:54:04
satanic cult but it's like no it's a
00:54:06
monster of a human being.
00:54:07
Yeah. And they were like oh we're
00:54:09
finding all this stuff around the
00:54:10
Bridgewater triangle and it's all so
00:54:12
spooky and blah blah blah. It's like
00:54:14
no. Yeah. This is a human being who's
00:54:16
responsible for this. Maybe we should go
00:54:18
find them. Can we stop blaming it on
00:54:20
some like it's it's just ridiculous.
00:54:23
It's so annoying. But within a few days
00:54:25
of the new angle being pursued in the
00:54:27
press Sal and Florence DePalma both like
00:54:29
we know deeply religious people were
00:54:31
being quoted in the press as agreeing
00:54:33
that their daughter quote could have
00:54:34
been the victim of black witchcraft and
00:54:36
Satanism.
00:54:38
There were also rumors that with no
00:54:40
leads to go on the Springfield police
00:54:42
had actually consulted with an area
00:54:43
witch on the case. Florence told a
00:54:46
reporter we were afraid the witch would
00:54:47
try to bring Jeanette back from the
00:54:49
dead.
00:54:50
The police on the other hand refused to
00:54:52
comment on the rumors of a witch being
00:54:53
involved in the investigation. Police
00:54:56
Chief George Purcell said I heard that
00:54:58
some people from the department brought
00:54:59
a witch out there but I know nothing
00:55:00
about it.
00:55:02
It's getting kooky. It's getting kooky.
00:55:05
It's like like guys can we put the
00:55:07
nose to the grindstone here and actually
00:55:09
look for the person who did this?
00:55:11
Let's look for evidence. This is a
00:55:11
teenage girl who was murdered in the
00:55:13
woods.
00:55:13
Let's look for evidence. Let's look for
00:55:15
evidence. Let's try to find the person
00:55:17
who did this to her.
00:55:18
Let's look for Look into the boyfriend
00:55:21
and look start talking to more people.
00:55:22
Like what are you doing? Yeah, come on.
00:55:24
You had a perfect angle going there that
00:55:26
there might be a secret boyfriend go
00:55:28
look into it.
00:55:29
Mhm.
00:55:29
Why did that suddenly come to an end?
00:55:31
It's like nah it's probably not that.
00:55:32
It's probably just this fictional group
00:55:34
of witches that we've come up with. It's
00:55:36
like no. Or the devil.
00:55:38
real avenues to go down here and no
00:55:41
one's going down them. Yeah. Meanwhile
00:55:43
Jeanette's just her case is just going
00:55:45
to be unsolved to this day. It and it
00:55:47
is.
00:55:48
Within a few weeks of her body being
00:55:50
discovered Jeanette went from being the
00:55:52
victim of a tragic and mysterious murder
00:55:54
to the potential victim of a quote
00:55:56
sacrificial rite of black magic with
00:55:58
both theories being treated as equally
00:56:00
valid which is insane. Yeah. In the span
00:56:03
of just a few days the news about the
00:56:05
arrangement of sticks around Jeanette's
00:56:06
body spun into something far more
00:56:08
sinister than they were originally
00:56:10
described to be. Reverend James Tate
00:56:12
told a reporter the logs and branches
00:56:14
were supposedly arranged in a manner
00:56:16
that would have indicated occult
00:56:17
symbolism and perhaps a human sacrifice.
00:56:20
I'm sure Jeanette herself was not
00:56:22
involved in anything like that but I
00:56:23
know that many of the other young people
00:56:25
in this area are involved. Can I name
00:56:28
one? Nope. Could I point one out to you?
00:56:31
Absolutely not.
00:56:32
tell you maybe 10 to 12 people are
00:56:34
involved.
00:56:34
tell you. Yeah, give me that jar of
00:56:37
jelly beans I'll tell you. Yeah. Like
00:56:39
the religious leaders in Vineland
00:56:41
Reverend Tate was convinced that
00:56:42
Springfield had some sort of organized
00:56:44
group of occultists or Satanists
00:56:46
operating under the cover of darkness.
00:56:48
Though why he believed that is entirely
00:56:50
unclear and doesn't seem to be supported
00:56:52
by literally anything other than rumor.
00:56:55
Cuz why not? But further complicating
00:56:57
that theory was that while Don Schwartz
00:57:00
and one or two other officers remembered
00:57:02
seeing what appeared to be that
00:57:03
intentional arrangement of sticks at the
00:57:05
crime
00:57:06
the cross and like the semicircle.
00:57:09
Other officers remember no such thing.
00:57:11
Huh. Ed Kish said of the discovery she
00:57:13
was found lying in the middle of the
00:57:14
woods for Christ's sakes. There were
00:57:15
sticks and stones everywhere.
00:57:17
Yeah. Like hello. That's the thing. And
00:57:20
even Don Schwartz who was one potential
00:57:22
source of the story eventually told
00:57:24
reporters from Weird New Jersey magazine
00:57:26
he had quote no memory of any sticks or
00:57:28
branches framing Jeanette's body like a
00:57:30
coffin. Huh. So he was like I wouldn't
00:57:32
go that far.
00:57:32
Well and even if there was a cross
00:57:35
what does that have to do? Is it upside
00:57:37
down? Yeah. What does it have to do that
00:57:39
to me that looks like a grave marker.
00:57:41
Right, exactly.
00:57:42
That's
00:57:43
a Christian grave marker to me. Like you
00:57:45
know what I mean? Like I don't
00:57:46
understand why the cross would
00:57:47
immediately lead you to Satanism unless
00:57:49
it's upside down.
00:57:50
Also if anything I feel like that would
00:57:51
just lead you more to the pathology of
00:57:53
your killer. Exactly. Like look more
00:57:55
into that. And like take really look at
00:57:58
it, you know? Don't look at it and go
00:57:59
Satanism. Look at it and be like why
00:58:02
would they do that? Did they do that?
00:58:04
But unfortunately profiling was No, of
00:58:06
course not. far off back then.
00:58:08
just common sense. Like just start
00:58:09
thinking. With your brain. You would
00:58:11
think. And then to hear all these dudes
00:58:13
be like some of them are like yeah there
00:58:15
was a cross and a semicircle around her
00:58:17
head of of like sticks and stones and
00:58:19
all that. And then the other one to be
00:58:21
like there's sticks and stones
00:58:22
everywhere. I didn't see anything like
00:58:23
that. How did one like how did somebody
00:58:26
see that and another person at the scene
00:58:28
didn't? It obviously wasn't that obvious
00:58:30
if it was there which makes me think it
00:58:32
wasn't intentional and it was just
00:58:33
sticks looking a little weird in the
00:58:35
woods. I mean you could walk through the
00:58:37
woods and find any number of
00:58:39
arrangements of sticks that are
00:58:40
naturally occurring that would make you
00:58:42
be like woah. Ever since I've seen The
00:58:44
Blair Witch Project I see crazy [ __ ] in
00:58:46
the woods all the time.
00:58:47
Yeah and it's like so it obviously
00:58:49
wasn't if they were really do setting
00:58:51
this up so that when she was found this
00:58:53
was a main attraction. would have said
00:58:56
it.
00:58:56
They all would have saw it because it
00:58:57
would have been obvious it would have
00:58:58
been made to be obvious it would have
00:59:00
been made to be something you saw. Yes.
00:59:03
To me it sounds like it wasn't it sounds
00:59:05
like it could have been either Yeah. not
00:59:07
intentional and just organically there
00:59:09
or
00:59:11
it was like an afterthought.
00:59:12
Well that's exactly it. Yeah. Given the
00:59:14
general imperfection of human memory
00:59:16
especially in this case and the number
00:59:19
of times that this story changed over
00:59:20
the years we'll likely never know why
00:59:22
the sticks and rocks were interpreted as
00:59:24
evidence of witchcraft or perceived to
00:59:27
be arranged in a way that associated
00:59:28
them with the occult. And And something
00:59:30
you would remember.
00:59:31
But the thing is, in the year leading up
00:59:33
to Jeanette's death, New Jersey
00:59:35
residents had followed two highly
00:59:37
unusual murder cases, both of which had
00:59:40
some supposed supernatural or occult
00:59:42
influence on them. There you go. So,
00:59:44
under those circumstances and the
00:59:45
growing fears about the occult influence
00:59:47
on American teens, it's possible that
00:59:50
the officers there saw what they wanted
00:59:52
to see.
00:59:53
Yeah. Some of them. Or interpreted
00:59:55
random the random arrangement of nature
00:59:57
as something that it wasn't just out of
00:59:59
fear.
01:00:00
Yeah.
01:00:01
But regardless of their motives or their
01:00:02
reasons, the belief that Jeanette's
01:00:04
death was somehow related to devil
01:00:05
worship stuck to the case and not only
01:00:08
influenced the investigation, but
01:00:10
ultimately how Jeanette was remembered
01:00:12
by those who didn't really know her very
01:00:13
well.
01:00:14
Yeah.
01:00:15
To some, like Reverend James Tate,
01:00:16
Jeanette's devout faith made her a
01:00:18
target. He said she was so religious
01:00:20
that she would often talk to friends and
01:00:21
acquaintances about God, which we've
01:00:23
already heard is not the case. I'm
01:00:25
like her own friend Some
01:00:27
Some of her closest friends, like I
01:00:28
think it was Gail Donahue earlier, was
01:00:30
like, "I didn't even know that she was
01:00:32
that religious."
01:00:33
Yeah. That's interesting. That's really
01:00:35
crazy. But it was his belief that
01:00:37
Jeanette had met some local occultists,
01:00:40
No. of course, just out and on around
01:00:42
town. Yeah. And she, quote, "tried to
01:00:44
lecture them about Jesus, the person
01:00:46
these people detest. Their fanaticism
01:00:49
arose and they killed her."
01:00:51
So, he thought that whilst hitchhiking
01:00:54
or, you know, going about her merry way,
01:00:56
Jeanette came across a came across a
01:00:58
group of occultists. How she would known
01:01:00
who hate Jesus.
01:01:01
Well, how she would have even known that
01:01:03
they were occultists, I'd love to know.
01:01:05
Maybe they were dressed in all black.
01:01:07
Shrouded in
01:01:08
fingernails. Come on. Yeah, like weird
01:01:10
makeup. Who knows?
01:01:11
And she said, "Can I Can I tell you
01:01:13
about Jesus?" And they were like,
01:01:15
"Absolutely not. We're going to kill
01:01:17
you."
01:01:17
"That guy, I [ __ ] hate that guy."
01:01:19
That's literally they don't believe in
01:01:21
that.
01:01:21
When has that ever happened?
01:01:22
be the whole shindig? It's like When has
01:01:25
that When?
01:01:26
ever happened?
01:01:28
And also, where did this happen? Where
01:01:30
did she run into occultists? In the
01:01:32
woods. And no one just in the woods.
01:01:34
Excuse me. Just in the woods. I forgot.
01:01:36
They're
01:01:37
You know, I'm always thinking that. I'm
01:01:38
like, I better
01:01:39
knot the devil's teeth or whatever it
01:01:41
was.
01:01:41
know, we better not take a walk through
01:01:42
the woods because we'll run into some
01:01:44
occultists. It's actually why I just
01:01:45
wait.
01:01:46
why I head into the woods.
01:01:47
Yeah, let's go. Just making friends.
01:01:49
That doesn't make No. No.
01:01:51
literally any sense.
01:01:52
No. And again, to have
01:01:56
they are spinning this narrative that is
01:01:58
so infuriating. That's like Her friends
01:02:00
are literally saying, "I didn't even
01:02:01
know she was that Christian."
01:02:03
Yeah. Like I did She wasn't out here
01:02:04
a cool person and a good friend.
01:02:06
to all of us. Like it just She was just
01:02:08
a good person and a nice friend.
01:02:10
the reverend has to be like, "She was
01:02:11
trying to tell them the word of God."
01:02:13
there spreading the word of God. And
01:02:14
it's like she wasn't.
01:02:15
First of all, if she was, she was. But
01:02:17
it's like second of all, if everyone
01:02:19
close to her is saying that's not the
01:02:21
case. So, I don't think she was just
01:02:22
randomly doing it one day.
01:02:24
And again, I don't know. And for them to
01:02:26
be sitting there saying this like I
01:02:28
don't know Jeanette the trauma. No. I
01:02:30
know what I'm finding out about her
01:02:32
through people that knew her. And these
01:02:34
people who don't even know her are
01:02:36
sitting there being like, "I know
01:02:37
exactly what happened. She was out there
01:02:39
preaching the word of God to some
01:02:40
occultists that she met randomly in the
01:02:43
middle of the [ __ ] woods." And it's
01:02:44
like, "No. No. What are you doing?
01:02:48
Like what to derail a case like this
01:02:51
with this nonsense
01:02:53
is criminal.
01:02:54
is infuriating.
01:02:55
It should be criminal. Because she
01:02:57
She should have been the focus and the
01:02:59
focus became Look at the They used this.
01:03:03
Oh, yeah. They used this that this like
01:03:06
particular branch of this community Yep.
01:03:08
100% used Jeanette's murder
01:03:11
to further their whole conspiracy of the
01:03:15
youth of today is getting corrupted by
01:03:17
Satanists that are wandering around the
01:03:18
woods. And it's like, Okay, so we're
01:03:20
just going to forget about Jeanette,
01:03:22
16-year-old Jeanette who got murdered.
01:03:23
Right.
01:03:24
going to forget about her because now
01:03:26
she's furthered your narrative. Well,
01:03:27
it's like your case that you just
01:03:29
covered, Bobby Dunbar. It sold papers.
01:03:32
Yeah. Salacious, weird [ __ ] sells papers
01:03:36
and people take that and they run with
01:03:38
it and then the truth of what the poor
01:03:41
victim went through is literally lost
01:03:43
forever Oh, yeah. their memory. It's
01:03:45
tainted forever.
01:03:46
their own humanity at the door Yeah.
01:03:48
before they go and print this [ __ ]
01:03:50
Yep. They pick it up on the way out. But
01:03:52
it's like it's
01:03:53
so gross.
01:03:54
It is. They used her to further this
01:03:57
[ __ ] conspiracy
01:03:59
a scapegoat. worshippers wandering
01:04:00
around in the forest. And it's like,
01:04:02
"Nope. The focus should be on Jeanette
01:04:04
and what was going on here and figure
01:04:06
out who did this to her." Exactly.
01:04:07
didn't. Well, and on the completely flip
01:04:09
side of thing, other people took a far
01:04:11
less sympathetic approach to the story
01:04:13
and just associated Jeanette with hippie
01:04:15
culture and blamed her murder on drugs.
01:04:17
Wow.
01:04:18
Even though there was literally no
01:04:19
evidence that she had done drugs.
01:04:21
Wow. And it's like, "Okay, and if she
01:04:24
had done drugs, does that mean she
01:04:25
deserves to be murdered in the middle of
01:04:26
the woods?"
01:04:28
To some people. Like, "Damn." Yeah.
01:04:30
That's nice. That's cool. That's
01:04:31
awesome. Apparently everybody's checking
01:04:32
their humanity somewhere. Yeah, I don't
01:04:34
know what was going on.
01:04:35
Jesus. on these parts.
01:04:37
Well, about a year into the
01:04:38
investigation, a young man referred to
01:04:40
as Terry Rickel. I don't know if that
01:04:42
was like a um
01:04:44
pseudonym. I kind of seems like it is.
01:04:46
Um he approached Ed Kish and officer Ed
01:04:48
Kish and said he had some information
01:04:50
about the case. According to Terry,
01:04:52
there was a local unhoused man who went
01:04:54
by the name Red Kira, I think it is, and
01:04:57
he was living at a campsite at the
01:04:59
quarry very close to where Jeanette's
01:05:00
body was found. Terry said he was a
01:05:02
weird-looking guy. He looked like an old
01:05:04
hippie. Okay. Kish and his partner went
01:05:06
out to the campsite and found that it
01:05:08
was abandoned. But eventually, they did
01:05:10
locate Red Kira and they interviewed him
01:05:12
about the murder. Apparently, um like
01:05:14
I'm like just on the suspicion that he
01:05:16
lived there and looked strange.
01:05:19
Yeah. That's That's the thing. It's
01:05:20
like, "Really?" I'm like, I feel like
01:05:21
we're doing the the same thing over and
01:05:23
over again in this case.
01:05:25
We're not getting the best results. Kish
01:05:27
said, "I want to say that Red was
01:05:28
cleared and that he was no longer a
01:05:29
viable suspect. I was told this was
01:05:31
because of the differences in age and
01:05:32
lifestyle between Red and Jeanette."
01:05:36
But I'm like, it can't have just been
01:05:37
the difference between age and lifestyle
01:05:39
because Yeah.
01:05:41
older people in very different
01:05:42
lifestyles murder people in younger,
01:05:44
very different lifestyles literally
01:05:46
every single day. Yeah. So, I That makes
01:05:49
more sense.
01:05:50
But he was cleared.
01:05:52
The press continued to focus heavily on,
01:05:54
you know, of course, the supposedly
01:05:55
occult aspects of the case, going so far
01:05:58
as to literally interview members of the
01:05:59
Church of Satan for their perspective on
01:06:01
the case.
01:06:02
Behind the scenes, though, investigators
01:06:04
were getting nowhere, of course.
01:06:06
And with the exception of Red Kira, no
01:06:09
new leads had been uncovered. Zero.
01:06:12
By the following year, the case had gone
01:06:14
entirely cold and the story slipped
01:06:16
further and further from the front pages
01:06:18
of the local papers until the press just
01:06:20
stopped reporting on it at all. Wow.
01:06:22
Because satanic panic eventually did die
01:06:24
down. Wow. So, they I mean, they they
01:06:27
really showed their ass on that one.
01:06:28
They were just like,
01:06:30
"Well, we were using it to further this
01:06:31
narrative that sold papers and got
01:06:33
everybody riled up. And now that that's
01:06:35
over, we don't really care what
01:06:36
happened."
01:06:37
People are interested in something else
01:06:38
now, so let's let's put that to rest and
01:06:41
shameful at all.
01:06:41
just forget the memory of the
01:06:43
16-year-old girl who was murdered
01:06:44
brutally in the woods in the middle of
01:06:45
the day. Yeah.
01:06:47
Well, by the late 1990s, Weird New
01:06:49
Jersey magazine started writing about
01:06:50
Jeanette's case and through their heavy
01:06:52
reporting on the case, they sought out
01:06:54
anybody associated with the case for
01:06:56
comment.
01:06:57
The resulting articles attracted the
01:06:59
attention of several members of the
01:07:00
Springfield community who remembered the
01:07:02
case and soon anonymous letters started
01:07:05
coming into the Weird New Jersey office.
01:07:07
Jesse [ __ ] a correspondent for the
01:07:09
magazine, remembered, "We got a tip from
01:07:12
a relative of one of these other victims
01:07:14
found in the area. They said, 'You
01:07:16
better take a look at this because the
01:07:17
MOs are very similar.'" Now, this is the
01:07:20
first time you will ever hear actual
01:07:22
investigation into this and it's
01:07:24
compelling.
01:07:26
But it's literally like
01:07:27
New Jersey
01:07:28
It's done by Weird New Jersey.
01:07:29
Good for them. Who they love. I was just
01:07:30
going to say Weird
01:07:31
uh There's so many like different state
01:07:33
offices. There's so much fun.
01:07:35
but
01:07:36
good for them. And it's like I can't
01:07:39
believe it came down to them having to
01:07:40
do it. Yeah. Well, and
01:07:42
when you hear what they found, you're
01:07:45
like, "How was that not investigated at
01:07:47
the time?"
01:07:48
wasn't important.
01:07:49
Because this is genuinely so compelling.
01:07:51
Yeah. None of this was important. It was
01:07:52
furthering that narrative of satanic
01:07:54
panic.
01:07:54
Which is
01:07:55
devastating.
01:07:56
Yeah.
01:07:57
Jesse and his writing partner, Mark
01:07:59
Moran, I think it was, started digging
01:08:01
into similar murders committed around
01:08:03
that part of New Jersey in the few years
01:08:05
before and after Jeanette's death. And
01:08:08
they discovered a number of murder
01:08:10
victims who were very similar to
01:08:12
Jeanette. Jesse said, "All were young,
01:08:14
attractive brunettes with the same
01:08:16
hairstyle. Come on.
01:08:18
All were between 16 and 24, average
01:08:21
height, all thin, Caucasian, and all
01:08:24
supposedly picked up hitchhiking.
01:08:26
All were killed by obstruction to the
01:08:28
airway. All found dead, arranged face
01:08:32
down in a wooded area."
01:08:34
Come on.
01:08:35
There are not that many [ __ ]
01:08:37
coincidences in life, everybody.
01:08:39
Let's be real.
01:08:41
Holy [ __ ]
01:08:42
same MO, same victim profile, same
01:08:47
dispo- like body disposal, same method
01:08:51
of killing. What the [ __ ]
01:08:53
the same area within a span of years
01:08:55
before Jeanette was killed, when
01:08:57
Jeanette was killed, and after Jeanette
01:08:59
was killed.
01:09:00
I'm shook by the fact that they were
01:09:03
they just ignored all of this before.
01:09:04
New Jersey had to be the people that
01:09:06
reported on this.
01:09:07
And like decades later.
01:09:08
Decades later. That the police
01:09:10
And I'm like, there's no way that the
01:09:11
police that didn't come across their
01:09:13
desk that, you know, all of these thin,
01:09:17
young, attractive brunettes with the
01:09:19
same hairstyle between a very similar
01:09:21
age were killed
01:09:23
similarly.
01:09:24
to see if there was anything anything
01:09:26
connected. I think all they were looking
01:09:28
for slap you across the face though.
01:09:30
All they were looking for
01:09:31
to look for that.
01:09:32
Well, because it didn't fit their
01:09:33
narrative. So, they're not going to look
01:09:34
at it because it doesn't fit what they
01:09:36
were trying to get across. They went
01:09:38
looking for ritualistic
01:09:41
crime scenes and things to do with Satan
01:09:44
and things to do with like leading a
01:09:46
[ __ ] band of demons and all that
01:09:47
[ __ ] All the really important stuff
01:09:49
that you should look at when you are
01:09:51
trying to solve a case of a 16-year-old
01:09:52
girl's murder.
01:09:53
Meanwhile, look at all of that stuff.
01:09:56
you're supposed to be saying, "Huh, are
01:09:58
there any victims in the area that are
01:10:00
of the same profile, were killed in the
01:10:01
same way? Are there anything that we can
01:10:03
link to this?" None of them did that.
01:10:05
Tons.
01:10:06
None of them did that because it didn't
01:10:07
further that narrative. It's insane.
01:10:11
preconceived idea of what they wanted to
01:10:13
get across when Jeanette was killed and
01:10:15
she was used for that purpose.
01:10:16
How wild is that though?
01:10:18
Now, I want to get these guys on the
01:10:20
podcast. I'm like, let's [ __ ] solve
01:10:22
Jeanette's case, man.
01:10:26
If you guys want to come on the show,
01:10:27
guys, cuz you're needed anytime.
01:10:28
That's very impressive that you guys
01:10:30
were able to do this.
01:10:31
Insanely impressive. And we love your
01:10:33
books. We literally have many of them in
01:10:35
the office. We do.
01:10:37
We've used them for like cryptids and
01:10:38
[ __ ] before.
01:10:38
We have, yeah. They're awesome. But,
01:10:40
back to this story. At the time of the
01:10:42
murders, law enforcement agencies
01:10:44
operated independently and like we've
01:10:46
seen in a lot of cases, they were not
01:10:47
very good at communicating with one
01:10:49
another.
01:10:50
And even if they had been able to, the
01:10:52
concept of a serial killer was still a
01:10:53
few years away from entering the public
01:10:55
consciousness. So, it's really actually
01:10:58
unlikely that they would have had the
01:10:59
resources and relevant information that
01:11:01
would have led them to that conclusion
01:11:03
way back then.
01:11:04
But still, Jesse Pollock and Mark Moran
01:11:07
believe one man was responsible for
01:11:09
several of these murders committed in
01:11:11
the area during the '70s, including
01:11:14
Jeanette DePalma. Pollock said, "Either
01:11:16
one person committed all these crimes or
01:11:18
the other option, which is a lot
01:11:20
scarier, is that you have multiple
01:11:22
killers operating in the same area at
01:11:24
the same time with the same MO." Yeah.
01:11:27
Which is even scarier.
01:11:29
Even scarier? I don't think that's the
01:11:31
case. I think somebody was operating in
01:11:33
and around New Jersey, had a victim
01:11:36
profile, was murdering these young women
01:11:38
in the same manner, and disposing of
01:11:40
their bodies in similar ways, and got
01:11:43
away with it because
01:11:45
everybody was like, "Satan." Satan. I
01:11:48
agree. I think they are onto something
01:11:50
huge. Now, more than 50 years have
01:11:54
passed since Jeanette's body was
01:11:55
discovered at the quarry, and police
01:11:57
have made no additional progress toward
01:12:00
closing this case. To some, the
01:12:02
occultist and devil worship angle is
01:12:04
still a sufficient explanation for
01:12:06
Jeanette's death, and to them I say,
01:12:08
"Grow up." Yeah, do better.
01:12:11
Seek help. Yeah. But others, like
01:12:14
Pollock and Moran, believe the more
01:12:16
modern theory that Jeanette was murdered
01:12:18
by an experienced killer who would go on
01:12:19
to kill again and again and again.
01:12:22
And then there are those who hold onto
01:12:24
their biases and preconceived notions.
01:12:26
In 2019, Don Schwart told a reporter,
01:12:28
"They were probably doing drugs and she
01:12:30
OD'd."
01:12:31
Wow. Despite a complete lack of evidence
01:12:33
of drug use.
01:12:34
no evidence to that, but sure. But yeah,
01:12:36
totally.
01:12:37
The circumstances of Jeanette's death,
01:12:39
honestly, at this point might not ever
01:12:41
be known and her killer may never be
01:12:42
identified. In a 2024 interview, Ed Kish
01:12:45
summed things up and agreed, telling a
01:12:47
reporter he didn't believe the case
01:12:48
would ever be solved. He said, "The cops
01:12:50
are only as good as the evidence left
01:12:52
behind, and in this case, there was
01:12:53
virtually no evidence left at the
01:12:55
scene." And according to Kish, "Kids
01:12:58
tend not to talk, and whoever had
01:12:59
knowledge of what may have happened
01:13:01
would be taking it to their graves."
01:13:02
Wow.
01:13:03
That's devastating.
01:13:05
Unreal
01:13:07
that that is the turn that that story
01:13:10
took.
01:13:11
I just like
01:13:13
I and I I hate hearing it's probably
01:13:16
never going to be solved because I
01:13:17
refuse to believe that.
01:13:18
to believe that, too. I think I think
01:13:20
the work that the guys over at Weird New
01:13:22
Jersey did
01:13:24
has some [ __ ] legs.
01:13:26
Yeah.
01:13:26
think you get the right eyes on that. I
01:13:28
mean
01:13:30
there has to be some kind of DNA left at
01:13:32
one of those scenes, and genealogical
01:13:34
DNA is so fascinating to me. I think it
01:13:37
really is going to solve so many more
01:13:40
crimes.
01:13:40
if you can connect those things, connect
01:13:43
a few of those
01:13:45
figure out who it could be, and then
01:13:46
trace backwards and see if you can
01:13:49
connect her back to it. There's got to
01:13:51
be a connection.
01:13:52
There's got to be. Like it's there's got
01:13:54
to be something there.
01:13:55
the thing that's awful about Jeanette's
01:13:57
case is that they really I mean, they
01:13:59
lost vital records. And it looks like
01:14:01
they half-assed the autopsy.
01:14:03
half-assed the autopsy. I don't even
01:14:04
know
01:14:05
I don't think anything was even
01:14:06
discovered. That's pretty shameful.
01:14:10
But It's got to be something there.
01:14:12
hope that they can do something. I know
01:14:13
at one point, I think as recently as
01:14:15
2019,
01:14:17
they wanted to test her clothing, but it
01:14:19
was being left up to decision, and I
01:14:22
don't know if they came to a decision
01:14:23
about that. So.
01:14:24
Come on, guys.
01:14:25
I know.
01:14:26
I know. Let's push to get it done.
01:14:28
Like come on. Like look at the Lady of
01:14:30
the Dunes. Look at the Somerton man, the
01:14:32
boy in the box. These are the things
01:14:34
that give you hope.
01:14:35
They've so old so cases that they never
01:14:38
going to be solved. Yeah. Even older
01:14:39
than this case. I mean, the Golden State
01:14:42
Killer, obviously not older than this
01:14:43
case, like around the same time.
01:14:45
massive one. It's like, holy [ __ ]
01:14:47
Mhm. That guy thought he was going to
01:14:48
live Joseph James DeAngelo, whatever his
01:14:51
name is, thought he was going to go live
01:14:53
the rest of his days. Yeah.
01:14:54
Boom, interrupted. Let's interrupt the
01:14:56
[ __ ] who took
01:15:00
Yeah.
01:15:00
them.
01:15:01
And
01:15:02
let's cuz then it would it would take
01:15:04
away from the whole satanic panic and
01:15:06
occultist thing of it all. It would be
01:15:08
like, "Nope, that's stupid. It's this
01:15:10
guy."
01:15:10
of the story.
01:15:11
Remove it.
01:15:11
Yeah. And then it can be what it is what
01:15:13
we've been saying it is, which is
01:15:14
[ __ ] and a distraction.
01:15:16
It's a monster of a human. Yeah.
01:15:19
Ugh, so sad.
01:15:21
Damn.
01:15:21
So sad, but I really hope that at some
01:15:24
point it can get solved.
01:15:25
Yes. And in the meantime, we hope you
01:15:28
keep listening. And we hope you keep it
01:15:31
weird.
01:15:32
But not so weird that you don't go tell
01:15:33
the weird New Jersey guys that we want
01:15:34
to have them on to talk to them about
01:15:36
this case because how great would that
01:15:37
be? Mark and Jesse, let's go. Are you
01:15:38
listening? Are you listening?
01:15:41
Love your books.
01:15:42
Oh my god, I love your work.
01:15:45
[Music]
01:15:52
[Music]
01:16:12
[Music]