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GameChanger [Music] [Applause] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:43
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always there a man that told me before I went on vacation that he was
00:01:49
changing the locks on the garage he is the captain I'm also the man that called the cops on you for breaking and
00:01:55
entering but that did me no good so it's good to be seen and it's good to see you
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thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend today we are drinking Secret Stairs by trillian Brewing Company
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garage grade 4 and 1 12 bottle caps out of five Secret Stairs is a stout that is
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bold and balanced and unlike most STS it's not too syrupy not too sweet this fine beer was brought to us by you and
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these fine members of the garage crew first up from Chester New York two great people with great taste and beer and
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True Crime podcast obviously a big thank you to Stephanie and Matt and a resident
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of Parts Unknown we have Kristen she likes to listen to the show why she jogs around Parts Unknown next we have jod
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and Sydney Australia and a big cheers mates from candy can her also in Sydney Australia cheers mates and a big cheers
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to Deborah in Covington Georgia and we got a thanks for doing what we do from paig in Huntsville Alabama and last but
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not least a huge thank you to Candice in South Lake Tahoe California so thanks to
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everybody for helping us out with this week's beer run if you want to help us out with next week's go to True Crim
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garage.com and click on the old donate button BW are you wi beer run if you like to follow us on Instagram Snapchat
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Twitter Facebook all that stuff do so at True Crime garage and Captain I know I've said it a million times but I get
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asked every single week so here we go one more time old episodes bonus episodes are available in the iTunes
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Store and on our store Page at truecrime garage.com and while you're at our website make sure you check out the blog
00:03:36
and join in the discussion that's enough of the business that's right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer
00:03:43
let's talk some true [Music] [Music] crime [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
00:04:06
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] this case begins with a teenager who goes missing several weeks later in September of
00:04:32
1972 a body is discovered at top a cliff high above an abandoned Quarry in Springfield New
00:04:40
Jersey later it was determined this was the body of the missing teen Janette dma along with the body it was said that
00:04:50
cult related items were recovered from the area rumors said that she had been resting on a makeshift altar in the
00:04:58
woods The Cult like items were rumored to have been occult symbols carved from branches and
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logs the perpetrator or perpetrators of this murder are said to have left the teen's body posed with the crude
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symbolic artifacts surrounding the body the only thing missing from the young girl was a gold cross that she
00:05:21
always wore around her neck these stories would certainly Point toward a possible ritualistic murder
00:05:28
committed by Satanist or a deadly coven of witches weeks after the body was found
00:05:34
local newspapers published articles that fueled speculation and scared the locals
00:05:39
with headlines like occult symbols reportedly surrounded the body and Witchcraft implicated in DePalma
00:05:48
murder these articles told us that living inside this quiet conservative Community was a group of bloodthirsty
00:05:56
satanists then the story vanished from the local newspaper papers the Police Stopped releasing
00:06:02
information some say the police quit working the case some say they didn't want to work the case janette's family
00:06:10
wanted and clearly deserved answers but would they get any did police have any suspects and if so why hold back so much
00:06:17
information information that could lead to a possible arrest and conviction was there a cover up for all
00:06:24
we know this could be like so many other murders that happened in communities back then where the cops figured out
00:06:30
pretty quickly who did it but in the absence of reliable forensics they simply could not build a solid case
00:06:36
against the offender the offender off the case went cold years later the story became local folklore and the rumors
00:06:44
have never quieted the murder of Janette dma is very bizarre and still unsolved this case is not known to most outside
00:06:52
the state of New Jersey could the unsolved abduction and murder of this teenage girl be the result of a police
00:06:57
cover up is is janette's case one of the first examples of satanic [Music] Panic or was Janette one of the first
00:07:07
victims of ritual occult murder in Suburban America this is the case of the devil's
00:07:14
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] tee September 19th 19 1972 Springfield
00:07:31
New Jersey at around 11:00 a.m. 44-year-old police officer Don shro he's responding to a strange police call he
00:07:40
is on his way to the brand new Gardens apartment complex on Wilson Road the strange call that came in the apartment
00:07:48
building superintendent had found what was reported to be a severed human arm this was found lying in the grass near
00:07:55
some bushes right by one of several entrances to the building building this was not officer DA's first day on the
00:08:02
job and he was trying to figure out what to expect to see when arriving on the scene probably see an arm Don and the
00:08:10
other officers had responded to several calls not only from this apartment complex but from the same superintendent
00:08:17
that had made this call see a group of teenage boys that lived in the apartments well these kids suck and they
00:08:24
decided for some reason to pick on the superintendent and always played pranks on this poor woman actually one repeat
00:08:33
prank that they seemed to enjoy was to take trash bags full of rubbish and cut the bags open and then they would dump
00:08:40
the trash all over the lawn and then the lady would have to clean up their mess real dick noses as he got closer to the
00:08:48
apartments officer Don thought well you know here we go again this time the boys
00:08:52
had stepped up their game and he was going to have to give them a Stern talking to because it appears this time
00:08:58
the boys to scare the poor lady to death they stepped up their game by severing an arm or leaving something that would
00:09:05
scare the woman into believing she saw a seed arm you know he might have to use the strong arm of the law to put some
00:09:11
fear in these boys maybe like a mannequin with uh some ketchup they need to stop picking on this woman well
00:09:18
anyway the the Springfield police they've got better things to do than to continually respond to calls at this
00:09:24
apartment building so officer Dawn he pulled up to the building and got out of his car he approached the building
00:09:30
looking for the superintendent but before he could locate her he spotted the item that had fueled the police call
00:09:38
there lying in the grass was a forearm officer Dawn could immediately see this was not the arm of a mannequin like he
00:09:45
had expected to see not a half arm he saw the fingernails he could tell that the arm had been out in the elements for
00:09:53
quite some time the flesh appeared to be almost leathery and kind of maroon in color
00:09:59
Don got out his camera and took several pictures of the find and then he called into the station telling them you better
00:10:06
get some detectives out here we have a human arm lying in the grass and it's no joke so I'm assuming this arm didn't get
00:10:13
there by these pranksters correct well that's the weird thing Captain because that is the first thing that jumps in my
00:10:19
mind how did this arm get here lying in the grass near this building right and I
00:10:24
don't know that they ever truly answered this if you look up like little short Snippets about this case they will tell
00:10:32
you that a dog had somehow found the arm and and brought it to this location leaving it there in the grass mhm I
00:10:40
don't know that they fully explained that uh the police anyway in their investigation yeah the issue was the
00:10:46
lady that made the initial call that her dog was very little like a small dog yeah but what they found out later was
00:10:53
that there was a Dalmation that was um owned by somebody on the property and that
00:10:59
the denomination would roam this area all the time so they kind of assumed that that's how the arm got there yeah
00:11:05
cuz they started knocking on doors of the tenants that lived in the building just asking questions what people had
00:11:10
been doing that morning and such and like you said that Dalmation was a large dog and the one lady says I let my dog
00:11:18
out this morning and he just runs wild and then I let him in whenever he's done whenever he comes back and so I think
00:11:24
they kind of just put two and two together and came to this conclusion that maybe the dog
00:11:29
had gone off into the woods or in some other location bringing it back to the apartment complex the other strange
00:11:35
thing that that occurs early on in this police call is once the detectives and some other officers get there it's not a
00:11:44
long time that they're there before one of the detectives spoke up and says hey I think this could be the arm of Janette
00:11:52
DePalma you know which seems like a very strange thing but we have to keep in mind we're talking about 1972 in
00:12:00
Springfield New Jersey and from my understanding it's not a huge town you know there's not a ton of people that
00:12:07
are living there and at the time Janette DePalma she was the only missing person
00:12:12
listed in Springfield right and I'm assuming that they could tell that it was a female hand well it did have the
00:12:19
uh the fingernail polish um but we both know that doesn't mean anything no uh but uh what does that mean we we both
00:12:28
know no we grew we grew up when the goth thing came was was going crazy yeah we had we might have had more guys with
00:12:36
finger nail polish than girls in the high school that's possible in the in that old classy high school well you
00:12:42
probably had more guys wearing nail polish and College Tech than the college prep program well it took some time
00:12:51
Captain but a search was organized they had to call in a favor with another Police Department the Springfield
00:12:58
Department was was very small and had limited resources back then they did not have a K9 unit or a search dog so they
00:13:06
brought in an officer with a blood hound and they had a team of about four or five officers some of them were actually
00:13:13
Off Duty Officers that had volunteered their time to help in the search the official search started around 300 p.m.
00:13:21
that same afternoon just after about 3:30 p.m. the search team entered a wooded area this is off of Mountain View
00:13:30
Road they spent some time kind of you know getting deep into these Woods mhm The Searchers passed over a hill crossed
00:13:39
a creek and then came to a quarry now this area this property actually belong to the howdale
00:13:46
construction materials company and according to the officers this area would not be accessible to any normal
00:13:53
means of traffic that's their word so for clarification on what that may mean is just this simple they would not
00:14:00
expect hikers to be trampling through this area mainly because of where it was located it was when they got near this
00:14:08
Quarry area that they found what they belied to be a small top portion of the arm that was earlier located at the
00:14:16
apartment complex and they're assuming that the dog again a dog went to the woods took the arm took it back to the
00:14:23
apartment complex and so that this piece would have fell off on its Journey Back
00:14:28
and remember officer Don that we spoke of earlier well he was one of the officers that had volunteered his time
00:14:34
that afternoon to join the search so he along with another officer started up what officer Don would later call a very
00:14:42
Steep Hill he says that it was steep enough that he had slipped several times on his way to the top mhm at the top of
00:14:49
the hill there was a flat area it was on this spot that the two men had located a
00:14:55
body the body was lying face down the flat area where the body was lying was about 12 ft around on the body a blue
00:15:04
there was a blue t-shirt and tan pants but no shoes or socks they did find a pair of flip-flops nearby now excuse me
00:15:14
for for saying this I give a little warning here it's a little gross but animals had ate most of the flesh off of
00:15:20
the feet and around the head of this body according to the officers that found the body the clothing was in so so
00:15:29
shaped but the body was very deteriorated mhm they couldn't tell if it was the body of a male or a female
00:15:36
and as they had anticipated the body was missing an arm the remaining arm was resting under the head and the head was
00:15:45
pretty much just a skull by this time with long dark matted hair even though they couldn't tell outright determine
00:15:53
the gender of the body they suspected it was a female body because of the long hair and they had found a pocketbook
00:16:00
nearby well yeah even though this is like the height of the hippie movement right or around well it's in the hippie
00:16:08
movement there was what the officers would say a bizarre arrangement of sticks and stones around the body some
00:16:15
said that the sticks had been arranged to appear like crosses that there were some Stones arranged around the head in
00:16:22
a semicircle and according to one of the officers it looked almost like a halo around the body's head one of the
00:16:31
officers told officer Dawn that in his opinion this looks to him to be the work of
00:16:37
Witchcraft when the detectives arrived the they kicked all of the Searchers and the officers off of the hilltop they had
00:16:45
to wait for the coroner to show up to officially declare the body as dead before they could remove the body now
00:16:53
the hill was so steep captain that they had to use a a fire truck uh to remove move this body and the way that this was
00:17:01
explained to me is that on one side you know you you pretty much have a steep Cliff or a steep hill mhm and then on
00:17:09
one side you have a cliff so just a complete drop off and what they did was they took the fire Tru and they backed
00:17:17
it up to the cliff portion and they took the ladder and they shot it up towards the top of the cliff yeah I mean it's
00:17:24
it's kind of like when you're moving a mattress right inste going through the house you go through like the bedroom
00:17:29
window right right that's a good explanation I guess the officers just determined that the hill was too steep
00:17:36
to to take it down the hill this way would be faster and probably preserve the body the best that they
00:17:43
could now once they get the body back to uh to check it out to try to find some evidence figure out who this person is
00:17:51
and the cause of death it's crazy Captain because they weren't able to determine a cause of death there was no
00:17:58
cause of death determined and while the coroner was going to continue to work on this aspect
00:18:04
of the case right the detectives they were charged with trying to figure out who this body belonged to the
00:18:12
identification of this body from the autopsy were they able to speculate anything I mean I know that they
00:18:18
couldn't determine you know for sure like this is how the person died but sometimes they
00:18:23
can say well it's possible that this person died this way okay so my understanding is that the the the body
00:18:30
had been deteriorated very badly mhm and that this did not allow them to come up
00:18:36
to come up with a 100% conclusion of how this person would have died now they say
00:18:43
that they believe that this person was strangled um and but they can't prove it they can't prove it and there was
00:18:49
actually no like ligature marks to to lead them to that conclusion what my guess is is that they have no they don't
00:18:58
have any obvious signs of of a bullet wound you know or any signs of blunt force trauma or something that would
00:19:04
have fractured the skull or fractured other bones uh and typically you would see that with bullet holes or you would
00:19:10
see that with stab wounds or being struck over the head there was nothing to indicate that anything like that had
00:19:17
happened to this person before he or she expired or if there was any indication of that it possibly could have been
00:19:24
postmortem as well correct now to kind of paint a picture of how badly decomposed this body was and and how
00:19:32
possibly long it had sat there in the woods M the clothing of the person and the the body of the person it had laid
00:19:40
there so long that they kind of started to become one and was very sunken into the ground that the body had laid on so
00:19:48
I mean when they're seeing this situation they're seeing this site it's obvious to them even from somebody with
00:19:54
an untrained eye that we're looking at a person that's been there in out in the elements for quite some time so as we
00:20:02
said the the detectives are charged with trying to make an identification of this body and the one
00:20:09
detective decides you know what he's he remembered what one of the other officers said Remember the officer said
00:20:15
hey this could be the arm of Janette DePalma well he remembered hearing that and he says you know what I'm going to
00:20:21
start there so yeah I mean obviously she's the only person that's missing in your town reported missing and then
00:20:29
furthermore they kind of believe that they're looking at the body of a a possible female victim right so this is
00:20:35
a good starting point so what they do is the following day the day after the body
00:20:39
is discovered they have a meeting with janette's dentist okay now the way that I understand this is that the dentist he
00:20:49
was new to the area and he was kind of the young dentist right and he was working for this older dentist that had
00:20:56
been in the area for many many years years skeptical and I guess what's skeptical well I'm anti-dentite
00:21:03
so next thing you know you'll be saying they should have their own schools yeah uh anyway so I guess he said that
00:21:12
he was janette's dentist because the way that this situation that they had set up
00:21:16
was this that the the older dentist he took all of the older patients and anybody that was younger and new well he
00:21:24
got the new patience so the dentist had to go over to the funeral home and do an
00:21:28
examination on the body's dental work and comparing it to records that he had brought with him regarding Janette
00:21:36
DePalma and of course made a positive identification that this was in fact the missing teen that they had been looking
00:21:43
for she' had been missing for almost 6 weeks you ever spend any time in a funeral home only when I'm attending a
00:21:50
funeral well I had a friend that lived in one okay and uh we had a sixth grade dance in the at the the funeral hole
00:21:59
Yeah it was you know romantic in a creepy way wow no it's not no it's not it was like my girl no I think that's
00:22:08
what you do when you want the children to remind their parents that hey this is what happens when you don't vote for the
00:22:14
school levy no it's just it was just a party it wasn't a school dance so we got to talk about Captain the devil's teeth
00:22:20
and uh for those of you out there listening you know the title of the show was the devil's Tee It was wasn't just a
00:22:26
clever name that the captain came up did you just say Devil's teeth I think I think I did Hey listen to our new
00:22:33
episode The Devil's teeth but the reason why we have this is this title is because Janet DePalma her body was found
00:22:41
at the top of the cliff the cliff that they found her body at is now known to the locals as the de Devil's teeth now
00:22:49
our story takes place in 1972 but how this spot got to be known as the devil's teeth well you have to go back a bit
00:22:58
according to locals back in the 1920s it was known as The Devil's skull this is because some kids found a large natural
00:23:06
depression in the blue stone that was up there so this is a like fairly large Rock Hollow and in the spring and summer
00:23:14
months it would fill up with water and the kids would sit inside of this kind of like a like a bathtub or a hot tub uh
00:23:21
hot tub yeah in the Autumn months and when it started to get cold out the place became you know dreary kind of
00:23:29
kind of like Ohio does when the Sun goes away in in November and you don't see it
00:23:34
again for a few months but it is said that you could often see buzzards circling above the spot because like
00:23:41
little rodents and stuff would would fall in there and drown in the water and the the birds would pick their bodies
00:23:48
out of there but during times where there would be enough time between rainfall The Rock Hollow would dry out
00:23:56
and it would start to take on the appearance of the inside of like an inverted half skull so the kid the kids
00:24:03
started calling it The Devil's skull so then years later when the construction materials company purchased the land and
00:24:10
started mining the area they would dump loads of Wati Rock along the edge of the
00:24:16
devil's skull so the rows of this waist Rock started looking like teeth like lining the jaw of the devil's skull so
00:24:24
that's how it took on the name of the devil's teeth and remain it's still called that to this
00:24:29
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[Music] today all right cheers me matey all cheers I was just admiring your little
00:26:47
uh fancy coaster thing you have over there on your desk during the beer break yeah it's cuz uh there's some beautiful
00:26:54
people that listen to the show and they like to send me some things well Captain
00:26:58
I want to talk about victimology here because we know that Janette DePalma is our victim and we know that she was
00:27:04
found September 19th 1972 yeah she was last seen on August 7th 1972 this is like 6 weeks before
00:27:14
they find her body apparently she was supposedly going to Gail Donahue's home this is a girl her same age good friend
00:27:23
of hers somebody that she had hung out with often uh apparently I guess Gail lived approximately 8 Miles Away now the
00:27:33
story goes like this because there's some conflicting stories amongst people close to Janette on what her plans were
00:27:41
for the last day that we know that she was possibly alive and the one story comes from Gail
00:27:48
Donahue herself she says that that morning one of the two had had phoned the other one either Janette had called
00:27:56
her she had called called Janette right the plan for the day was that Janette was supposed to come over to Gail's home
00:28:03
because there were two boys that they were interested in that they had made plans with and they were going to hang
00:28:10
out that that afternoon mhm apparently I guess that Janette says I can't make it you know I know we said
00:28:17
we were going to hang out but I can't make it my mom has some chores and things that I have to do and I I won't
00:28:22
be able to to get over there right Gail says look you know we've been there well
00:28:28
I don't know that all of us have been there but I can recall times where you're supposed to make plans and you
00:28:33
got two girls two guys making plans and if your buddy doesn't show up now you got a weird situation right because
00:28:40
you're thinking maybe the girls won't show up or maybe they only want to hang out cuz he's there whatever your day is
00:28:45
kind of ruined if somebody drops off especially at that age yeah it's an awkward time
00:28:52
so Gail kind of gives Janette the business like no we made these plans with these guys you should figure out a
00:28:59
way to get over here right make it happen Janette before she hangs out hangs up the phone she says you know
00:29:05
I'll get over there what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk to my mom I'll hitch hitchhike a ride to your place
00:29:13
okay which the hitchhiking was a lot more popular back then yes of course where the story start to vary a little
00:29:21
bit is we have janette's sister janette's sister said that on that Janette had asked her if she wanted to
00:29:29
go with her to Gail's home and this is this is where I should I should clarify this is where the story gets a little
00:29:36
strange she says that she wanted to go to Tommy's home okay Tommy is a boy that I guess Janette was interested in and
00:29:44
she told her sister that Tommy lived near Gail Gail would later say that that's not you know that's not the case
00:29:52
she was coming to my home yes we did know a boy named Tommy but he was the guy I was interested in right what I
00:29:59
think we have here Captain is we have an older sister who ultimately does not end
00:30:03
up going with Janette and I bet you there's I bet you both stories are probably true in some sense we probably
00:30:11
have an older sister that maybe really only knew part of the facts of why Janette was leaving or why she wanted to
00:30:19
go where she was going yeah but this happens all the times especially with teenagers you know you have a situation
00:30:27
where people's stories don't line up but also it's like you're trying to their perceptions are off of what the
00:30:34
truth is it's not that they're technically lying they just don't really remember the facts correctly yes and we
00:30:42
have so we have the sister that was asked to walk with Janette the sister ultimately turns her down she had
00:30:47
something else to do we do know that Janette reached out to another friend asking her if she would like to walk
00:30:54
with her to the to Gail's home yeah well wasn't there a report that the mom was going to drive her that's
00:31:02
correct typically her mother would drive her down to a train station and then she
00:31:08
would take the train to wherever she was going maybe it was a work later that day
00:31:12
or to a friend's house now remember we said that her friend Gail Donahue's home was approximately 8 miles away so in
00:31:20
this situation she would need to get three miles to the train station and then make it the rest of the way to her
00:31:26
friend's house it's it's the summertime it's August 7th she tells her mom hey it's nice out I would prefer to walk so
00:31:34
she's got three miles to travel on foot she's reached out to a few different people who can't go with her or don't
00:31:41
want to make the trip with her so she's on foot alone for these three miles and I don't know if it matters at all but I
00:31:48
also heard that it wasn't a nice pleasant conversation it was the mom said I'm going to drive you and she she
00:31:57
said uh I'm 16 now I'll just you know I'll hitchhike well it's interesting that you bring that up because of a
00:32:06
couple of points and one that I will wait to get to later but one point is this though it's pretty common when you
00:32:13
know when we're talking about victimology and what kind of person was Janette and what kind of family did she
00:32:18
come from right it's widely reported by people that knew her and knew her family
00:32:23
that there was a lot of kind of back and forth between between mom and daughter that that Janette was kind of a tough a
00:32:32
tough girl and it sounds like that the Palma family was a little tough all of them and maybe hard-headed would be a
00:32:40
word that we could use um well I mean I think it's safe to say I mean I don't want to assume too much but I think when
00:32:48
a when a younger boy is becoming a man the 16 to 18 range he has some issues with the father mostly and when when a
00:32:57
when a a teenage girl is becoming a woman she starts having issues with her mother well if in fact they did argue
00:33:04
about whether she would walk or ride to the train station mhm that would not be their only argument that I have heard
00:33:13
reported of that that day of the day that she went missing apparently her cousin had run away from home several
00:33:22
times and I don't get the sense that she was running away from a home where she had abusive parents or she was being
00:33:29
mistreated it was more of she's a teenager and she was kind of wild and running away might be going and staying
00:33:36
with friends for a couple of days without permission from the parents yeah well on this day her parents had
00:33:43
informed her that her cousin had been gone for like a week or two like like a a longer time than than expected and
00:33:52
previous from previous times again this is a different time so wasn't very it pretty common that at 18 you moved out
00:34:01
back in the 70s and so you'd have a lot of situations where somebody would you know I'm I'm going to live on my own at
00:34:08
at 16 or 17 that wasn't super uncommon and at some point during the course of that
00:34:15
morning janette's parents told her that her cousin had been missing for a while and Janette got upset with them and kind
00:34:22
of gave them the business because she's like well why did you wait so long to tell me yeah so they they could have had
00:34:29
more than one argument that day regardless she goes off on foot by herself she's got to make the three mile
00:34:35
hike to the train station now we do know that she was seen walking several people
00:34:40
had seen her walking in the direction of the train station that yeah but that walk is going to take her about 45
00:34:46
minutes yeah and she's last seen not terribly far from her home where she's Crossing an intersection this is widely
00:34:54
considered the last sighting of Janette dma on the day that she went missing now
00:35:00
let's talk about the dma family I've been told that this is an upper middle class area the neighborhood that she was
00:35:07
lived in and the neighborhood that she was last seen in regarding her family a lot of the people have referred to the
00:35:15
family as quote unquote weird and that would make you think that there would be something very strange
00:35:21
with this family I don't know that I found a lot strange with with what they they accounts of why this family was
00:35:28
weird what do I mean by weird so this was a small community right mhm and these the diplomas were not very social
00:35:37
they rarely went out they didn't go out a lot the adults didn't the mother and father M and when they did go out they
00:35:43
were not social to the other people in the community this regarding you know when you take into account the time
00:35:50
period and the small community that they lived in this was considered to be strange mhm there was the other
00:35:57
consideration that there were Mafia rumors that maybe the father was in the mafia this was an Italian family a large
00:36:04
Italian family I believe they had seven or eight children yeah and they seem to have some money and so I think some
00:36:12
people in the neighborhood and in the town thought that they were involved in the mafia well they had a little bit of
00:36:17
money cuz they weren't going out all the time there you go so and and look there's a difference between you know
00:36:24
maybe they were quiet some people assume all this person's quiet so they're rude
00:36:29
mhm and so you know I'd like to know if there was a you know or were they outwardly just rude to people there were
00:36:37
a few police officers now retired obviously that state that they had responded to the home several times on
00:36:44
police calls for what well it I guess they don't really know the police don't really know because every time they
00:36:51
would arrive they would get the same story that there was a problem now there is no problem we're all fine here mhm
00:37:00
they believe that there was probably some yelling and fighting between the parents and at times maybe one of the
00:37:08
parents would call or one of the children would call the police and then whatever issue had warranted the call
00:37:16
was resolved by the time the police would arrive but we do have several police officers stating that they
00:37:21
believe and recall that happening several times now regarding our victim Janette DePalma what kind of kid was she
00:37:29
what kind of girl was she that is it's that's the debate yes it's all over the shop you've you've read these things too
00:37:37
it's like depending on who you talk to you get one completely different version of somebody else you know somebody
00:37:45
else's account and if you take all the different versions of who she was we could literally talk about that for
00:37:53
maybe four or five hours it's that debatable all right well let's start no let's not because I found that
00:38:01
portion of when I was looking into this case I found that portion to be quite boring and I felt that it was quite
00:38:07
really cuz I I actually thought it was interesting well the thing for me was I didn't think it helped me understand the
00:38:13
case any better maybe that's why I thought it was boring but I found that it was interesting that you know one
00:38:19
person would be like oh she was a real wild girl you know she was always she was always you know hanging out with the
00:38:25
greasers and doing drugs and and she was a fast girl she spent a lot of time with
00:38:30
a lot of different boys yeah there was rumors um a lot of cops were saying that you could find her at like Lovers Lane
00:38:37
and stuff like that she would always be in somebody's car and then you have other people that other girls or boys
00:38:44
her age that would say the complete opposite they would like well she might have smoked a cigarette every now and
00:38:50
then maybe even some weed once in a while but I wouldn't consider her to be wild and I didn't know her to do
00:38:56
anything more than first base you know maybe she liked to kiss some boys but nothing you know that was out of the
00:39:03
ordinary for her time you know for her age right she's 16 years old that's what everybody's doing what most of the kids
00:39:09
are doing at that age and then you have other people that are saying that she was very religious and that she had a
00:39:18
boy or two that she was interested in and when she was interested in a boy she didn't look at other boys she didn't
00:39:24
chase other boys or talk to them that she was pretty conservative so it's really all over the shop at the end of
00:39:30
the day and it makes it hard to kind of nail down what type of person she is well and there's again there's then
00:39:36
there becomes rumors of that she's heavily involved in church and there's a lot of stuff from her family coming out
00:39:43
and saying she was very involved in church and then other people saying that she was possibly involved in witchcraft
00:39:50
yeah and one thing I found captain that when uh years later when people would go
00:39:56
back and Tred to investigate this case is I found that what a lot of people were
00:40:03
reporting regarding her character janette's character and her actions it seemed to me they were reporting things
00:40:10
that they had heard or things that they had heard other people say or my parents
00:40:15
told me this or my sister told me that here's what I wonder you know we mentioned during the trailer that this
00:40:22
case has almost become folklore at some point and I think that very quickly in this case when you have a 16-year-old
00:40:29
girl that goes missing and she's missing for 6 weeks and then later found dead in
00:40:34
the woods mhm you know you know sometimes and and I don't care for this one bit but sometimes parents and priest
00:40:44
and police officers and teachers and principls aunts and uncles anybody in the the form of authority figure to
00:40:53
teenagers they kind of use this as a teaching moment where they're like and they they misconstrue the truth they
00:41:00
they stretch the truth quite a bit sometimes when they choose to take this on as a teaching moment and they'll
00:41:06
throw things in like she was a wild girl you know she was always in the back seats of uh cars with with boys hanging
00:41:13
out in lover Lanes this is what happens to you when you give hand jobs yeah and they don't really outwardly say that but
00:41:19
they imply like this happened because she was this way or she was she was way into drugs and look where it got
00:41:26
yeah reer Madness man yeah and where really I mean yeah may maybe you can use that as a teaching moment I don't think
00:41:35
you can when when you don't have a cause of death and you have a person who is a
00:41:42
victim at this point we don't have anything to point us in the direction to lead us to believe that that she had
00:41:50
anything to do with her demise well it's a lot of rumor and a lot of hearsay yeah
00:41:54
and one thing that does not seem to be rumor or hearsay remember we have her telling her friend that she would just
00:42:01
hitchhike a ride over to her house yeah well it seems to be that that was a general consensus amongst her friends
00:42:09
was that that Janette was not opposed to hitching a ride mhm there were several of these friends though however that
00:42:17
said she would not get into a car unless she would know the driver and apparently I get but that
00:42:24
sounds silly it's like it's one or the other right you're just going to hitchhike and it's you only get in the
00:42:29
car when you're hitchhiking if you know the person I get what you're saying I wonder if you know if she would
00:42:36
recognize a girl and guys her age are a little bit older well they would have to
00:42:41
be a little little bit older because apparently back then you had to be 17 and a half in New Jersey to get a
00:42:47
license at that time right so when she's 16 she's trying to get around on her own
00:42:52
my speculation is what they mean by that is that she would recognize a friend's car from high school and then stick the
00:42:59
old thumb out or wave him down you know hey Tommy hey Julie whatever I'm heading
00:43:04
over here you live near them would you mind giving me a ride kind of thing yeah but this kind of stuff in cases drives
00:43:10
me nuts because maybe that's not the type of person she was just getting in a car with a stranger but all it takes is
00:43:16
one time mhm yeah maybe she got desperate right and didn't want to make I mean 8 miles is a is a stretch right
00:43:23
so after walking for 45 minutes maybe went uh I don't really know this guy but he seems safe mhm or he's he's looks
00:43:32
like somebody I might go to high school with or he looks like he's only 18 years
00:43:37
old well here's one rumor that I do want to talk about though cuz this one seems
00:43:42
to stand out amongst the others for me Captain and this is something that didn't really I think this was a rumor
00:43:48
that was swirling about amongst the people that knew Janette and amongst the people at her high school but it wasn't
00:43:55
something that was kind of widely known until a couple years after her death and
00:44:00
this was a rumor of a party the night that Janette had disappeared and this party was taking place at her friend's
00:44:07
house Donna blattis now her friend Donna blattis and her brothers apparently were
00:44:14
throwing a party that evening the rumor is that Janette showed up to this party and at some point you know there were
00:44:21
drugs and drinking and things like that going on at this party at some point that she had overdosed on an unnamed
00:44:28
drug and one of the blattis brothers or all of them kind of panicked and people that were at that party took her body
00:44:38
off into the woods off of Mount View Road and dumped her there MH I guess this this seems to be the belief that is
00:44:48
also held by some of the members of the dma family and some people dispute this because they say well the drugs that
00:44:55
would be the unnamed drugs right would be like LSD and that you can't OD from LSD okay
00:45:03
and I'm not an LSD expert so I I don't know if that's possible or not I thought I was working with an LSD expert uh no
00:45:11
but I would I would also assume you know cuz one of the other rumors is that maybe that she left this party and she
00:45:17
went wandering and she just collapsed or whatever in this in the woods right is that possible if high on LSD well you
00:45:27
have the situation where there is no visible signs of cause of death uh for this individual so that that would lead
00:45:36
some you know lend some Credence to what they're saying here but so the the people of the dma family that seem to
00:45:44
believe this is we have Cindy her sister we've mentioned her sister before but not by name the youngest one and Carl
00:45:51
and according to Cindy her mother believed this too and the reason why they believe this rumor that they heard
00:45:57
was they recall not having seen Donna blattis and her brothers at the funeral you know this was a this was a wake and
00:46:05
a funeral that was attended by hundreds of people uh people that that Janette knew and the DePalma family knew and
00:46:13
they don't recall seeing them at the funeral when you have that many people you might have missed somebody you might
00:46:19
have missed a face in the crowd yeah it's also possible that they didn't go for whatever reason I don't know mhm I
00:46:26
don't know how much it points towards guilt it might seem strange though I can I can get on board with that that it
00:46:31
might seem strange but we have a friend of of janette's and she was somebody that was
00:46:39
very close to Donna blatus MH and she disputes this she says that you know this rumor might have some it might have
00:46:50
some truth to it but according to this friend and her name is Denise Parker she gives a slight different story she says
00:46:57
that there was no party at Donna's house that night that's just a bad rumor she states that there were always kids there
00:47:04
were always kids hanging out at Donna's house 247 it was a hang out right you know uh but had there been a party she
00:47:11
would have been aware of it and she also stated that that was not a party house it was just a place where you would you
00:47:18
would see a couple kids hanging out from time to time right but that again it's not a party house it's just kids hanging
00:47:25
out but is it possible that why these kids were hanging out parents leave for a little bit and they decide to do some
00:47:33
experimenting with some drugs and some things happen well so but Denise would go on to further say that she did hear a
00:47:41
rumor that Janette was at Donna's house that night she's the same woman saying that there's there was no party that
00:47:48
night she's saying however that Janette had stopped by there on her trip walking
00:47:54
that she had stopped by Don and was looking for a ride to get to her friend's house right and she when she
00:48:03
gets there she finds out that Donna was actually grounded and could not drive her over to Gail's home mhm and from
00:48:11
there the rumor she heard was Janette had just had to leave on foot because her friend was unable to drive her there
00:48:18
yeah Didn't I also heard that maybe she asked the mother like the girl was grounded but then she was like well let
00:48:25
me ask your mother oh okay like she was she was really into uh finding a ride but either way I think that backs up the
00:48:34
story that she was at least there and maybe you know again quote unquote there wasn't a party and if that vers yeah
00:48:40
that version that you had heard there would have been no no party I would assume now what do the investigators
00:48:45
think when retired investigators and police were were presented with these rumors regarding the party there's a man
00:48:52
by the name of Ed kitch now Ed was the juvenile officer back then and he was a juvenile officer for over 20 years in
00:49:00
the area can't believe they let kids do that let them take the job uh Ed believes that the blatus theory is the
00:49:09
one that holds the most truth the blest knight in the Pips out of all the theories that he's heard over the years
00:49:16
and rumors he believes this one holds the most truth he he would go on to say that he's 90% sure that something
00:49:23
happened to Janette in the blet home that night and that Mark blattis this is one of the uh Brothers uh was rumored to
00:49:32
have been involved and he he believes that that's where the truth in this case lies all right so in your personal
00:49:38
opinion do you think a group of teenagers could hold on to a story like this I mean I've seen I Know What You
00:49:46
Did Last Summer yeah and then you have to wonder not only are they holding on to a lie you're talking about keeping it
00:49:51
quiet and holding on to a lie for four decades over four decades mhm but if it's family
00:49:58
members then it'd be easier to do I tend to when when when we look at a lot of cases and the first thing that I look at
00:50:07
when I'm when I'm looking at a Cas is was this committed by an individual or committed by multiple people a group of
00:50:14
people that's interesting I start with Wikipedia and the thing here is with especially with these older cases that's
00:50:22
usually the assumption that I make that it's probably an individual rather than a group of people because it is often
00:50:29
hard to keep a group quiet there's usually one person that will come out at some point and say hey this is what
00:50:36
happened or I know something um you know we have drunken confessions that we've heard of on the show and reported about
00:50:42
we've had deathbed confessions that we've reported about uh so often I find that this is not the case that it that
00:50:49
is would be very tough for a group of people to keep this quiet now but keep keep this in mind we're talking about
00:50:56
did a group of people actually keep this quiet because there's rumors out there that this is what in fact happened right
00:51:02
so where it's it's now boils down to how can you trace these rumors back what is
00:51:09
the root of these rumors and do they stem from somebody that was at that house that night that night that saw
00:51:15
Janet Janet so what you're saying is is it speculation and that's how we got to this point and we know that she was at
00:51:23
this house and we know that kids hung out at this house so is that where it's coming from and it's just P pure
00:51:31
speculation or did somebody say something and because of that the rumor mill started up and I don't want to
00:51:39
upset anybody because you know when I make this statement I thought about this last night when I was thinking about
00:51:44
this case and I was like do I say this because I'm afraid that people are going to be like well then it everything you
00:51:50
just said is hogwash no but I think this should be taken into I have to say it captain cuz everything I think you have
00:51:57
to take it with a grain of salt because this case almost reminds me of the serial case of Adnan SED and and hmon
00:52:05
Lee we're talking about a girl that disappeared she's not found until weeks later and then I think we
00:52:13
have we have teenagers that are being questioned they're like when did you see her last did you see her on this night
00:52:19
and I think they start wondering well yeah I saw her yeah I saw her on uh what was that a Tuesday no it was a Mond
00:52:25
oh okay well maybe it was a Monday yeah I saw her maybe you didn't you get to a point where you start to wonder the I'm
00:52:33
not I don't want to call these people Liars if somebody believes something they're not Liars they're just
00:52:39
misremembering misremembering they they don't have the date it was it should have been a normal day it should have
00:52:44
been an ordinary day there was no reason to remember if that was the last time you would see this person or not yeah so
00:52:50
I see the similarities I mean we have similar ages we have somebody going missing for a period of time and then
00:52:58
their body was found but a difference here is hmon Lee was um reported missing MH where Janette was reported as a
00:53:08
runaway yeah so I said we would get to this later and this is where we need to get to that right so her parents
00:53:14
reported her missing the same night uh that we had already discussed her parents are salvator and Florence dup
00:53:22
Palma now keep in mind Janette was scheduled to work that evening or at least she told her parents that she had
00:53:29
to work that evening so she was going to go to work after going to her friend's house she never returns home that night
00:53:37
her mother starts making calls to janette's friends and to their parents as well nobody seems to know anything
00:53:44
she didn't arrive at her friend's home not only did they not know anything in fact no one had anything to report to
00:53:51
them you know having heard from her or plans changing anything like like that there was nothing to report now when
00:53:58
they called the police to report their daughter missing the police gave her the old same old troubling story that we've
00:54:05
heard a hundred times when we talk about these older cases you know we've seen this a lot they they get the old she
00:54:11
needs to be gone for 24 hours before she can be reported missing according to the
00:54:17
police it was the depalma's the the family themselves that reported Janette as a runaway right and
00:54:25
that might have been they could have been assuming because of her cousin because of the cousin and remember you
00:54:32
and I had talked that there was probably at least two arguments that took place that day between her and one of her
00:54:39
parents before leaving the house the thing here though Captain where this gets real screwy is you know
00:54:46
back then police would not really this isn't something that you investigated when somebody's reported missing it's
00:54:53
investigated when somebody's report reported as a runaway you might look around for the person you put out a you
00:54:59
know you you you alert the officers that this person is uh has left their home right and that the parents are looking
00:55:06
for this home and if somebody matching the description go up and talk to them but they don't really do any work when
00:55:12
somebody's reported as a runaway that because they're under the belief that this person left of their own will that
00:55:19
they wanted to leave the home and in most these cases when that does happen the teenager returns after a couple of
00:55:27
days the thing here Captain I wonder about you know when when a girl is reported let's say she was reported
00:55:35
missing let's say she was reported as a runaway let's let's let's take that aside but she's reported as not being
00:55:41
where she's supposed to be okay and then 6 weeks later she's found dead out in the middle of the woods somewhere MH and
00:55:49
you come back as an investigation and you say well we can't come up with a cause of death but we're going to rule
00:55:56
it a suspicious death or a homicide because she was found somewhere that she should not have been that we don't
00:56:02
expect her to have gone on her own so therefore we're going to we're going to investigate it as a homicide so now your
00:56:10
department has declared this a homicide the problem you have here is if when you
00:56:17
took the missing person's report you decided or officers amongst your group decided she's not missing she's a
00:56:24
runaway and then you find her dead out in the middle of the woods well then there's a problem with the Department
00:56:29
there's a problem with somebody in the department one of the detectives or one of the cops because the public wants to
00:56:35
know well why did you call her a runaway it's very likely she did not run away if
00:56:39
she was found murdered somewhere right so here's my big question my big question is that later
00:56:48
the police stating they the family reported her as a runaway this wasn't our problem this was not our doing
00:56:55
nothing that we did wrong was it to cover their ass right to cover their butts the problem I have with the family
00:57:01
let's say the family did report her as a runaway MH I understand that yes there was an argument or two and I understand
00:57:09
that maybe because her cousin had taken off you thought maybe she was doing the same thing MH but there's a couple
00:57:17
problems with these stories one is if the cousin had been gone long enough that the family not only the immediate
00:57:25
family but the extended family were growing concerned because she was gone a lot longer than typically she would be
00:57:31
gone mhm to the point where you tell your daughter that starts an argument with you that morning because she's mad
00:57:38
you waited so long to tell her wouldn't you have enough concern of the cousin of
00:57:42
your niece that your daughter all of a sudden missing would wouldn't she fall into
00:57:48
that same concerned department for you like naturally for me it would the second part that I have an issue with
00:57:56
is if your daughter ran away she didn't take anything with her M and you had 24 hours to figure that out I would be a
00:58:03
little if if my daughter or son which I don't have they don't exist but if if one of them existed and left you know
00:58:13
said say they took off and they were gone okay and the police tell me I can't report this for 24 hours I'm going to do
00:58:20
a little investigating on my own and one thing I'm going to first look at is did
00:58:24
they take anything with them you know it a kid a 16-year-old kid that packs up a
00:58:30
backpack full of items is a lot different than somebody that just leaves walking on foot with nothing mhm did you
00:58:38
ever try to run away when you're a kid not like a real runaway you know like the silly like maybe rode my bike too
00:58:44
far and stayed gone a little you know like hours longer than I was supposed to but not overnight I don't think I ever
00:58:50
made it yeah but that's not running away you just stayed out later but no no no no but I think I I think my intent at
00:58:56
one point was like like like that's it I'm out of here and then it's like 3 hours later you get hungry and it gets
00:59:03
dark and you're like okay well I'm going back I was in kindergarten and I had this duffel bag and I remember thinking
00:59:10
I'm going to run away and uh so I I put the duffel bag and there's no like strap
00:59:16
right mhm so I put the the handles around my neck right and I have this du bag filled you weren't going to make it
00:59:24
very no so I got to the like the end of the court and I couldn't breathe see this is a teaching moment
00:59:32
this is what you get for running away this this is what you get a strong teaching moment here my my mom looked at
00:59:38
me and said this is what you get for giving hand jobs all right well Captain I think what
00:59:43
we've brought up here is that there's a lot of questions about her friends and certainly questions about her own
00:59:50
lifestyle and character but where I think that we need to hone in on and talk about when we start off the next
00:59:56
episode there's some questions about this family and about the parents as well what what truly happened to Janette
01:00:04
DePalma and we never even got to the aspect of possible Satanism or witchcraft being involved in this murder
01:00:11
and that is a huge Topic in this [Music] case thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend thanks for sharing on
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