Episode 646: The Unsolved Murder of Jeannette DePalma

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Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena.
And this is Morbid. This is Morbid.
What is that squishy thing that you have? So this is, what is it called? Is it like a stress ball? ball it's called like neato or something uh yeah it's like a stress ball but i actually got it for the

kids for like a stocking stuffer i think yeah it's like this little teardrop of a thing that's

like filled with gel almost and you can squeeze it and mess around with it as much as you want

and it just turns back into that shape throw me it caught it oh yeah can i have one yeah oh wow can i have one you can like really stretch this oh wow i could work some anger out on this yeah it's literally called me doe knee n-e-e doe there's a lot of dog hair on there yeah sorry that Sorry, that was a really aggressive throw. That was.

Luckily, I played softball, man.

Same, but not as well.

No, these things are great.

I recommend a stress ball for everybody.

I think they should be passed out in the United States right now.

Yeah, honestly.

Actually, I think.

Honestly.

As you know, this comes out so much later than anything, but our hearts really go out to anybody affected by that plane crash. It is.
We are only a couple of days out from the helicopter slamming into the passenger plane, the U.S. Airways passenger plane in D.C.
at Reagan Airport. and it has been weighing on my mind so heavy because victims' names, people are being identified.
I mean, there's still people. They're still doing the recovery right now.
And it's so many kids. It is so many kids.
A lot of them were from the Boston Skating Club locally. Six victims were from only a couple of towns over from us, I think.
So it's, it's like really, it's got wrenching. It's I can't wrap my brain around it.
And I can't wrap my brain around the response to it. I can't wrap my brain around how it happened.
I just feel for everybody for I feel really, really horrible for everybody involved. And it's like breaking my heart.
Every time somebody gets identified, it just like shatters me. So it really sucks.
And if you're in the D.C. area, I'm sure you're just like feeling it extra hard.
Feeling the weight of that. And if you know any of the people that were involved, like, fuck, I'm so sorry.
holy shit this seemed entirely avoidable yeah 100 yeah it's been a real bummer we would be very remiss not to say anything no matter how late this comes out so we just wanted to touch on that for sure um unfortunately i don't have anything happier to talk about i know i'm trying to think if there's anything like like, exciting thing to throw out there. Oh, I think, I don't, I mean, it looks like it's confirmed.
I'm going to switch gears entirely just to get us into, like, at least a neutral space here. A little palate cleanser.
I think Matthew Lillard is going to be in Scream 7, everybody. It looks like he is.
There's a lot of reports saying he is. And he did a little video where he wrote, my mom and dad are going to be so mad at me on a piece of paper.
My dad is so mad at me. And I don't know how to properly contain my excitement.
I hope he comes back with his wonderful sweater that he wore. That beige sweater.
That beige sweater. I hate beige, but I love that sweater.
That sweater was torn to shit. to shit he's gonna have so many scars on his face oh he's gonna come back gnarly when he comes back it's gonna be awesome and do you think so do you think he's gonna come back current or do you think it's gonna be a flashback kind of deal i think i will feel uh a little cheated if it's if it's a flashback deal no same um that would not be my favorite thing that would not be my favorite thing if you're listening right now don't do that to us please i don't think anybody would be happy with that no we need him to come back like no i've been saying since i've been saying since the dawn of time that's you lived through that whole thing john keeps telling me i'm crazy but i can't wait to go downstairs and rub this in his face no i was sick the other day and whenever i'm sick i watch scream because it's a comfort movie it's how alina raised me um and he he moans after the tv settles like he goes he does a little groan yeah literally yeah that's the exact noise the actual yeah so he's alive he is and he's cut me he's gonna be in scream 7 guys When is that supposed to come out? I'm ready for it.
February next year. So he's alive.
He is. And he's going to be in Scream 7, guys.
When is that supposed to come out?

I'm ready for it.

February next year.

So only like a straight up a year from now.

Shit.

That's crazy.

I am.

Well, I hope it's early February.

February, it is the latest it could be without being the last day of February.

The 27th.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

I hope it's early.

I'm manifesting that it's early February.

You're like, eh. Like close.
Close, but no cigar it's a short month yeah you know yeah there you go i made a really good coffee today i'm in my at-home barista era yeah you are you you made a really yummy one for me this morning is it good i got new beans and they're a lot, the beans were beaning. The beans were beaning.
I've been making this cookie butter latte thing,

everybody. It's the shit.
You literally just like smear cookie butter around a cup and then you put

like a tablespoon of it in your little like glass that you're going to brew your espresso over.

Put that, put some milk in your cup over ice. That espresso shot in there, that's it.
It's that

simple. It's that fucking simple.
It's so good. it's like a morning treat it is it's delicious i love it i don't need to go get coffee anywhere anymore because ash just brings me one it's true i'm great i'm very blessed yeah never stressed still still very stressed but i literally as soon as i said that i was like i'm still very stressed as well still the most stressed but very blessed i have a whole new appreciation for baristas though because that shit is not easy yeah it's not it's a science i had to order like so many accoutrements to go with my fucking i was like oh good espresso machine that's it it was like buy these other five things if you want it to taste good yeah it's like its own thing there yeah but my coffee bar's cute so so that's all

that matters well that's all the good things we can think of coffee neato and uh matthew lillard

that's a great thing it's a rough thing sandwich is what it is yeah and um we are going to be

talking about an unsolved murder today this one is this is a very interesting case it breaks your

heart on so many different levels because we're going to be talking about the murder of janette

I don't heard the details it's wrapped up in an era of satanic panic and that plays such a crucial role in this case to the point where jeanette's memory really gets lost and kind of clouded yeah i can definitely see that which is really shitty yeah um but we're gonna tell it obviously the best we can and dave did a really great job with this one making sure to get there's so many people that thought they knew Jeanette and said all these things about her, but then her family and close friends said things on the complete opposite spectrum. Yeah.
And obviously they're the people that really knew her. Exactly.
So I'm glad that he was able to gather a lot more of those quotes. Yeah.
So let's get into it. Who was Jeanette De Palma? She was born August 3rd, so she's a Leo, 1956 in Jersey City, New Jersey.

And she was the sixth of seven children born to Florence and Salvatore De Palma.

Florence was a homemaker and Salvatore was an auto mechanic.

Right around the early 1960s, the family moved to Spring Township, New Jersey, which is just a quiet suburb. It's about 30 miles away from New York City.

It seemed like the perfect place to Florence and Salvatore

to raise their kids.

It was quiet.

It was far away from a very increasingly violent city life.

One resident said there were no gangs to speak of in Springfield,

but there were a few interesting characters in town.

This is iconic.

There was Tilly, an extremely short woman with one huge breast.

There was the lady who swept the moonbeams off her driveway all night long.

I'm going. As well as the mailman who ended up living in a dumpster.
Wow. I said, I love an eccentric group of people.
Hell yeah. Sign me up.
Sign me up. What an array there.
What an array indeed. What a smorgasbord of humans.
Yeah, that's a town. Yeah.
That's a group of people. It's weirdly giving like stars hollow.
Yeah. You know? It really is.
Yeah. I want to know more about each of those people.
Especially the lady who's sweeping moonbeams off her driveway. Yeah.
All night. I would never sweep a moonbeam off my driveway.
No, but I'm just like, tell me your story. I know.
So the De Palma family had always been close-knit and relatively private, which immediately caught their new neighbors off guard. One of their former neighbors said, something wasn't 100% right with that family.
They were weird. And to make matters worse, by the early 1970s, Sal and Florence became the center of several rumors around the town because the police were constantly being called to their house former patrolman uh ed kish said sal and florence would get into a fight somebody would call us but by the time we got there florence would turn us away sounded like a lot of domestic disputes were going on between the parents yeah rachel sedgeski sal and florence's granddaughter also remembered the de palma house as one of constant turmoil and chaos.
And she said her grandfather, Sal, was quote unquote rotten to her grandmother. So there was a lot going on.
That makes me sad. Yeah.
In time, it wasn't just Sal and Florence that fueled the rumors around town, though, but the children. A former teacher in town, Margaret Bandrowski, said, Judging by what I heard from the other students, Jeanette was a little on on the wild side she acknowledged what a lot of people considered wild in the 70s and late 60s is pretty different from today's standards so she added i don't think wild meant anything other than that janette was not the perfect christian child that her mother believed her to be yeah which like which like who is relatively that's not wild.
Ed Kish also commented that Jeanette was what they would refer to as a party girl. He said, I can recall quite a few instances where I had to pull that kid out of the backseat of some guy's car over at Bryant Park.
Oh, man. In my words, she was living her best life.
You know about that. She's being a teenager.
Yeah. Let her live.
Yeah. while some of those who knew Jeanette back then remember her in the terms of rumors around town, those who knew her best completely rejected the characterization that was being painted of her as like this wild party girl out of control.
Her best friend, Gail Donahue, said, I don't think that was Jeanette at all. I mean, she and I both had crushes on these two Italian guys in Berkeley Heights, but I wasn't even allowed to date until i was 16 so there she's like yeah so like people but it wasn't like that yeah jeanette's sister cindy was more to the point in refuting the town elders opinions and no uncertain terms she said this cop seems to be feeding people a lot of bullshit i love how just like to the point she's like no that no, that's bullshit.
That's a bunch of bullshit.

That's a sister right there.

That is a sister.

Florence, Jeanette's mother, also disagreed with the opinion that her daughter was this crazy wild child.

When Jeanette's body ended up being found in 1972, Florence told reporters,

My daughter was more a Christian than anything else.

I think the most important thing she loved to do was lead children to Jesus. She loved to help the kids out with their problems.
Well, that sounds nice. Yeah, which was at least partially true because when she wasn't at school, Jeanette actually worked part-time at the community office of the Evangel Church in a program that was supporting at-risk youth in the area.
Damn. So she was giving back to the community.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's really fucked up that everybody's like, oh oh i had to pull her out of the back seat of a car and you know i heard from other students that she was so cuckoo yeah and it's like she was doing more for her community than most teenagers are to be honest literally helping at-risk children but even detective sergeant sam calabrese the lead detective on janette's case told reporters that janette quote had no record of trouble See, so that's all just like hearsay.
It's like she can't have been too wild because there's literally no reports. Unless she was like a criminal genius, criminal mastermind out here, getting away with everything.
You know that. And also giving back to her community.
At the same time. Yeah.
Yeah. It's really unclear why the locals in Springfield have such dramatically different memories of janette de palma but it's very highly possible that in the 50 years that have passed since her murder the rumors surrounding her death have tainted the recollection of those who didn't really know her very well that absolutely makes sense and just like with a lot of female victims of crime at the time people were quick to question question the victim's behavior.
Oh, yeah. And just straight up blame the victim for what happened instead of placing the sole blame on the person who committed the heinous crime in the first place.
Yeah, a favorite pastime. Yeah.
But to those who were closest to her, Jeanette was a pretty ordinary teenager. Her cousin Linda said, we were hippie Jesus freaks who smoked weed.
We used to smoke and listen to rock music. Janis Joplin was her favorite.
Damn. Hippie Jesus freaks listening to rock music and smoking.
Like, that's literally what you pretty much picture for teenagers of the 60s and 70s. Absolutely.
Like, maybe not so much the Jesus freak part of it. Honestly, probably.
Fairly common. Yeah, absolutely.
And when it came to the rumors of Jeanette being promiscuous or engaging in heavy drug use, people started saying that kind of thing. Lisa just rejected those claims with an emphatic, hell no.
She was like, uh-oh. Now, in 1970, Jeanette convinced her parents to let her transfer from Union Catholic School to the public school, which was Jonathan Dayton High School.
Former teacher, Margaret Bandrowski, the one we were talking about before, she said, the impression that we had was that Jeanette's mother was convinced of her daughter's religious nature and had removed her from Union Catholic because kids in the public school needed her example more. Wow.
Which is nice, but like, it doesn't sound like this teacher was Jeanette's teacher because she literally said, like the account of other students and the impression that I had I'm like so did you talk firsthand yeah like did you ever talk to her yeah uh it appears her memory could be clouded by the passage of time because she only knew Jeanette by sight and reputation and then on the flip side of that coin a close friend of Jeanette's from school Graceilli DeMuro, said, She never mentioned to me that she was religious or devoted to a Christian lifestyle. Although if being a good Christian meant being a good friend, looking out for you, helping you if she could, that's what I saw.
Oh, that's nice. Yeah.
But how weird. It's so wild that a lot of people are like...
Very conflicting ideas. Complete opposite ends of the spectrum.
But it's the people who were not close to her like oh this you want to hear this fact about janet and then the people who actually knew her like no like she was a good friend and she was pretty fun to hang out with she liked janice joplin like janice joplin like that's and it's like that seems more the real thing i think a lot of people in in town had opinions of the family as a whole. And Jeanette kind of got scapegoated in a way there.
Yep. I think so too.
And I also think, and we'll come to find out, that the rumors, like I said in the beginning of this, the rumors surrounding the nature of her death really made an imprint on people's opinions. It really colored in what the image of her now is.
Yes, exactly. Since Jeanette's case gained a certain amount of notoriety once details became public, it's difficult to discern the real Jeanette De Palma from the murder victim of local legend, which is really sad.
That is really sad. But relying more on the information from her friends and family, again, she just seemed like an ordinary teenager.
Yeah, who was a good friend, a good example. Yeah.
Did some stuff for her community, helping at-risk kids. Yeah.
She sounds like a cool girl. A cool chick.
She loved music. Like, we know she loved Janis Joplin.
She loved clothes. She was under her style.
Yeah. She liked boys.
And like other teenage girls, she allowed her parents to believe the best in her, even if that wasn't always what was true at the time of course same retweet her friend grace said the thing about Jeanette was this when you first saw her you assumed this preconceived notion of her being this tough fast wild girl but when you would start talking to her she was so sweet honest and funny but she didn't take anyone's crap good for her yeah fuck yeah I'm like maybe she had a duality that literally none of you could understand. Yeah, maybe that's what it was.
Maybe she was so far ahead of her time and that she could... That you just couldn't grasp that she could be multifaceted.
Exactly. She could lean on both sides of her personality.
Well, in the early summer of 1972, Jeanette's cousin Lisa, who she was always really close to, ended up running away from home. It was not the first time that Lisa had run away, so the family assumed that she would come back in a few days, and they figured it was best not to tell Jeanette because they didn't want to upset her for no reason.
But after a month passed and Lisa still hadn't returned, Sal and Florence decided finally to sit Jeanette down. And this was on the morning of August 7th, and they told her what was going on with her cousin.
Lisa later remembered hearing about Jeanette's reaction and said she was pissed. She was very angry that her parents had waited so long to tell her.
So she left the table and stormed off back to her room. Which I don't blame her.
I'd be pissed if they kept that from me. But as a punishment for her behavior that morning, Jeanette's mother gave her additional chores to do.
Even though she actually had plans to meet up with some friends that afternoon. I think it was like a, you know, you got an attitude thing, you can't act like that in this house.
Yeah, like you stormed off into your room, and you get an extra chore. Right.
So according to her friend, Gail Donahue, their plan was to meet up at Echo Lake Park with two boys from school, and they had both really been looking forward to it. So Gail was upset when Jeanette called and had to cancel.

Gail said, I'm not a bully, but I bugged her to come over because she put me in this position,

and she told me, all right, I'll hitchhike over.

And that was the last time I heard from her. Oh, no.
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Now there are, again, varying accounts of what happened that afternoon, but they all end the same way. According to Jeanette's sister, Cindy, Jeanette asked her if she actually would come with her to Gail's house in Berkeley Heights, about eight miles away.
Cindy said, Jeanette was seeing a guy named Tommy who I had never met. She wanted to meet up with him at Gail's house before work.
At the same time though, Cindy was having trouble with her own boyfriend and said she didn't feel like going out, so she declined. But then on the flip side of the coin, when asked about this, Gail Donahue denied Cindy's version of events and said she didn't remember anybody named Tommy that Jeanette was seeing and said Jeanette had never said anything about even bringing Cindy with her this afternoon.
She said Cindy was a year younger and they didn't really hang out with her often. So again, 50 years had passed by the time a lot of these people started talking or continue talking about this.
Yeah. Your memory is not going to serve you perfectly well, but.
No, I mean, no. Like my memory remember what i had for breakfast yeah i could not remember any kind of intricate i i don't know because i always think about it i'm like but if it's like an event like this does it help your memory or hurt it you know i mean because it's such a tragic and life tainting event you know yeah i don't know it's just interesting like some people are like oh she was going to meet tommy and then other people are like i'd never heard of tommy like who are you talking about yeah but who knows i mean people have secrets that we don't know that's very true while they're living like the memory of janette herself the time that's passed has clouded a lot of people's memories of the day she went missing but the details could have been more important than just trivial plans of teenage girls given the circumstances in which Jeanette would be found the existence of this secret boyfriend actually could have been a pretty significant piece of the puzzle yeah but unfortunately throughout the investigation in the years that followed no one could actually settle on whether or not she had a boyfriend they didn't know oh That's so hard because it's like you want like it makes it i get so scared of like teenage years with yeah you know i mean because you're like you want to maintain such consistent communication but sometimes kids throw up roadblocks oh and they can shut you out you know and they can shut you right out and that's like my biggest fear yeah it's like not having that consistent line of communication where they feel like they can tell you anything i think luckily these days you're in a lot better of a situation because the amount of shit you can put on those kids you can track their ads everywhere i like but parents in the 60s and 70s how the fuck did they do it it was the wild west out there because if your kid wasn't telling you what they were saying oh i'm gonna go do this but actually they went and did that which how many of us do as teenagers oh yeah they were it's like they just went around the dark side of the moon you just lost communication and hopefully it comes back yeah you can't see them can't hear them and you're just like well i hope they come around the other way yeah it's scary yeah but those that believe janette did have a boyfriend at this time couldn't remember a name or any any details, which, you know, doesn't help.
No. So anyway, after finishing her chores that afternoon, Jeanette told her parents that she was scheduled to work a shift that night, and she made another call to one of her friends and then grabbed her purse, told her mom she was going to walk the three miles to the train station and summit and head to work.
Okay. From there, she actually planned to take the train to Berkeley Heights to go see Gail to follow through on their plan, which, you know, Florence obviously didn't know.
She was concerned enough about her daughter walking the three miles to the station by herself, but she did agree to let her go. Had she known that Jeanette's actual plan was to hitchhike to Gail's house, obviously Florence never would have let Jeanette leave the house that day.
Now, one of the last people believed to have seen Jeanette that day was her friend Donna I believe it's Bladis who lived a few houses down according to Donna's husband now John Rosensky Jeanette stopped at the house on her way to Berkeley Heights and tried to get Donna to go with her he said Jeanette was having a fight with her boyfriend and was looking for a ride somewhere according to to Rosensky, Jeanette even went so far as to ask Donna's mother for a ride, which Jeanette's friends later said would have been pretty unlikely, because I guess Donna's parents didn't really like Jeanette. Oh, okay.
But whatever the case, Donna's mother refused, so Jeanette left the Blattis house and continued down the road in the direction of Berkeley Heights, int intending to continue hitchhiking later that night several hours after janet should have returned home sal and florence de palma started to worry because she wasn't in the habit of coming home late regardless of where she had been and on the occasions where she would have been late she always called them so after a few hours of waiting they decided it was time to start reaching out to some of Jeanette's friends and classmates to find out if anybody had seen her or heard from her that afternoon. But none of the people they spoke to had heard from Jeanette at all.
Now, when their phone calls failed to produce any information, the DePalmas gave in and they reported Jeanette missing to the Springfield police. To their surprise, though, they were told that they would have to wait a full 24 hours before reporting their daughter missing.
That's wild to me. Nothing about that makes sense.
No. Ed Kish said, it was strange how runaway situations were not handled the same way back then as they are today.
Back then, runaways did not garner much attention because they left willingly, and running away from home wasn't a criminal offense. That's so scary.
Just like so many aspects aspects of the case there are also discrepancies around the de palma's call to the police sal and florence maintained that they reported their daughter missing when they called the police but according to several retired springfield police officers who were with the department at the time sal and florence quote claimed that jeanette had run away when they reported her missing. Oh.
So there's major discrepancies there. Yeah, and it's like, where's the record? Exactly.
Where are any of the records? That's a big question. That's the thing.
Clearly, the rumors around town about the De Palma family and Jeanette's behavior started affecting the case almost immediately. Even as they took down the report, the responding officers noted that Sal florence were giving short and vague answers former officer don schwartz said there was talk in the station house that they weren't very cooperative it was like let's keep this quiet and not be out in the public with it the family didn't really come out right away and give interviews or anything as far as i know at least okay which is like they don't have to yeah they don't want also they're already the center of a lot of rumors in town this is probably the last thing that they want getting out is that their daughter's now missing you know like you're going to the police the people who are going to help you here yeah i mean look at how people are already talking exactly they don't want to just fuel it and you don't know what you would do unless you're in that position.

Yeah.

And also at the time of Jeanette's disappearance, again, like late 60s, early 70s, parents weren't encouraged to react as quickly as they would be today. And it wasn't customary for ordinary people to reach out to the media and arrange press conferences or other media events.
Yeah, it's very different. That's something that happens more often now.
Yeah. But of course, even though the behavior of parents in the wake of their kids' disappearance is always pretty relevant to investigators, we all know that people deal with stress in different ways.
It's so tough. It doesn't always seem rational.
It doesn't always make sense, but it doesn't mean they're guilty. And that's the thing.
It's like it is 100% human nature, not a great part of human nature, to look at how somebody's reacting to something and deduce what you will deduce from it. That is human nature.
Of course. Nobody's a bad person for, you know, being like, I don't know, they seem, we all do it.
That was a little weird. We all do it.
Yeah. Again, not our best, you know, little quirk that we have as a species, but there it is.
But also, we know that it is not always helpful and it is not always indicative of what they are actually feeling. People in shock act crazy.
They will just straight up shut down and it looks like nothing is bothering them when, in fact, their entire nervous system has just gone into orbit. And it's actually just the body's response to this trauma.
Because our bodies self-preserve in these situations. We're designed to do that.
We are. And everybody's body does it a little different.
Or they react to it a little different. Or they allow their body to do it in a certain way.
Right. So it's like, I know it's easy to do that.
And again, human nature. And sometimes it's dead on.
Oh, yeah. Sometimes how they react to it and you go, that's fucked up.
And then, yeah, it was fucked up. It just can't be the only thing we rely on.
Chris Watts is a perfect example. Haunting.
I watched that man's fucking little interviews. And I said, that man knows something.
Yeah. I knew it the second.
There is a science to some things. Yeah, of course.
Like body language and all that. For sure and all that tics that people do but it's such a tight it's a it's a dangerous and tight line to walk yeah for sure exactly i'll get off my soapbox now i know it's it's that's not even a soapbox no it's just it comes up a lot that's just straight up yeah but regardless of how cooperative springfield police remember sal and Florence being at the time, they were never considered suspects.
And no one investigation wise ever really thought they had anything to do or anything. They weren't the reason that their daughter ran away.
Or that they knew anything. Exactly.
Yeah. The rumors about the De Palma family also might have contributed to the relatively underwhelming response from the community once word got out that Jeanette was missing.
That's pretty shameful. It's really sad.
That's pretty fucking shameful, that community. She's a teenager that literally just disappeared into thin air.
And then when you find out what did happen to her, you're like, cool that nobody was searching. Years later, William Nelson said, it was my understanding that Jeanette just ran away.
He was just one of many people who either assumed or had heard that Jeanette ran away rather than she actually disappeared. Yeah.
Mary Starr, another neighbor at the time, heard the news framed in similar terms. She said, I did hear the rumor that Jeanette was running away.
Jeanette would not have surprised me if she had run away from home. Jeanette would have been more inclined to go against her parents, I think.
See, even more mystery, because it's like, everyone's got a different idea of what she would or wouldn't have done. Even if it was a kid, which I'll tell you right up at the top, she didn't run away.
No. That's not what was happening.
But it's like, so many people could have pictured her running away. Yeah.
It's just, I just feel bad that she's been categorized in such a way after she's unable to defend herself. And especially when like.
Or to show who she is. Yeah.
And when it's clear that like obviously she was dealing with a lot at home. I mean, like no matter what, the police were getting called to that house frequently.
And she's, you know, like their own granddaughter said that sal was pretty awful to florence yeah like that's like she was seeing that and dealing with that you should have empathy for her yeah and it doesn't really seem like a lot of people did at all she's a child yeah she's still a kid and like this is a teenager no matter what she's troubled if that's going on and if that's the case then she does need help and everybody needs to be because because no matter what, even if she did run away, she could still be in danger. Yeah.
Like she's a kid on the run. Absolutely.
Yeah. It's unclear why rumors of Jeanette having run away persisted as long as they did.
According to authors Mark Morin and Jesse Pollack, Florence and Salvatore De Palma made no reference to Jeanette having run away during several interviews that they gave to the Elizabeth Dailyabeth daily journal and the new york star ledger each time insisting that their daughter had simply left home to visit her friend in berkeley heights but either way the rumors absolutely affected the response to her disappearance after several days passed with no word from janet or the springfield police department either. Like they called, reported their daughter missing.

The Springfield Police Department said, okay, you have to wait a full 24 hours before we're

going to do anything about this.

And then more days passed and they didn't do anything.

It makes no sense.

So Sal and Florence ended up organizing their own search party for their daughter.

But by then it was too late.

Yeah.

I mean, which is like the first 48 hours are like the most. That's why that always astounded me that it was like we have to wait 24 let's cut that in half yeah let's let's cut our time that we could find them in half when do you know when that was that they established that the first 48 are the most crucial it had to have been after this time period because clearly nobody was following yeah because that's actually such a good point yeah because you're literally just chopping it in half.
Throwing those 24 hours to the wind. So it says, and this is according to Google's AI, there isn't a single definitive date marking when the first 48 hours concept was established as crucial in investigations, but it's generally considered to have gained widespread recognition and application with police practices over the course of the late 20th century due to advancements in forensic science and investigative techniques that highlighted the importance of immediate evidence collection

in the initial stages of a crime investigation.

I love that in the beginning they were like, like that it came to a point where they were like,

shit, we should probably pay attention.

It would be awesome if we collected evidence right away.

Now.

It's just like, who came, who was like, who was like light bulb moment whoa if evidence doesn't get to be disturbed and decayed it might be more helpful we might do better at this who whomst before that was like we should just let evidence get tainted for a little while yeah and then we can just work harder to try to figure out who did it. A lot of people, actually.
A lot of people were in that boat. Like what an aha.
In that boat, I meant to say. What an aha moment for that person to be like, wow, the earlier we do this, the easier our job is.
And the funniest thing to think about, too, is not funny, but like ironic, that they were probably met with pushback. No.
100%. It's like the first person who was like, hey, we should wash our hands if we work in a hospital.
And people were like, throw that guy in jail. It's a fucking crazy person.
What the fuck is he talking about? Telling us to wash our hands. Well, this is about to take a very, I mean, it's already very sad, but it's about to take an even sadder turn.
So on the morning of September 19th, a resident of the newly built Baltus Roll Gardens. I looked up how to say that, so don't come at me, was an apartment complex.
One of the residents opened the back door to her apartment for her dog, who immediately darted out of the apartment in the direction of a nearby quarry. Unbeknownst to its owner, that dog would return a short time later, carrying in its mouth a badly decomposed human arm, which it dropped in the yard just before heading back into the apartment holy shit again unbeknownst to the owner oh my god just moments after the dog had entered uh the apartment the building superintendent stepped outside and made her way down the steps onto the lawn where she then found the arm lying in the grass officer don schwirt recalled the call came in around 11 o'clock dispatch radioed me that this woman had found an arm on the lawn of her apartment complex where she lived i honestly thought it was a prank i figured it was going to be a mannequin's arm because this lady was always being harassed by a few kids that lived in that apartment complex but when he arrived at the complex he quickly realized that this was not any kind of prank he said i looked at it and i said to myself this is human i could see the fingernails and the color of the skin oh my god so officer short grabbed his camera and took several photos of the arm before returning to the car to report that what he had found and request additional officers be dispatched to the scene asap the superintendent told the officers she thought it was entirely likely that her dog who she also let out earlier that morning had found the arm in the woods and brought it back to the yard but when the officers saw the dog they knew that probably wasn't what what had happened schwartz said the lady brought me over to a puppy so he he didn't think that that puppy would have been able to carry the arm most likely.
Okay. I guess.
Yeah. Although it was unlikely that her dog had found the arm, the notion that a dog had found it and dropped it in the yard did seem like the most likely scenario.
So the officers went door to door looking for other large dogs until they finally found one resident with a large Dalmatian. Schwartz said that tenant tenant told me she had let her dog out to run earlier that morning and we determined that this Dalmatian had most likely brought the arm home from wherever it had been roaming.
Okay. So the officers packed the arm into a cardboard box and returned to the station, all of them considering whether or not they just found Jeanette De Palma or part of Jeanette De Palma.
That afternoon, the on-duty members of the Springfield Police Department broke up into small teams and they started combing the wooded area behind and around the apartment complex, including the Hudai Quarry. Located a short distance from the apartment complex, the Hudai Quarry was this large open area that actually at the time was being mined for greenakite, which is a mineral rich with cadmium, I think it is.

It was also a spot known to be popular with teenagers and other locals, including the Springfield police who actually use the area for target practice. Schwartz said, we were over by the quarry searching the bed that had been laid out for Interstate 78 when we found the upper portion of the arm.
So they found the other part of it. Once they found the upper portion of the arm, investigators assumed that the rest of the remains couldn't be far.
So they spread out across the quarry and kept on searching. A little after 6 p.m., remember, that arm was found earlier in the morning at about 11.
It took them until 6 p.m. Schwart and one of the other officers found Jeanette's badly decomposed body about 400 yards from the road at the top of a steep cliff that the locals referred to as the Devil's Teeth.
So that ended up gaining a lot of traction later, even though it's literally just a made-up name for a fucking cliff by locals. By locals.
Wow. Jeanette's body was laying face down at the top of the steep incline, just a few feet from the edge, actually.
She was found fully clothed in a blue t-shirt and tan pants, and a pair of flip-flops were lying on the ground nearby. Schwartz said, I immediately remembered that this was the description of the clothing Jeanette De Palma was wearing on the day she went missing.

Also on the ground near the body was a woman's pocketbook.

Detectives at the scene opened it, hoping that they might find something inside to identify the body, but it contained nothing of note.

Jeanette's remains had been exposed to the element at that point for nearly six weeks.

Six weeks had gone by.

Wow.

So they were badly decomposed by the time they were discovered. Remember, she went missing in August.
Holy shit. Yeah.
To make matters worse, the parts of the body that were uncovered, primarily her feet, ankles, and head, had been eaten away by animals and insect activity. Other than that, there were no apparent signs of trauma or an immediately recognizable cause of death at that point.
But still, in a press conference the following day, Assistant Union County Prosecutor Michael Mitzner told reporters, Jeanette's death is being treated as a homicide by the police. But they confirmed they had no leads.
Wow. Zero.
Of all the details of the case that are shrouded in rumor and myth, none are more heavily debated and controversial than the scene where Jeanette's body was found according to Don Schwart quote there was a wooden cross over her head that was made out of two sticks there were also some stones arranged around the top of her head in the shape of a semi semi circle almost like a halo okay which would have been strange absolutely Schwart was just one of the officers at the scene who found the arrangement of sticks and rocks to appear intentional

to howard thompson who arrived at the top of the hill shortly after short

the objects around janet's body looked like quote-unquote witchcraft

oh personally i don't know any witches that do anything like that, but okay. Hey, weirdos.
I'm Mike Corey. And like you, I'm drawn to true crime, creepy history, and all things spooky.
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Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect. For Patti, that friend was Desiree.
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A few minutes later, a number of detectives arrived at the top of the hill and effectively took over the investigation from that point forward. Schwartz said, once the detective bureau came on the scene, we were pushed aside and everything became secretive.
They treated the rest of us patrol men like a bunch of dunces. Anyway.
The silence is deafening. Yeah.
Because of the steep incline, detectives opted to remove Jeanette's remains by using a stretcher lowered down the cliff face by means of a rope and pulley system. So this was tough.
Yeah. Once on the ground, Dr.
Bernard Ehrenberg pronounced the victim dead and the body was taken by ambulance to Sullivan Funeral Home for an autopsy. During the autopsy the following day, Dr.
Ehrenberg had the body x-rayed for any evidence of bone fractures or any other skeletal damage, but it seemed like there was none. There also appeared to be no external signs of physical trauma.
There's no bullet hole,

no knife wound that they found. So ultimately, Ehrenberg concluded that the body was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death.
That sucks. But suspected that strangulation could have been the cause.
That evening, Jeanette's body was identified by a dental comparison, which is just whenever that happens i know that adds such a layer of like sadness well like the reason i said that sucks is like just to not know what happened to her yeah her family absolutely and that must be tough to not have it be 100 concrete yeah you just don't know like you just left to wonder you You'd wonder for the rest of your life. Exactly.
That sucks.

Now, according to Ed Kish, the autopsy was poorly performed by Dr. Ehrenberg, who Kish felt was not trained or experienced enough to conduct pathological exams.
Oh, good. Yeah, awesome.
That's great. Kish said, Bernie Ehrenberg was not competent enough, as far as I'm concerned, to have been conducting forensic autopsies.
Wow. And he might have been right because it does appear that the autopsy wasn't held to any rigid standards and a lot of the samples and tests conducted at the time have since been lost.
Wow. Like completely lost.
I don't know how that happens. So there's no hope of determining whether she had, you know, drugs in her system, alcohol in her system, anything like that at the time of her death.
Wow. And I'm not saying like that she did drugs but you don't know if like poisoned she was poisoned exactly drugged her did anything like that exactly there's that's a huge piece of the puzzle missing how do you lose samples like that couldn't tell you we couldn't if we tried in the morgue we couldn't have lost that shit if we tried yeah Yeah.
Well, in the absence of any evidence or viable leads, the investigation and press coverage quickly turned to the more sensational and dubious aspects of the case. Within a week of the discovery, the local press started reporting that the police were, quote, investigating the possibility that black witchcraft and Satan worshipped were involved in Jeanette's death death or you could just look for a murderer yeah you could do that because usually that's who kills people i mean 99.99999 if not 100 of the time it's a murderer who murders people it's not a ritualistic sacrifice it's not usually it's just they want to murder hiding in the woods yep it's not the devil reincarnate it's when had how many like how many times has it been a random witch coven hiding in the woods that has been responsible for a murder i would say approximately zero like let's let's be like real here be so right now.
Like, be so for real and start looking at actual suspects instead of this bullshit. That did not happen.
No. This is only going to get...
And that's why this is unsolved. It's exactly why.
To this day. Oh, just wait.
Just wait. It's exactly why.
According to one article in the Daily Journal of Elizabeth, searchers who found the girl's body said pieces of wood were crossed on the ground over her head and more wood framed the body like a coffin no one ever said that i was just gonna say where did that come from said that these rumors and reports were often contrasted

with quotes from janet's own parents describing their daughter as somebody who quote tried to

lead others to jesus the black magic angle though was quickly associated with the murders of the

list family in nearby westfield which had happened less than a year earlier.

In that case, if you're not familiar, five members of the List family were shot and killed by the father of the family, John List, who went on the run after committing those murders. in the search of the list home investigators found a quote number of books on witchcraft

and 16 year old susan list bedroom and were quote trying to determine if the crimes had any link to

a coven or witchcraft group thought to exist in that area nope just her mentally ill father yeah and it's like who killed the entire family like let's not make a joke of it because you're being like oh it's got to be witches let's be witches just it's usually just just, it's usually just a man. It's usually just a man.
And like, that's statistically true. Like, can we stop? Can we please stop? With like the fakery here? It doesn't help anything.
It makes cases like this remain unsolved for decades. And it just makes a mockery of it all.
And it makes their family and their loved ones have to wait, wait for so long, if forever, to get could have got it just makes me like do actual detective work don't stop looking to the forces of the dark world that's silly and there's no time for silly no like come on silliness is for fiction stories now any belief that Jeanette's death was related to the list case would soon be abandoned, but the witchcraft angle would remain the central piece of this case. And that's where we get to the satanic panic of it all.
So let's talk about that for a little bit. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, a wave of what we now refer to as satanic panic swept across North America, fueled almost entirely by rumors and widespread religious fears.
In a very broad sense, satanic panic was what's known as moral panic, or this widely shared fear among a group or society that some negative influence poses a threat to the safety and well-being of one particular group, in this case, apparently New Jersey. Yeah.
The majority of New Jersey. Just New Jersey.
The majority of these panics usually surround kids or young adults, and they tend to come out during times of generational shifts and social transformations. In the case of satanic panic in North America, rumors and false reports of these ritualistic child abuse at schools and daycare centers fueled the belief that secret groups of witches and devil worshipers existed across America and were involving young people in their rituals for evil purposes.
Yeah, for sure. We found that to be the case in a lot of these cases, right? Even though there was actually no evidence of any such groups or activities existing in the U.S.
and tons of tons of people were swept up in false and completely outrageous claims that in some cases led innocent people to become outcasts in their community or led people to even be jailed for long periods of time based on rumors and lies and just Tom motherfucking foolery. Ridiculous.
Be so for real. Yeah.
Now the origin of the satanic panic of the 1980s is actually most often traced back to the book Michelle Remembers, which was a supposedly true account of satanic ritual abuse, which was published in 1980. And while it's true that Michelle Remembers kicked off the widespread fears of ritual abuse, it's fair to say that the roots of the panic can also be found in America's suburbs in the 1970s.

According to the independent scholar Sarah Hughes,

the panic was part of a backlash to social movements in the late 1960s and 70s

that challenged white patriarchal norms.

In simpler terms, to older generations,

the culture among young people in the 60s and early 70s was so foreign

and posed such an existential threat that they just had to attribute it to some outside nefarious dark influence and theories about this supposedly evil influence reached into suburban homes were ultimately supported by the release of movies like rosemary's baby the exorcist the whole nine yeah just basically depicting the lives of ordinary americans being upended by witch, satanic influence, and diamonds. Diamonds.
It's never a daemon. In suburban New Jersey, it wasn't just the discovery of Susan List books about witchcraft that ultimately took Jeanette De Palma's case in a strange direction.
The books were part of a series of events, actually, that spurred the fears of satanism in this area because the year before

Jeanette's death the drowning death of 20 year old Patrick Newell in Vineland New Jersey about an hour south of Springfield shocked the region when it was initially reported on the case prompted one reporter to ask is it really possible that the pleasant town of 48,000 people could harbor satan cult? Wow. No.
Because there is no. Well, the reason they asked that is because early in the summer of 1971, Patrick's body was discovered floating in a pond in Millville, New Jersey.
His hand and feet were bound with adhesive tape. And upon investigation, two of Patrick's closest friends, Richard Williams and Wayne Schweikert, told police that Patrick Newell, quote, belonged to a Satan worshippers sect and felt that he had to die violently in order to be put in charge of 40 leagues of demons.
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say about that.
I'll tell you more about what they said so you can just sit tight. Yeah.
So they said he enlisted the two of them to aid him in a, quote, satanic ritual where he would be the sacrifice and they would push him in the pond and allow him to drown so that he could die violently and be in charge of this league of demons. During the investigation, police did find a, quote, considerable amount of literature on satanic cults and witchcraft in Patrick Newell's bedroom.
And they also learned that, among other things, this is very sad, he had previously attempted suicide on multiple occasions. And this is a trigger warning for animal cruelty.
Oh. He had, quote, sacrificed hamsters by shaking them up in a wooden box into which sharp nails had been driven oh my god yeah

awful finally and perhaps most importantly investigators learned that quote hard drugs were involved in a party prior to the killing so what you're seeing here is that this actually really doesn't have anything to do with quote-unquote satanism or black magic or any of that dumb shit that people want to label it with it has to do with mental illness and drugs drug abuse situation yeah drug abuse like there's plenty of factors here and I can tell you that Satan isn't one of them no he's absolutely not Patrick Newell's death was ultimately listed as a quote suicide with assistance and would likely have been assumed to be a very tragic result of drug abuse slash mental illness had it not been for Reverend Harry Snook, pastor of the Chestnut Assembly of God.

Snook spent a lot of his time doing outreach to local teens and adolescents, preaching in what was described as a, quote, fervent Pentecostal style of old time religion. So very like theatrical and shouty,

like scare tactic-y kind of preaching.

That's literally nightmarish to me.

It is.

It's very scary.

It's what you would picture, I think,

in a lot of horror movies, you know? Yeah.

He claimed that he, quote,

talked with half a dozen or more young people

who confessed having taken part in devil worship rats.

I like how you went right into like your preacher your preacher voice that's my preacher voice uh no i no i i don't believe him i think one i think you scared these kids yeah i just don't believe him i think unfortunately this is the only thing they're allowed to do so they don't get to use their imagination elsewhere so you're giving them the perfect place to use it and ever heard of the Salem witch trials that's exactly exactly what it reminds you of you know where that started bored kids yeah bored kids yeah being influenced by religious trauma essentially yeah exactly but he wasn't the only one who claimed that satanism had infiltrated their region reverend joseph uh dunchez i believe a pastor at the first presbyterian church quote estimated the number of young devil worshipers in vineland at between 80 and 90 oh okay i don't know thank you what fact that's based off of but he said i'd say 80 or 90 give or take you know what let's take this guy into one of those contests where you get to guess the amount of jelly beans in the jar and you get something special. He sounds really good at it.
I think he might be. Because he can pick out the devil worshipers.
Yeah, just like that. Just like the jelly beans.
Yeah, boom. It's unclear where either of these bozos got their information because like I said earlier, there has literally never been evidence of an organized group of devil worshipers active in the United States.
But in most crimes where ritual sacrifice or other occult symbols are involved, it's obviously the result of mental illness, unfortunately, drug abuse or teenage pranks. Exactly.
Or just somebody knowing that a bunch of bozos will latch onto it if they put a pentagram at a crime scene.

Yeah.

And that it will take them completely in the wrong direction, leaving that person to scoot,

scoot, scoot away and never get looked at.

Exactly.

I mean, let's.

It's like you're giving them, you're giving them a route to take.

We got to rub some neurons together and see what like, it's so easy.

Just give it a shot.

It's so easy.

It's literally the look over here.

Yeah, it is. Tactic.
It is. And everybody looks over there.
it's like

it's like

stop looking

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like

it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's so easy give it a shot it's so easy it's literally the look over here yeah it is tactic it is and everybody looks over there it's like jada essence hall look over there yeah stop looking over there yeah this person's running away and they're getting away with it now well in fact snook and john uh dunchez themselves and even the investigators and patrick the patrick newell case acknowledge the prominent role that drug abuse played in the lives of these supposed devil worshippers. So it's like, let's blame it on what is actually the root cause here and actually try to do some work on that.
Yeah. Maybe.
Exactly. Instead of being like, it's the devil.
And it's like, no, they're just seeing things because they're on many drugs. Yeah, exactly.
Maybe you should help. Maybe.
Make this not a thing, not an epidemic. Yeah.

In November 1971, Richard Williams and Wayne Schweikart pleaded guilty, and they were both sentenced to a maximum term of 10 years at the correction center at Yardville for their role in Patrick Newell's death. however while their sentence may have effectively brought that case to a close

the supposed influence of satanic and occult beliefs would just go on to spread around the

state and become the defining aspect of jeanette's murder at least as far as the police and the press were concerned yeah although the cases of patrick newell the list family and jeanette de palma weren't linked in literally any evidence or any fact they still became associated with each other because in the absence uh of evidence all, or a suspect, investigators turned to the more sensational rumors of devil worship and this youth culture that had, as far as adults could tell, gotten completely out of control. Yeah, it was nuts.
It's also unknown whether it was Don Schwart or one of the other officers at the scene, but somehow the news about the supposed evidence of witchcraft at the site where Jeanette's body was found was leaked to the press, which just renewed and fed the fears of the occult being in suburban New Jersey. In no time at all, Jeanette's murder was being mentioned alongside other evidence of the occult in the area, including police having found, quote, burning candles and a bowl of blood and feathers and pigeons with their necks snapped at a nearby reservation.
And elsewhere in the area, somebody said they found a dead goat that they believed had been sacrificed. This is always what happens in these cases.
It's crazy. As soon as it gets mentioned, this must be the devil worshippers.
All of a sudden, people are finding dead animals. Yep.
It's so true. They weren't finding them before.
The same thing happened. As soon as it gets mentioned, all of a sudden people are finding dead animals yep it's like they weren't finding them before the same thing but as soon as it gets mentioned all of a sudden dead animals all over the place the same thing happened uh close by to us um was it mariana ruta yeah yeah she was killed by a monster of a human being literally and everybody claimed it was like the satanic cult but it's like no it's a monster of a.
And they were like, oh, we're finding all this stuff around the Bridgewater Triangle. And it's also spooky and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, no, this is a human being who's responsible for this. Maybe we should go find them.
Can we stop blaming it on some, like, it's just ridiculous. It's so annoying.
But within a few days of the new angle being pursued in the press, Sal and Florence De Palma, both, like we know, deeply religious people, were being quoted in the press as agreeing that their daughter, quote, could have been the victim of black witchcraft and Satanism. There were also rumors that with no leads to go on, the Springfield police had actually consulted with an area witch on the case.
Florence told a reporter, we were afraid the witch would try to bring Jeanette back from the dead. The police, on the other hand, refused to comment on the rumors of a witch being involved in the investigation.
Police Chief George Parcell said, I heard that some people from the department brought a witch out there, but I know nothing about it. It's getting kooky.
It's getting real kooky. It's like, guys, can we put the nose to the grindstone here and actually look for the person who did this?

This is a teenage girl who was murdered in the woods.

Let's look for evidence.

Let's look for evidence.

Let's try to find the person who did this to her.

Let's look for anything that you look for in an investigation.

Start talking to more people.

Like, what are you doing?

Yeah.

You had a perfect angle going there that there might be a secret boyfriend. Go look into it.
Why did that suddenly come to an end? It's like, nah, it's probably not that. It's probably just this fictional group of witches that we've come up with.
It's like, no. Or the devil.
There's like real avenues to go down here. Yeah.
And no one's going down them. Yeah.
Meanwhile, Jeanette's just, her case is just going to be unsolved to this day. And it is.
Within a few weeks of her body being discovered, Jeanette went from being the victim of a tragic and mysterious murder to the potential victim of a, quote, sacrificial rite of black magic. With both theories being treated as equally valid, which is insane.
Yeah. In the span of just a few days, the news about the arrangement of sticks around Jeanette's body spun into something far more sinister than they were originally described to be.
Reverend James Tate told a reporter, the logs and branches were supposedly arranged in a manner that would have indicated a cult symbolism and perhaps a human sacrifice. I'm sure Jeanette herself was not involved in anything like that, but I know that many of the other young people in this area are involved.

Can I name one?

Nope.

Could I point one out to you?

Absolutely not. But I can tell you maybe 10 to 12 people are involved.

But I'll tell you.

Yeah.

Give me that jar of jelly beans.

I'll tell you.

Yeah.

Hey, weirdos. I'm Lindsey Graham from the podcast American History Tellers.
And if you're still reeling from Ash and Elena's episode on the Boston molasses disaster, and you want to dive even deeper, you're in luck. My show doesn't usually venture too far into the spooky or creepy, but we've dedicated two full episodes to uncovering fascinating details about this bizarre molasses catastrophe.
From the company's negligence to the victim's harrowing stories, we explore how this strange event reshaped industrial safety laws and left an indelible mark on Boston's history. And the Boston Molasses Disaster is just one of many fascinating stories waiting for you on American history tellers.
We take you to the events, the times, and the people that shaped our nation and show you how our history affected them,

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Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Like the religious leaders in Vineland, Reverend Tate was convinced that Springfield had some sort of organized group of occultists or Satanists operating under the cover of darkness.
Though why he believed that is entirely unclear and doesn't seem to be supported by literally anything other than rumor because why not but further complicating that theory was that while don schwart and one or two other officers remembered seeing what appeared to be that intentional arrangement of sticks at the crime scene the cross and like the semi-circle other officers remember no such thing huh ed kish said of the discovery she was found lying in the the woods, for Christ's sakes. There were sticks and stones everywhere.
Yeah. Like, hello.
That's the thing. And even Don Schwart, who was one potential source of the story, eventually told reporters from Weird New Jersey magazine, he had, quote, no memory of any sticks or branches framing Jeanette's body like a coffin.
Huh. So he was like, I wouldn't go that far.
Well, and even if there was a cross, what does that have to do? Is it upside down? Yeah. What does it have to do? That's it to me that looks like a grave marker.
Right. Exactly.
That's a Christian grave marker to me. Like, you know, like I don't understand why the cross would immediately lead you to Satanism unless it's upside down.
Also, if anything, I feel like that would just lead you more to the pathology of your killer. Exactly.
Like look more into that and like take really look at it, you know? Don't look at it and go seitanism. Right.
Look at it and be like, why would they do that? Right. Did they do that? But unfortunately profiling was...
No, of course not. Far off.
But it's like just common sense. Like just start thinking with your brain.
You would think. And then to hear all these dudes be like, some of them are like, yeah, it was a cross and a semicircle around her head of like sticks and stones and all that.
And then the other one would be like, there's sticks and stones everywhere. I didn't see anything like that.
How did one part, like how did somebody see that and another person at the scene didn't? It obviously wasn't that obvious if it was there, which makes me think it wasn't intentional and it was just sticks looking a little weird in the woods i mean you could walk through the woods and find any number of arrangements of sticks that are naturally occurring that would make you be like whoa ever since i've seen the blair witch project i see those in the woods all the time yeah and it's like so it obviously wasn't if they were really setting this up so that when she was found everybody a main attraction they all would have saw it. Because it would have been obvious.
It would have been made to be obvious. It would have been made to be something you saw.
To me, it sounds like it wasn't. It sounds like it could have been either not intentional and just organically there or it was like an afterthought.
Well, that's exactly it. Yeah.
Given the general imperfection of human memory, especially in this case. Yeah.
And the number of times that this story changed over the years, we'll likely never know why the sticks and rocks were interpreted as evidence of witchcraft or perceived to be arranged in a way that associated them with the occult. And that's something you would remember.
But the thing is, in the year leading up to janette's death new jersey residents had followed two highly unusual murder cases both of which had some supposed supernatural or occult influence on them there you go so under those circumstances and the growing fears of the occult influence on american teens it's possible that the officers there saw what they wanted to see yeah Yeah, some of them. Or interpreted the random arrangement of nature as something that it wasn't.

Sinister.

Just out of fear.

Yeah.

But regardless of their motives or their reasons,

the belief that Jeanette's death was somehow related to devil worship stuck to the case

and not only influenced the investigation,

but ultimately how Jeanette was remembered by those who didn't really know her very well.

Yeah. To some, like Reverend James Tate, Jeanette's devout faith made her a target.
He said she was so religious that she would often talk to friends and acquaintances about God, which we've already heard is not the case. Like her own friend, some of her closest friends, like I think it was Gail Donahue earlier, was like, I didn't even know that she was Christian.
That she was religious. So yeah that's interesting that's really crazy but it was his belief that jeanette had met some local occultists you know of course just out and around town yeah and she quote tried to lecture them about jesus the person these people detest their fanaticism arose and they killed her so he thought that whilst hitchhiking or you know going about her merry way jeanette came across of came across a group of occultists how she would have known who hate jesus one how she would have even known that they were occultists i'd love to know that maybe they were dressed they were wearing black shrouded black fingernails come on yeah like weird makeup who knows uh and she said can i can i tell you about jesus and they were like absolutely not we're gonna kill you they said that guy i fucking hate that guy that's literally they don't believe in that when has that ever happened that'd be the whole shtick also when has that when ever happened and also where did this happen where did she run into a cultist in the woods and no one's just in the woods excuse me just in the woods i forgot there you know i'm always thinking that i'm like the devil's the devil's teeth or whatever yeah that you know we better not take a walk through the woods because we're running to some occultists it's actually we're just waiting it's usually why i head into the woods yeah let's go but it's like friends that doesn't make no literally any sense no and again, to have, they are spinning this narrative that is so infuriating.
That's like, her friends are literally saying, I didn't even know she was that Christian. Yeah.
Like, she wasn't out here. I just knew she was a cool person and a good friend.
Like, preaching to all of us. Like, she was just a good person and a nice friend.
But of course, the reverend has to be like, she was trying to tell them the word of God. She was out there spreading the word of God.
And it's like, first of all, if she was, she was. But it's like, second of all, everyone close to her is saying that's not true.
Doesn't sound like it. So I don't think she was just randomly doing it one day.
And again, I don't know. And for them to be sitting there saying this, like, I don't know Jeanette De Palma.
No. I know what I am finding out about her through people that knew her.
And these people who don't even know her are sitting there being like, I know exactly what happened. She was out there preaching the word of God to some occultist that she met randomly in the middle of the fucking woods.
And it's like, no. No.
What are you doing? Like, to derail a case like this with this nonsense is infuriating.

It should be criminal.

Because she should have been the focus.

And the focus became, look at it.

They used this.

Oh, yeah.

They used this, this particular branch of this community.

Yeah.

100% used Jeanette's murder to further their whole conspiracy of the youth of today's getting corrupted by Satanists that are wandering around the woods. And it's like, okay, so we're just going to forget about Jeanette, 16-year-old Jeanette who got murdered.
Right. We're just going to forget about her.
Exactly. Because now she's furthered your narrative.
Well, and it's like your case that you just covered, Bobby Dunbar. It sold papers.
Yeah. Salacious, weird shit sells papers.
It shit sells papers and people take that and they run with it and then the truth of what the poor victim went through is literally lost forever and their memory yeah they just check their own humanity at the door before they go and print this shit yep they pick it up on the way out but it's like it's so gross it is they used her to further this bullshit conspiracy she became a saint and worshippers wandering around in the forest and it's like nope the focus should be on janet and what was going on here and figure out who did this to her exactly and they didn't well and on the completely flip side of thing other people took a far less sympathetic approach to the story and just associated janette with hippie culture and blamed her murder on drugs. Wow.
Even though there was literally no evidence that she had done drugs. Wow.
And it's like okay and if she had done drugs does that mean she deserves to be murdered in the middle of the woods? To some people like damn. Yeah that's nice.
That's cool. Apparently everybody's checking their humanity somewhere.
Yeah I I don't know what was going on. Jesus.
On these parts. Well, about a year into the investigation, a young man referred to as Terry Rickle.
I don't know if that was like a pseudonym. It kind of seems like it is.
He approached Ed Kish and Officer Ed Kish and said he had some information about the case. According to Terry, there was a local unhoused man who went by the name Red Kira, I think it is,

and he was living at a campsite at the quarry

very close to where Jeanette's body was found.

Terry said he was a weird-looking guy.

He looked like an old hippie.

Okay.

Kish and his partner went out to the campsite

and found that it was abandoned,

but eventually they did locate Red Kira,

and they interviewed him about the murder.

Apparently, I'm just on the suspicion that he lived there and looked strange. Yeah.
That's the thing. It's like, really? I'm like, I feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again in this case.
We're not getting the best results. Kish said, I want to say that Red was cleared and that he was no longer a viable suspect.
I was told this was because of the differences in age and lifestyle between between red and janet but i'm like it can't have just been the difference between age and lifestyle because yeah older people in very different lifestyles murder people in younger very different lifestyles literally every single day yeah so i there's more to that but yeah he was cleared the press continued to focus heavily know, of course, the supposedly occult aspects of the case, going so far as to literally interview members of the Church of Satan for their perspective on the case. Behind the scenes, though, investigators were getting nowhere, of course.
And with the exception of Red Kira, no new leads had been uncovered. Zero.
By the following year, the case had gone entirely cold, and the story slipped further and further from the front pages of the local papers until the press just stopped reporting on it at all. Wow.
Because satanic panic eventually did die down. Wow.
So they, I mean, they really showed their ass on that one. Oh, yeah.
They were just like, well, we were using it to further this narrative that sold papers and got everybody riled up. And now that that's over, we don't really care what happened.
People are interested in something else now. Wow.
So let's put that to rest. That's not shameful at all.
Just forget the memory of the 16-year-old girl who was murdered brutally in the woods in the middle of the day. Yeah.
Well, by the late 1990s, Weird New Jersey magazine started writing about Jeanette's case. And through their heavy reporting on the case, they sought out anybody associated with the case for comment.
The resulting articles attracted the attention of several members of the Springfield community who remembered the case, and soon anonymous letters started coming into the Weird New Jersey office. Jesse Pollock, a correspondent for the magazine, remembered, we got a tip from a relative of one of these other victims found in the area they said you better take a look at this because the mo's are very similar now this is the first time you will ever hear actual investigation into this and it's compelling but it's literally like weird new jersey it's done by weird new jersey good for them we love i was just gonna say weird uh there's so many like different state offshoots there's so much Yeah, like, but like, good for them.
Yeah. And it I was just going to say.
All the weird. There's so many like different state offshoots.
New England. There's so much fun.
Yeah. But like good for them.
Yeah. And it's like I can't believe it came down to them having to do it.
Yeah. When you hear what they found, you're like, how was that not investigated at the time? Because it wasn't important.
Because this is genuinely so compelling. Yeah.
None of this was important. It was furthering that narrative of satanic panic.
Which is devastating. Jesse and his writing partner, Mark Morin, I think it is, started digging into similar murders committed around that part of New Jersey in the few years before and after Jeanette's death.
And they discovered a number of murder victims who were very similar to Jeanette. Jesse said all were young, attractive brunettes with the same hairstyle.
Come on. way all found dead arranged face down in a wooded area come on there are not that many motherfucking coincidences in life everybody let's be real literally shit same mo same victim profile same dispose like body disposal same method of killing what the all in the same area within a span of years before

janette was killed when janette was killed and after janette was killed i'm shook by the fact

that they were they just ignored all of that weird new jersey had to be the people that reported on

this and like decades later decades later that the police and i'm like there's no way that the

police that didn't come across their desk that you know all of these thin young attractive brunettes with the same hairstyle between a very similar age were killed similarly to see if there was anything anything connected i think all they were looking for you across the face though all they were looking for you don't even have to look for that well because it didn't fit their narrative so they're not going to look at it because it doesn't fit what they were trying to get across they went looking for ritualistic crime scenes and things to do with satan and things to do with like leading a fucking band of demons and all that shit all the really important stuff that you should look at when you are trying to solve a case of a 16 yearyear-old girl's murder. Meanwhile, look at all of that.
And instead, you're supposed to be saying, huh, are there any victims in the area that are of the same profile, were killed in the same way? Are there anything that we can link to this? None of them did that. Tons.
None of them did that because it didn't work. And there were tons.
That narrative. It's insane.
There was a preconceived idea of what they wanted to get across when Jeanette was killed and she was used for that purpose. How wild is that, though? Now I want to get these guys on the podcast.
I'm like, let's fucking solve to talk to them. Jeanette's case, man.
Come on the show, guys. You're invited anytime.
That's very impressive that you guys were able to do this. Insanely impressive.
Yeah. And we love your books.
We literally have many of them in the office. We do.
We've used them for like cryptids and shit before too. We have, yeah.
They're awesome. But back to this story.
At the time of the murders, law enforcement agencies operated independently. And like we've seen in a lot of cases, they were not very good at communicating with one another.
And even if they had been able to, the concept of a serial killer was still a few years away from entering the public consciousness so it's really actually unlikely that they would have had the resources and relevant information that would have led them to that conclusion way back then but still jesse pollock and mark morin believe one man was responsible for several of these murders committed in the area during the 70s including janetteette DePalma. Pollock said, either one person committed all these crimes or the other option, which is a lot scarier, is that you have multiple killers operating in the same area at the same time with the same MO.
Yeah, which is even scarier. Even scarier? I don't think that's the case.
I think somebody was operating in and around New Jersey, had a victim profile, was murdering these young women in the same manner and disposing of their bodies in similar ways and got away with it because everybody was like, sighting. Sighting.
I agree. I think they are on to something huge.
Now, more than 50 years have passed since Jeanette's body was discovered at the quarry and police have made no additional progress toward closing this case to some the occultist and uh devil worship angle is still a sufficient explanation for Jeanette's death and to them I say grow up yeah do truly seek help yeah but others like Pollock and Morin believe the more modern theory that jeanette was murdered by an experienced killer who would go on to kill again and again and again and then there are those who hold on to their biases and preconceived notions in 2019 don schwart told a reporter they were probably doing drugs and god'd wow despite a complete lack of evidence of wow literally no evidence to that but sure but yeah totally the circumstances of jeanette's death honestly at this point might not ever be known and her killer may never be identified in a 2024 interview ed kish summed things up and agreed telling a reporter he didn't believe the case would ever be solved he said the cops are only as good as the evidence left behind and in this case there was virtually no evidence left at the scene and according to kish kids tend not to talk and whoever had knowledge of what may have happened would be taking it to their graves wow that's devastating unreal that that is the turn that that story took i just like i and i i hate hearing it's probably never going to be solved because i refuse to believe that i refuse to believe that too i think i think the work that the guys over at weird new jersey did has some fucking legs yeah and i think you get the right eyes on that i mean there has to be some kind of dna left at one of those scenes and genealogical dna is so fascinating to me i think it really is some of them going to solve so many more crimes and if you can connect those things yeah connect a few of those figure out who it could be start pulling that string backwards and see if you can connect her back to it start there's gotta be a connection there's gotta be like it's there's gotta be something i mean the thing that's awful about janette's case is that they really i mean they lost vital records and it looks like they half-assed the autopsy they half-assed the autopsy i don't even know i don't think anything was even discovered that's pretty shameful you know but i've got to be really really hope that they can do something i know at one point I think as recently as 2019 um they wanted to test her clothing but it was being left up to decision uh and I don't know if they came to a decision about that come on guys I know I know it's pushed to get it done like come on like look at the lady of the dunes look at the Somerton man well those are the box those are the things that give you hope they've so old cases that even older than this case yeah even older than this case yeah i mean the golden state killer obviously not older than this case like around the same time that was a massive one it's like holy shit that guy thought he was gonna live joseph james d'angelo whatever his name thought he was going to go live the rest of his days.

Boom.

Interrupted.

Let's interrupt the motherfucker who took these people's lives away from them.

Yeah, absolutely.

And let's, because then it would take away from the whole satanic panic and occultist thing of it all.

It would be like, nope, that's stupid.

It's this guy.

Remove that part of the story.

Remove it.

Yeah.

Get rid of it.

And then it can be what we've been saying it is, which is bullshit and a distraction. It's a monster of a human.
Yeah. Ugh.
So sad. Damn.
So sad. But I really hope that at some point it could get solved.
Yes. And in the meantime, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you don't go tell the weird New Jersey guys that we want to have them on to talk to them about this case.

Because how great would that be?

Mark and Jesse, let's go.

Are you listening?

Are you listening?

Love your book.

Oh my god, I love your work. Thank you.
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