Episode 646: The Unsolved Murder of Jeannette DePalma

Summary

Morbid Episode 646: The Unsolved Murder of Jeannette DePalma

Host: Morbid Network | Wondery
Release Date: February 17, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 646 of Morbid, hosts Ash and Elena delve into the haunting and enigmatic case of Jeannette DePalma, a 16-year-old girl whose unsolved murder in 1972 continues to perplex investigators and intrigue true crime enthusiasts. This episode meticulously unpacks the events surrounding Jeannette's disappearance, the discovery of her body, and the subsequent investigation overshadowed by rumors of occult involvement.

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Jeannette DePalma's Background

Jeannette DePalma was born on August 3, 1956, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the sixth of seven children to Florence and Salvatore DePalma. In the early 1960s, the family relocated to Spring Township, a quiet suburb approximately 30 miles from New York City, seeking a safe environment to raise their children.

Notable Quote:
Ash (09:00): "Jeannette was the sixth of seven children, growing up in what seemed like the perfect quiet suburb."

The DePalma family was perceived by neighbors as close-knit yet somewhat secretive. Frequent police calls to their home hinted at domestic turmoil, with Sal and Florence often involved in disputes, painting a picture of a family under constant strain.

The Night of Her Disappearance

In the summer of 1972, tensions within the DePalma household escalated when Jeannette's cousin, Lisa, ran away from home. After a month with no sign of Lisa, Jeannette’s parents informed her, leading to a confrontation that left Jeannette angry and punished with additional chores. Attempting to salvage her plans for the day, Jeannette arranged to meet friends at Echo Lake Park but ultimately never showed up.

Notable Quote:
Elena (19:52): "Jeanette was pissed when her parents delayed telling her about Lisa running away. She stormed off and never returned."

Jeannette planned to take the train to Berkeley Heights but instead decided to hitchhike—a decision that proved fatal.

Discovery of Her Body

On September 19, 1972, Jeannette's body was discovered in the nearby Hu Dai quarry, a location known for its popularity among teenagers and as a spot for police target practice. Her remains were found face down, clothed in a blue T-shirt and tan pants, with a pair of flip-flops nearby. The scene was unsettlingly arranged with sticks and stones around her body, leading some to speculate about ritualistic motives.

Notable Quote:
Ash (40:33): "Jeanette's body was found with a semicircle of stones around her head, which some interpreted as witchcraft."

The Police Investigation

Initial police response was hindered by procedural delays and unclear reporting. Sal and Florence DePalma reported Jeannette missing but were allegedly told to wait 24 hours before action could be taken—a protocol that significantly delayed the search efforts.

Notable Quote:
Ash (28:10): "The De Palmas reported Jeanette missing, but the police told them to wait a full 24 hours before acting."

Investigators struggled with conflicting accounts from witnesses and neighbors, many of whom perpetuated rumors about Jeannette's behavior and possible involvement in Satanic activities, overshadowing factual evidence.

Influence of Satanic Panic and Rumors

As the investigation progressed, the media and local authorities began to intertwine Jeannette's case with the broader Satanic Panic sweeping North America in the 1980s and 90s. Reverend James Tate and other religious figures propagated the belief that occult practices were behind the murder, diverting attention from more plausible explanations.

Notable Quote:
Elena (47:48): "Reverend Tate believed Jeanette's devout faith made her a target for occultists, despite her friends' testimonies to the contrary."

This sensationalist narrative was further fueled by unrelated cases, such as the List family murders, which investigators mistakenly connected to the DePalma case, despite a lack of evidence.

Later Investigations and Theories

Decades later, journalists Mark Morin and Jesse Pollack of Weird New Jersey began re-examining the case, uncovering patterns that suggested the possibility of a serial killer operating in the region during the 1970s. Their research highlighted similarities in victim profiles and disposal methods, challenging the previously dominant occult theory.

Notable Quote:
Ash (76:16): "Multiple victims with similar profiles and disposal methods point towards a possible serial killer, not occult rituals."

Despite these revelations, the case remains unsolved, primarily due to lost evidence and the initial misdirection caused by unfounded rumors.

Conclusion and Reflections

Ash and Elena express frustration over how external narratives, such as the Satanic Panic, derailed the true investigation of Jeannette DePalma's murder. They advocate for a return to empirical evidence and logical investigative methods, emphasizing the need for modern forensic techniques like DNA analysis to potentially solve the case.

Notable Quote:
Elena (82:01): "It's devastating that Jeanette's murder was overshadowed by baseless occult theories instead of focusing on concrete evidence and actual suspects."

The episode underscores the enduring impact of societal fears and misinformation on criminal investigations, highlighting the tragic loss of Jeannette DePalma and the ongoing quest for truth in unresolved cases.

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Final Thoughts:
Episode 646 serves as a poignant reminder of how external narratives can obscure the truth in criminal investigations. Through thorough research and critical analysis, Ash and Elena shed light on the complexities of Jeannette DePalma's unsolved murder, advocating for justice and the preservation of the victim's true legacy.

Transcript

[Elena]

Hey, weirdos. Elena here. If you're looking to kick back and relax with Morbid, Wondery is the way to go. It's like having a cozy seat in our haunted mansion. No ads, just you and early access to new episodes. You can join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or in Apple podcasts or Spotify.

[Ash]

You're listening to a morbid network podcast. There's a lot in life that feels like it should be guaranteed, but it just isn't. Things like your friends being on their way when they text you omw. Or getting out the same number of socks from the dryer that you put in. AT&T is introducing a new guarantee, the AT&T guarantee. Because there's a lot in life that's not guaranteed. The AT&T guarantee means connectivity you can depend on, deals you want and service you deserve, or they'll make it right. Visit att.com guaranty to learn more. AT&T connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details.

[Unknown]

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[Ash]

Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

[Elena]

And I'm Elena.

[Ash]

And this is morbid.

[Elena]

This is mor.

[Ash]

What is that squishy thing that you have?

[Elena]

So this is. What is it called?

[Ash]

Is it like a stress ball?

[Elena]

It's called like Neo or something? 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 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.

[Ash]

Throw me. It caught it. Oh, yeah.

[Elena]

Can I have one? Yeah.

[Ash]

Oh, wow.

[Elena]

Can I have one?

[Ash]

You can like really stretch this. Oh, wow. I could work some anger out on this.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

It's literally called me Doe knee.

[Elena]

N E E Doe.

[Ash]

There's a lot of dog.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Sorry. That was a really aggressive.

[Elena]

That was. Luckily I played softball, man.

[Ash]

Same. But not as well.

[Elena]

No, these things are great. I recommend a stress ball for everybody. I think it should be. They should be passed out in the United States right now.

[Ash]

Yeah. Actually, I think, honestly, as you know, this comes out so much later.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Than anything. Our hearts really go out to anybody affected by that plane crash. It is.

[Elena]

We are only a couple days out from when it happened. Helicopter slamming into the passenger plane, the US Airways passenger plane in D.C. at Reagan Airport. And it has been weighing on my mind so heavy because it like victims, names, people are being identified. I mean, there's still people. They're still doing the recovery right now. And we're two days out. It is so many kids. A lot of them were from like the Boston Skating Club, like locally. Six victims were from only a couple towns over from us, I think. So it's. It's like really.

[Ash]

It's gut wrenching.

[Elena]

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 sad. And if you're in the D.C. area, I'm sure you're just like feeling it.

[Ash]

Extra hard, feeling the weight of that.

[Elena]

And if you know any of the people that were involved, like, I'm so sorry.

[Ash]

So, so, so sorry.

[Elena]

Because holy shit. This seemed entirely avoidable.

[Ash]

Yeah, 100%.

[Elena]

Yeah. It's been a real bummer.

[Ash]

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. Unfortunately, I don't have anything happier to talk about.

[Elena]

I know. I'm trying to think if there's any like a exciting thing to throw out there. Oh, I think I don't. I mean, it looks like it's confirmed, guys. I'm going to switch gears Entirely. Just to get us into like a.

[Ash]

Yeah, we got a neutral space here.

[Elena]

A little palette cleanser. I think Matthew Lillard is going to be in Scream 7, everybody.

[Ash]

It looks like he is.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

So mad at me.

[Elena]

And I don't know how to properly contain my excitement.

[Ash]

I hope he comes back with his wonderful sweater that he wore that beige sweater. Sweater. I hate beige, but I love that sweater.

[Elena]

That sweater was torn to. He's going to have so many scars on his face.

[Ash]

Oh, he's going to come back gnarly.

[Elena]

He's going to be like pin. When he comes back. It's going to be awesome. And do you think.

[Ash]

So do you think he's going to come back current or do you think it's going to be a flashback kind of deal?

[Elena]

I think I will feel a little cheated if it's.

[Ash]

If it's a flashback deal. No, same.

[Elena]

That would not be my favorite thing.

[Ash]

That would not be my favorite thing.

[Elena]

If you're listening right now, don't do that to us.

[Ash]

Please don't do that.

[Elena]

I don't think anybody would be happy with that.

[Ash]

No, we need him to come back. Like.

[Elena]

No. I've been saying since. I've been saying since the dawn of time, that student 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.

[Ash]

No, I was sick the other day and whenever I'm sick, I watch Scream because it's a comfort.

[Elena]

Comfort movie.

[Ash]

It's how Elena raised me. And he. He moans after the TV setup.

[Elena]

He groans like he goes.

[Ash]

He does a little groan. Yeah.

[Elena]

Literally.

[Ash]

Yeah, that's the exact noise.

[Elena]

The actual.

[Ash]

Yeah. So he's alive.

[Elena]

He is. And he's. He's going to be in Scream 7, guys.

[Ash]

So when is that supposed to come out?

[Elena]

I'm ready for it. February next year. So only like straight up a year from now.

[Ash]

Shit, that's crazy. I hope it's early February.

[Elena]

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

[Ash]

The 27th.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Wow.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

Manifesting that it's early February. You're like, like close.

[Elena]

Close but no cigar.

[Ash]

Close but not at all. It's a short month.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You know.

[Elena]

Yeah. There you go.

[Ash]

I made a really good coffee today. I'm in my at home barista era.

[Elena]

Yeah, you are. You, you made a really yummy one for me this morning.

[Ash]

Is it good? I got new beans and they're a lot better.

[Elena]

Yeah, the beans were beaning.

[Ash]

The beans were beaning.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

I've been making this cookie butter latte thing, everybody. It's so you literally just like smear cookie 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.

[Elena]

It's that simple.

[Ash]

It's so good. It's like a morning treat.

[Elena]

It is. It's delicious. I love it. I don't need to go get coffee anywhere anymore cuz Ash just brings me one.

[Ash]

It's true. I'm great.

[Elena]

I'm very blessed.

[Ash]

Yeah. Never stressed.

[Elena]

Still. Still very stressed.

[Ash]

But I literally, as soon as I said that, I was like, I'm still very stressed.

[Elena]

Most stressed, but very blessed.

[Ash]

I have a whole new appreciation for baristas though, because that is not easy.

[Elena]

Yeah, it's not.

[Ash]

It's a science. I had to order like so many Acutra Monster. I was like, oh, good. Espresso machine.

[Elena]

That's it.

[Ash]

It was like, buy these other five things if you want it to taste good.

[Elena]

Yeah. It's like its own thing there. Yeah.

[Ash]

But my coffee bar is cute, so.

[Elena]

So that's all that matters.

[Ash]

Well, that's all the good things we can think of. Coffee, neato. And yeah. Matthew Lillard. That's a great thing.

[Elena]

It's a rough thing. Sandwich is what it is.

[Ash]

Yeah. And 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 Jeanette De Palma.

[Elena]

And I do remember this one.

[Ash]

Yeah, it happened.

[Elena]

Some of it.

[Ash]

It was like, it was like the late 60s, early 70s. So I'm sure you've heard it, like.

[Elena]

Talk about in passing. Yes, I have some details.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah, I can definitely see that.

[Ash]

Which is really shitty. Yeah. But we're going to 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. And obviously, they're the people that really knew her.

[Elena]

Exactly.

[Ash]

So I'm glad that he was able to gather a lot more of those quotes.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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, as well as the mailman who ended up living in a dumpster.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

I said, I love an eccentric group of people.

[Elena]

Hell, yeah.

[Ash]

Sign me up.

[Elena]

Sign me up.

[Ash]

What an array there.

[Elena]

What an array.

[Ash]

What a smorgasbord of humans.

[Elena]

Yeah. That's a town.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

That's a group of people.

[Ash]

It's weirdly giving like Stars Hollow.

[Elena]

Yeah, you know, it really is.

[Ash]

I want to know more about each.

[Elena]

Of those people, Especially the lady who's sweeping moonbeams off her driveway.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

All night.

[Ash]

I would never sweep a moonbeam off my. But I'm just like, tell me story. I know.

[Elena]

So.

[Ash]

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 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.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Rachel Saidreski, Sal and Florence's granddaughter, also remembered the De Palma house as one of constant turmoil and chaos. And she said her grandfather cell was quote, unquote, rotten to her grandmother.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

So there was a lot going on.

[Elena]

That makes me sad yeah.

[Ash]

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 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 Jeanette was not the perfect Christian child that her mother believed her to be. Yeah, which, like.

[Elena]

Which like who is relatively. That's not wild.

[Ash]

Exactly. 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 back seat of some guy's car over at Bryant Park.

[Elena]

Oh, man.

[Ash]

In my words, she was living her best life.

[Elena]

You know about that.

[Ash]

She's being a teenager.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Let her live.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

So there she's like, yeah, so you like people.

[Ash]

But it wasn't like that.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Jeanette's sister Cindy was more to the point in refuting the town elder's opinions in no uncertain terms. She said, this cop seems to be feeding people a lot of bullshit.

[Elena]

I love how just like, to the point, she's like, nah, that's bullshit.

[Ash]

That's a bunch of bullshit. That's a sister right there.

[Elena]

That is a sister.

[Ash]

Florence. Jeanette's mother also agreed. Disagreed. Excuse me. 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.

[Elena]

Well, that sounds nice.

[Ash]

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 and a program that was supporting at risk youth in the area.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

So she was giving back to the community.

[Elena]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ash]

And it's really fucked up that Everybody's like, 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.

[Elena]

Yeah. And it's like she was doing more for her community than most teenagers are, to be honest.

[Ash]

Literally helping at risk children. But, yeah, even Detective Sergeant Sam Calabrese, the lead detective on Jeanette's case, told reporters that Janette, quote, had no record of trouble with authorities.

[Elena]

See, so that's all just, like, hearsay.

[Ash]

So it's like, she can't have been too wild because there's literally no reports.

[Elena]

Yeah. Unless she was, like, a criminal genius, criminal mastermind out here with everything and also giving back to her community at the same time.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

It's really unclear why the locals in Springfield have such dramatically different memories of Jeanette 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.

[Elena]

Absolutely. Makes sense.

[Ash]

And just like with a lot of female victims of crime at the time, people were quick to 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.

[Elena]

Yeah. A favorite pastime.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Damn hippie Jesus freaks. Listening to rock music and smoking.

[Ash]

Like, that's literally what you pretty much picture for teenagers of the 60s and 70s.

[Elena]

Absolutely.

[Ash]

Like, maybe not so much the Jesus freak part of it, but honestly, probably, yeah. Fairly common.

[Elena]

Yeah. Absolutely.

[Ash]

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. With an emphatic hell, no. She's like. 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 Bandroski, 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.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

Which is nice, but, like, it doesn't sound like this teacher was Jeanette's teacher, because she literally said, like, from the account of other students and the impression that I had, I'm like, so did you talk to her firsthand?

[Elena]

Yeah. Like, did you ever talk to her?

[Ash]

Yeah. 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, Grace Petrilli 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.

[Elena]

Oh, that's nice.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

But how weird.

[Ash]

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 are like, oh, this want to hear this fact about Jeanette? And then the people who actually knew her, like, no, like, she was a.

[Elena]

Good friend and she was pretty fun to hang out with.

[Ash]

She liked Janis Joplin.

[Elena]

She liked Janis Joplin. It's like, that seems more the real thing.

[Ash]

I think a lot of people in town had opinions of the family as a whole, and Jeanette kind of got scapegoated in a way there.

[Elena]

Yep, I think so, too.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Opinions, colored in what the image of her now is.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

That is really sad. Sad.

[Ash]

But relying more on the information from her friends and family, again, she just seemed like an ordinary teenager.

[Elena]

Yeah. Who was a good friend, a good example. Did some stuff for her community, helping at risk kids. Yeah, she sounds like a cool girl, a cool chick.

[Ash]

She loved music like we know. She loved Janis Joplin. She loved clothes. She was under her style. 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.

[Elena]

Yeah, of course.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Good for her.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Fuck yeah.

[Ash]

I'm like, maybe she had a duality that literally none of you could understand.

[Elena]

Yeah, maybe that's what it was.

[Ash]

Maybe she was so far ahead of her time and that she could.

[Elena]

That you just couldn't grasp that she could be multifaceted.

[Ash]

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. 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, like, 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're. You can't act like that.

[Elena]

Yeah. Like you stormed off into your room. Now you get an extra chore.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Oh, no. Yeah.

[Ash]

With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to you to a step. Skip those trips to the grocery store and count on hellofresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. Are you tired of figuring out what is for dinner night after night after night? Especially on those busy weekdays? That gets super tough. Well, it doesn't have to be get dinner done the easy way. Thanks to hellofresh, it is so easy to find time to eat well with 50 wholesome and hassle free meals to choose from each week that are delivered right to your door. Drew and I love hellofresh. It's just nice. I feel like some days it will hit me like halfway through the day like, oh crap, what am I going to cook for dinner? And then I remember 9 out of 10 times I've got a couple hellofresh meals in the fridge ready to go. The other night I had that moment, I was like, what are we going to eat tonight? And then I was like, oh, we got the caramelized onion and mushroom flatbreads. Let me tell you, it probably took like 5, 5 minutes to prep and like 20 minutes to cook if that. We had dinner in about half hour, which some nights it can take over an hour. But not with hellofresh. Get up to 10 free meals and a free high protein item for [e-mail] hellofresh podcast one item per box with active subscription free meals applied as discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com hellofresh podcast HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit.

[Unknown]

In the 1980s, a swept the country.

[Elena]

Hey Mike, I really like this white Zinfandel. Well, good, good.

[Ash]

Now put it down.

[E]

We're gonna try another one.

[Unknown]

White Zin became America's top selling wine. But most don't know that this sweet drink has a sour history. What began in 1986 with counterfeit bottles.

[Ash]

A big fraud, a multi million dollar.

[Unknown]

Fraud sent investigators chasing one of the most powerful families in the business. The Licciardis. But the closer the feds got to them, the more dangerous things became. It's a story of deceit.

[Ash]

At the time, I was paranoid.

[Elena]

Threats, you touch my kids, I will kill you.

[Unknown]

And murder with a.22 caliber bullet to the head. What started with a scheme to mislabel wine spilled into a blood soaked battle for succession. Welcome to bloodvines. You can binge listen to Blood Vines exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Huh.

[Ash]

So again, 50 years had passed by the time a lot of these people started talking, but they're continue talking about this. Yeah, your memory is not going to serve you perfectly well.

[Elena]

But no, I mean, no, like my memory is terrible.

[Ash]

I barely remember what I had for breakfast.

[Elena]

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?

[Ash]

Yeah. I don't know, it's just interesting. Like some people are like, oh, she was going to meet Tommy. And 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.

[Elena]

That's very true.

[Ash]

While they're living like the memory of Jeanette 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.

[Elena]

That's so hard because it's like you want, like it makes, I get so scared of like teenage years with, you know, I mean, because you're like, you want to maintain such consistent communication, but sometimes kids throw up roadblocks.

[Ash]

Oh. And they can shut you out, you.

[Elena]

Know, they can shut you right out. And that's like my biggest fear. Yeah, it's scary, like not having that consistent line of communication where they feel like they can tell you anything.

[Ash]

I think luckily these days you're in a lot better Of a situation, because the amount of you can put on those.

[Elena]

I know you can track their ads everywhere.

[Ash]

I like. But parents in the 60s and 70s, how the did they do that?

[Elena]

Oh, my God. It was the wild west out there.

[Ash]

Because if your kid wasn't telling you what they were going or saying, oh, I'm gonna go do this. Actually, they went and did that. Which how many of us do as teenagers?

[Elena]

Oh, yeah, they were. It's like they just went around the dark side of the moon. They just lost communication and hopefully comes back.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

You can't see them, can't hear them, and you're just like, well, I hope they come around the other way.

[Ash]

Yeah, it's scary.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

But those that believe Jeanette did have a boyfriend at this time couldn't remember a name or any details, which, you know, doesn't help.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

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 gonna walk the three miles to the train station and summit and head to work.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

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 Belatis, who lived a few houses down. According to Donna's husband, now John Rzinski, 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 Rosinski, 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.

[Elena]

Oh, okay.

[Ash]

But whatever the case, Donna's mother refused. So Jeanette left the Bladis house and continued down the road in the direction of Berkeley Heights.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Intending to continue hitchhiking later that night. Several hours after Jeanette 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 De Palmas 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.

[Elena]

That's. That's wild. To me. Nothing about that makes sense.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

But so scary.

[Ash]

Just like so many 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.

[Elena]

Yeah. And it's like, where's the record?

[Ash]

Exactly. Where are any of the records? That's a big question.

[Elena]

That's the thing.

[Ash]

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 and 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.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Which is like, they don't have to.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

They don't.

[Elena]

Prerogative.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah. I mean, look at how people are already talking.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

Sure. They don't want to just fuel it, and you don't know what you would do Unless you're in that position. Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah, it's very different.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

It's so tough.

[Ash]

It doesn't always seem rational, it doesn't always make sense, but it doesn't mean they're guilty.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

That was a little weird.

[Elena]

We all do it. Yeah. Again, not our best, you know, little quirk that we have as a species, but there it is.

[Ash]

But also.

[Elena]

But 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.

[Ash]

And it's actually just the body's response to this trauma.

[Elena]

Because our bodies self preserve in these situations.

[Ash]

We're designed to do that.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

Right.

[Elena]

So it's like. I know it's easy to do that. And again, human nature. And sometimes it's dead on.

[Ash]

Oh yeah.

[Elena]

Sometimes how they react to it and you go, that's fucked up. And then. Yeah, it was fucked up.

[Ash]

It just can't be the only thing.

[Elena]

Look at Chris Watts. Chris Watts is a perfect example.

[Ash]

Haunting.

[Elena]

I watched that man's haunting little interview interviews and I said, that man knows something. Yeah, I knew.

[Ash]

There is a science to some things, like.

[Elena]

Yeah, of course.

[Ash]

Like body language and all that people do.

[Elena]

But it's such a tight. It's a. It's a dangerous and tight line to walk.

[Ash]

Yeah, for sure. Exactly.

[Elena]

I'll get off my soapbox now.

[Ash]

I know it's, it's. That's not even a soapbox. No. It's just.

[Elena]

And it comes up a lot.

[Ash]

That's just straight up.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 that tells you anything. They. They weren't the reason that their daughter.

[Elena]

Ran away or that they knew anything.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

That's pretty shameful.

[Ash]

It's really sad.

[Elena]

That's pretty shameful. She's lunity.

[Ash]

She's a teenager.

[Elena]

Literally just missing.

[Ash]

Disappeared into thin air. And then when you find out what did happen to her, you're, like, cool that nobody was searching.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

See even more. More mystery, because it's like everyone's got a different idea of what she would or wouldn't have done, even if it.

[Ash]

Was a kid, Which I'll tell you right up at the top, it's not. She didn't run away.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

That's not what was happening. But it's like, so many people could have pictured her running away. Yeah.

[Elena]

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, show who she is.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah. Like.

[Ash]

Like she was seeing that and dealing with that.

[Elena]

You should have empathy for her.

[Ash]

Yeah. And it doesn't really seem like. Like, a lot of people did at all.

[Elena]

She's a child.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like, she's still a kid. And, like, this is a teenager.

[Ash]

No matter what, she's troubled. If that's going on, if that's the.

[Elena]

Case, then she does need help, and everybody needs to be. Because no matter what, even if she did run away. She could still be in danger.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like she's a kid on the run.

[Ash]

Absolutely.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 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 Jeanette 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.

[Elena]

It makes no sense.

[Ash]

So Sal and Florence ended up organizing their own search party for their daughter. But by then, it was too late.

[Elena]

Yeah. 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 hours. Let's cut that in half.

[Ash]

Yeah, let's.

[Elena]

Let's cut our time that we could find them in half.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Nobody was following it.

[Ash]

Because that's actually such a good point.

[Elena]

Yeah. Because you're literally just chopping it in.

[Ash]

Half, throwing those 24 hours to the wind. So it says 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.

[Elena]

I love that in the beginning, they were like. Like that it that it came to.

[Ash]

A point where they're like, we should probably pay attention.

[Elena]

It would be awesome if we collected evidence right away now, like, it's just like, who came? Who's. Like, who was like, light bulb.

[Ash]

Whoa.

[Elena]

If evidence doesn't get to be disturbed and decayed, it might be more helpful.

[Ash]

We might do better at this.

[Elena]

Whomst before that was like, we should just let evidence get tainted for a little while.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And then we can just work harder to try to figure out who did it.

[Ash]

A lot of people. Actually, a lot of people were in that bot. Like, what a boat? In that boat. I meant to say, what an aha.

[Elena]

Moment for that person to be like, wow, the earlier we do this, the easier our job is.

[Ash]

And the funniest thing to think about too, is not funny, but, like, ironic that they were probably met with pushback 100%.

[Elena]

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. That's a fucking crazy person telling us to wash our hands. Hands.

[Ash]

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 19, a resident of the newly built Baltus Roll Gardens. I looked up how to say that, so don't come at me. It 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.

[Elena]

Holy.

[Ash]

Again, unbeknownst to the owner.

[Elena]

Oh my God.

[Ash]

Just moments after the dog had entered 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 Schwartt 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.

[Elena]

Oh, my God.

[Ash]

So Officer Schwartz 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, Short 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.

[Elena]

Okay. I guess, yeah.

[Ash]

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 told me she had let her dog out to run earlier that morning, and we were. We determined that this Dalmatian had most likely brought the arm home from wherever it had been roaming.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

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 Jeannette De Palma. Part of Jeannette 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 Hu Dai 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 green. A kite, which is a mineral. A mineral rich with cadmium, I think it is.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

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. That's 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. Across the quarry and kept on searching a little after 6pm Remember, that arm was found earlier in the morning at about 11. It took them until 6pm 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 cliff.

[Elena]

Yep.

[Ash]

By locals.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

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

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

So they were badly decomposed by the time they were discovered. Remember, she went missing in August.

[Elena]

Holy.

[Ash]

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 case. 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 Schwartt, 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. Semicircle, almost like a halo.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

Which would have been strange.

[Elena]

Absolutely.

[Ash]

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 Jeanette's body looked like, quote, unquote, witchcraft.

[Elena]

Oh.

[Ash]

Personally, I don't know any witches that do anything like that, but no.

[E]

Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From COVID experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about. Each week on Redacted Declassified Mysteries, we pull back the curtain on These hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power. Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II not as prisoners, but as assets to advance US intelligence during the Cold War. These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking. Follow Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to redacted early and ad free right now on Wonder Plus.

[Unknown]

Have you ever gotten a message out of the blue. Maybe you ignore them, or maybe you end up in conversation. Maybe they tell you about an amazing offer.

[Ash]

I can really show you how to make some money.

[Unknown]

And maybe that gets you into a lot of trouble. But this isn't a story about people like you, the people receiving these messages. This is a story about the people behind the messages. On the other end of the line, thousands of them, working in a microcity built for scammers. From Wondery, the makers of Dr. Death and Kill List, comes Scam Factory, a new series about survival at the expense of others. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scam Factory early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

[Ash]

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 patrolmen like a bunch of dunces anyway.

[Elena]

The silence is deafening.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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. 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 was no bullet hole, no knife that they found. So ultimately, Ehrenberg concluded that the body was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death.

[Elena]

That sucks.

[Ash]

But suspected that strangulation could have been the cause.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

That evening, Jeanette's body was identified by a dental comparison, which is just whenever.

[Elena]

That happens, I know that.

[Ash]

Such a layer of, like, sadness.

[Elena]

Well, like, the reason I said that sucks is, like, just to not know what happened to her.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like her family.

[Ash]

Absolutely. And that must be tough to not have it be 100 concrete.

[Elena]

Yeah, you just don't know. Like, you just left a wonder.

[Ash]

You'd wonder for the rest of your life. Exactly.

[Elena]

Exactly.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Oh, good.

[Ash]

Yeah, awesome. That's great kitsch, said Bernie Ehrenberg was not competent enough, as far as I'm concerned, to have been conducting forensic autopsies.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

I don't know how that happens.

[Ash]

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. And I'm not saying like that she did drugs, but you don't know she was poisoned. Exactly.

[Elena]

Drugged her, did anything like that.

[Ash]

Exactly. There's. That's a huge piece of the puzzle missing.

[Elena]

How do you lose samples like that?

[Ash]

Couldn't tell ya.

[Elena]

We couldn't if we tried in the morgue. We couldn't have lost that if we tried.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Or you could just look for a murderer. Yeah, you could do that.

[Ash]

Because usually that's who kills people.

[Elena]

I mean 99.99999 if not 100% of the time, it's a murderer who murders people.

[Ash]

It's not a ritualistic sacrifice. It's not usually it's just hiding in the woods. It's not the devil reincarnate.

[Elena]

When had. How many, like how many times has it been a random witch covenant hiding in the woods that has been responsible for a murder?

[Ash]

I would say approximately zero.

[Elena]

Like let's, let's be like real here.

[Ash]

Like be so for real right now.

[Elena]

Like be so for real and start looking at actual suspects instead of this.

[Ash]

That did not happen. This is only going to get.

[Elena]

And that's why this is unsolved.

[Ash]

It's exactly to this day. Oh, and it's 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.

[Elena]

I was just gonna say where did.

[Ash]

That one ever said that? These rumors and reports were often contrasted with quotes from Jeanette'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 the father of the family, John Listener, 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.

[Elena]

It because you're being like, oh, it's got to be witches. Just, it's usually just a man. It's usually just a man. And like that's statistically true. Like, can we stop with like, please stop the fakery here? It doesn't help anything. It makes cases like this remain unsolved.

[Ash]

And it just makes mockery of it all.

[Elena]

And it makes their family and their loved ones have to wait, wait for so long, if forever, to get answers when they could have got.

[Ash]

It just makes me like, do actual detective work.

[Elena]

Don't be.

[Ash]

Stop looking to the forces of the dark world.

[Elena]

Not a movie.

[Ash]

That's silly. And there's no time for silly.

[Elena]

No, like, come on. Silliness is for fiction stories.

[Ash]

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 worshippers existed across America and were involving young people in their rituals for evil purposes.

[Elena]

Yeah, for sure. We found that to be the Case in a lot of up. A lot of these.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Cases.

[Ash]

Right. Even though there was actually no evidence of any such groups or activities existing in the US 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 foolery.

[Elena]

Ridiculous.

[Ash]

Be so for real.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 suburbs in the 1970s 70s. 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.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Just basically depicting the lives of ordinary Americans being upended by witchcraft, satanic influence and daemons.

[Elena]

Diamonds.

[Ash]

It's never a daemon in suburban New Jersey. It wasn't just the discovery of Susan List books about witchcraft that ultimately took Jeannette 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 cults?

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

The answer is no.

[Ash]

Oh, well. The reason she 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 Satan worshipper sect and felt that he had to die violently in order to be put in charge of 40 leagues of demons.

[Elena]

I. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say about that.

[Ash]

I'll tell you more about what they said, so you can, you can just sit tight.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 trigger warning for animal cruelty. He had, quote, sacrificed hamsters by shaking them up in a wooden box into which sharp nails had been driven.

[Elena]

Oh, my God.

[Ash]

Yeah, 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 that people want to label it with. It has to do with mental illness.

[Elena]

And 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.

[Ash]

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 tacticy 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. Horror movies, you know.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

He claimed that he, quote, talked with half a dozen or more young people who confessed having taken part in devil worship. Brats.

[Elena]

I like how you went. I just had to like your preacher voice.

[Ash]

That's my preacher voice.

[Elena]

No, I. No, I, I don't believe him.

[Ash]

I think. I think you scared these kids. Yeah.

[Elena]

Don't believe him.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Ever heard of the Salem witch trials?

[Ash]

That's exactly. Exactly what.

[Elena]

You know where that started? Bored kids.

[Ash]

Yeah, bored kids being influenced by religious trauma, essentially.

[Elena]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ash]

But he wasn't the only one who claimed that Satanism had infiltrated their region. Reverend Joseph Donchez. I believe a pastor at the First Presbyterian Church, quote, estimated the number of young devil worshippers in Vineland at between 80 and 90.

[Elena]

Oh, okay.

[Ash]

I don't know what fact that's based off of, but he said, I. I'd.

[Elena]

Say 80 or 90, give or take. Let's take this guy and 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.

[Ash]

I think he might be.

[Elena]

Because he can pick out the devil worshippers. Yeah, just like you're 90 or so.

[Ash]

Just like the jelly beans.

[Elena]

Boom.

[Ash]

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 worshippers active in the United States.

[Elena]

No.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Exactly. Or just somebody knowing that a bunch of bozos will latch onto it if they put a pentagram at a crime scene.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And that it will take them completely in the wrong direction, leaving that person to scoot, scoot, scoot away and never get looked at.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

I mean, let's.

[Ash]

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

[Elena]

We gotta rub some neurons together and see what. Like, it's so easy.

[Ash]

Give it a shot.

[Elena]

It's so easy. It's literally the look over here.

[Ash]

Yeah, it is.

[Elena]

Tactic.

[Ash]

It is.

[Elena]

And everybody looks over there.

[Ash]

It's like, look over there.

[Elena]

Yeah. Stop looking over there. This person's running away and they're getting away with it now.

[Ash]

Well, in fact, Snook and Donchez themselves and even the investigators in 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. Like, let's blame it on what is actually the root cause here and actually try to do some work on that. Yeah, maybe.

[Elena]

Exactly.

[Ash]

Instead of being like, it's the devil.

[Elena]

And it's like, no, they're just seeing things because they're on many drugs.

[Ash]

Yeah, exactly.

[Elena]

Maybe you should help. Maybe make this not a thing, not an epidemic.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Death.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 of evidence at 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.

[Elena]

Yeah, it was nuts.

[Ash]

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. To the press, which just renewed the. 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.

[Elena]

This is always what happens in these cases. It's as soon as it gets mentioned, this must be the devil worshipers. All of a sudden, people are finding dead animals.

[Ash]

Yep.

[Elena]

It's, like, so true. They weren't finding them before.

[Ash]

The same thing.

[Elena]

But as soon as it gets mentioned, all of a sudden, dead animals all over the place.

[Ash]

The same thing happened close by to us. Was it Mariana Ruda?

[Elena]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ash]

She was killed by a monster of a human being.

[Elena]

Literally monster.

[Ash]

And everybody claimed it was, like, the satanic cult, but it's like. Like, no, it's a monster of a human being.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Can we stop blaming it on some? Like, it's. It's just ridiculous.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

It's getting kooky. It's getting this investigation like. Like, guys, can we put the nose to the grindstone here and actually look for the person who did this?

[Ash]

Let's look.

[Elena]

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

[Ash]

Let's look for evidence.

[Elena]

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

[Ash]

Let's look for. Look into the boyfriend.

[Elena]

Start talking to more people. Like, what are you doing?

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

Or the dare.

[Elena]

There's, like, real avenues to go down here.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And no one's going down them. Yeah. Meanwhile, Jeanette's just. Her case is just gonna be unsolved.

[Ash]

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, quote, sacrificial rite of black magic. With both theories being treated as equally valid, which is insane.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Can I name one?

[Ash]

Nope.

[Elena]

Could I point one out to you?

[Ash]

Absolutely. I can tell you maybe 10 to 12 people, but I'll tell you.

[Elena]

Yeah. Give me that jar of jelly beans. I'll tell you.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

A few miles from the glass spires of midtown Atlanta lies the south river forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility nicknamed Cop City.

[Elena]

At approximately 9:00 this morning, as law.

[Unknown]

Enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property, an individual, without warning, shot.

[Elena]

A Georgia State Patrol trooper.

[Unknown]

This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance.

[Elena]

The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down.

[Unknown]

Love and fellowship.

[Elena]

It was probably the happiest I've ever been in my life.

[Unknown]

And the lengths will go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts. Follow We Came to the Forest. On the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts, you can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

[Ash]

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 COVID of darkness. Though why he believed that is entirely unclear and doesn't seem to be supported by literally anything other than rumors, 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 gun scene, the cross and, like, the semicircle, other officers remember no such thing.

[Elena]

Huh?

[Ash]

Ed Kish said of the discovery, she was found lying in the middle of the woods, for Christ's sakes. There were sticks and stones everywhere. Yeah.

[Elena]

Like, hello, that's the thing.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Huh.

[Ash]

So he was like, I wouldn't go that far.

[Elena]

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?

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

Also, if anything, I feel like that would just lead you more to the pathology of your killer.

[Elena]

Exactly.

[Ash]

Like, look more into that and, like.

[Elena]

Take really look at it. You know, don't look at it and go, Satanism. Look at it and be like, why would they do that?

[Ash]

Right.

[Elena]

Did they do that?

[Ash]

But unfortunately, profiling was.

[Elena]

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, that was a cross in a semicircle around her head of. Of, like, stones and all that. And then the other one to 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.

[Ash]

Little weird in the woods.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

Ever since I've seen the Blair Witch Project, I see those everywhere in the woods all the time. Yeah.

[Elena]

And it's like, like. So it obviously wasn't. If they were really setting this up so that when she was found, everybody, a main attraction would have said it. 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.

[Ash]

Yes.

[Elena]

To me, it sounds like it wasn't. It sounds like it could have been either.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Not intentional and just organically there. Or it was like an afterthought.

[Ash]

Well, that's exactly it. Yeah. Given the general imperfection of human memory, especially in this case.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

And that's something you would remember.

[Ash]

But the thing is, in the year leading up to Jeanette's death, New Jersey residents had followed two highly unusual murder cases, both of which had some supposed supernatural or occult influence on them.

[Elena]

There you go.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Or interpreted random. The random arrangement of nature as something that it wasn't just out of fear.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

I'm like, her own friend.

[Ash]

Some of her closest friends, like, I think it was Gail Donahue earlier, was like, I didn't even know that she was religious. So. Yeah, that's interesting.

[Elena]

That's really crazy.

[Ash]

But it was his belief that Jeanette had met some local occultists. You know, of course, just out and around town.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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. Came across a group of occultists. How she would have known who hate Jesus, Even known that they were occultists. I'd love to know. Maybe they were dressed.

[Elena]

They were wearing black. Shrouded, black fingernails. Come on.

[Ash]

Yeah. Like, weird makeup. Who knows? And she said, can I. Can I tell you about Jesus? And they were like, absolutely not. We're gonna kill you.

[Elena]

They said, that guy. I hate that guy. That's literally. They don't believe in that.

[Ash]

When has that.

[Elena]

Wouldn't that be the whole schnick?

[Ash]

Also, when has that. When ever happened?

[Elena]

And also, where did this happen? Where did she run into a cultist in the. What? And no one's. Just in the woods. Just in the woods. I forgot there. You know, I'm always thinking that I'm.

[Ash]

Like, the devil's teeth or whatever.

[Elena]

Yeah. That. You know, we better not take a walk through the woods because we'll run into some occultists. We're just waiting.

[Ash]

It's usually why I head into the woods.

[Elena]

Yeah, let's go. But it's like, that doesn't make.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

No Literally any sense. And again, to have. They are spinning this narrative that is so infuriating. That's like. Like, her friends are literally saying, I didn't even know she was that Christian.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Like, I did. She wasn't.

[Ash]

I just knew she was a cool person and a good thing to all of us.

[Elena]

Like, it just. She was just a good person.

[Ash]

But of course, the reverend has to be like, she was trying to tell them the Word.

[Elena]

She was out there spreading the word of God. And it's like, she was. First of all, if she was, she was. But it's like, second of all, if everyone close to her is saying, that's not.

[Ash]

Doesn't sound like.

[Elena]

So I don't think she was just randomly doing it one day.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

And again, I don't know. And for them to be sitting there saying this, like, I Don't know Jeanette De Palma.

[Ash]

No.

[Elena]

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 occultists that she met randomly in the middle of the fucking woods. And it's like, no, no, what are you doing? Like what? To derail a case like this with this.

[Ash]

This nonsense is criminal.

[Elena]

Is infuriating.

[Ash]

It should be criminal because she.

[Elena]

She should have been the focus and the focus became. Look at the. They used this. Oh yeah. They used this. That. This like particular branch of this community. 100 use Jeanette's murder to further their whole conspiracy.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

Of the youth of today is getting corrupted by Satanists that are wandering around in the woods. And it's like, like, okay, so we're just gonna Forget about Jeanette, 16 year old Jeanette who got murdered.

[Ash]

Right.

[Elena]

We're just gonna forget about her.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

Because now she's furthered your narrative.

[Ash]

Well. And it's like your case that you just covered, Bobby Dunbar, it sold papers.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Salacious weird 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 in their memory. Yeah.

[Elena]

They just changed it forever. Their own humanity at the door before they go and print this shit.

[Ash]

Yep.

[Elena]

And they pick it up on the way out. But it's like, it's so gross.

[Ash]

It is.

[Elena]

They used her to further this conspiracy. She became a Satan worshipers wandering around in the forest. And it's like, nope, the focus should be on Jeanette and what was going on here and figure out who did this to her.

[Ash]

Exactly.

[Elena]

And they didn't.

[Ash]

Well. And on the completely flip side of thing, other people took a far less sympathetic approach to the story and just associated Jeanette with hippie culture and blamed her murder on drugs.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Ash]

Even though there was literally no evidence that she had done drugs.

[Elena]

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?

[Ash]

To some people, like, damn. Yeah. That's nice.

[Elena]

That's cool. Apparently everybody's checking their humanity somewhere.

[Ash]

Yeah. I don't know what was going on.

[Elena]

Jesus.

[Ash]

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.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Ash]

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, like, I'm like just on the suspicion that he lived there and looked strange.

[Elena]

Yeah, that's the thing. It's like really?

[Ash]

I'm like, I feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again in this case.

[Elena]

We're not getting the best results.

[Ash]

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 Red and Jeanette. 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.

[Elena]

But yeah, he was cleared.

[Ash]

The press continued to focus heavily on, you know, of course, the supposedly occult aspects of the case, going so far as to literally interview members of the church Search 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. 0. 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. Because satanic panic eventually did die down. Wow.

[Elena]

So that, I mean, they, they really showed their ass on that one. That they were just like, 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.

[Ash]

People are interested in something else now, so let's put that to rest.

[Elena]

It's not shameful at all.

[Ash]

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 complex 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 mos 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.

[Elena]

A weird New Jersey.

[Ash]

It's done by weird New Jersey.

[Elena]

Good for them.

[Ash]

Who we love.

[Elena]

I was just gonna say weird.

[Ash]

There's so many, like different state office.

[Elena]

England.

[Ash]

There's so much. Yeah.

[Elena]

Like. But like, good for them.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Elena]

And it's like, I can't believe it came down to them having to do it.

[Ash]

Yeah. 1. When you hear what they found, you're like, how was that not investigated at that point?

[Elena]

Because it wasn't important.

[Ash]

Because this is genuinely so compelling.

[Elena]

Yeah. None of this was important. It was furthering that narrative. Ye satanic panic.

[Ash]

Which is devastating.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 Janette'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.

[Elena]

Come on.

[Ash]

All were between 16 and 24, average height, all thin, Caucasian. And all supposedly picked up hitchhiking. All were killed by obstruction to the airway. All found dead, arranged face down in a wooded area.

[Elena]

Come on.

[Ash]

There are not that many coincidences in life.

[Elena]

Everybody, let's be real.

[Ash]

Literally, same mo, same victim profile, same dispos like body disposal, same method of killing.

[Elena]

What the.

[Ash]

All in the same area within a span of years before Jeanette was killed, when Jeanette was killed and after Jeanette was killed.

[Elena]

I'm shook by the fact that they were. They just ignored all of this.

[Ash]

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, that, you know, all of these thin, young, attractive brunettes with the same hairstyle between a very similar.

[Elena]

Either. I think they weren't looking similarly to see if there was anything. Anything connected. I think all they were looking for.

[Ash]

Slap you across the face though. All they were looking have to look for that.

[Elena]

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 scene.

[Ash]

Which you're not gonna find.

[Elena]

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 year old girl's murder.

[Ash]

Meanwhile, look at all of that and.

[Elena]

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.

[Ash]

Tons.

[Elena]

None of them did that because it didn't work. Further bad narrative.

[Ash]

It's insane.

[Elena]

It was a preconceived idea of what they wanted to get across when Jeanette was killed and she was used for that purpose.

[Ash]

How wild is that though?

[Elena]

Now I want to get these guys on the same podcast.

[Ash]

I'm like, let's talk to them.

[Elena]

Jeanette's case, man. If you guys want to come on.

[Ash]

The show, guys, because you're right at any time.

[Elena]

That's very impressive that you guys were able.

[Ash]

Insanely impressive.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

And we love your books. We do have many of them in the office.

[Elena]

We do.

[Ash]

We've used them for like cryptids and shit before too.

[Elena]

Yeah, they're awesome.

[Ash]

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 Jeanette de Palma. 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 ammo.

[Elena]

Yeah. Which is even scarier.

[Ash]

Even scarier. I don't think that's the case 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, satan, Satan.

[Elena]

I agree. I think they are on to something huge now.

[Ash]

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 devil worship angle is still a sufficient explanation for Jeanette's death. And to them I say grow up. Yeah, do better. Seek help.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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, Dawn Schwartz told a reporter they were probably doing drugs and God. Wow. Despite a complete lack of evidence of drug use.

[Elena]

Literally no evidence to that.

[Ash]

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 some 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.

[Elena]

Wow, that's devastating.

[Ash]

Unreal. That that is the turn that that story took.

[Elena]

I just like. And I hate hearing it's probably never going to be solved because I refuse to believe that.

[Ash]

I refuse to believe that too. I think the work that the guys over at weird New Jersey did has some fucking legs.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

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 going to solve so many more crimes.

[Elena]

And if you can connect those things, connect a few of those, figure out who it could be and then trace backwards and see if you can connect her back to it.

[Ash]

It start pulling.

[Elena]

Gotta be a connection.

[Ash]

There's gotta be like, it's.

[Elena]

There's gotta be something.

[Ash]

I mean the thing that's awful about Jeanette's case is that they really, I mean, they lost vital records and it.

[Elena]

Looks like they half assed the autopsy.

[Ash]

They half assed the autopsy. I don't even know. I don't think anything was even discovered that's on her body, you know, But I really, really hope that they can do something. I know at one point, I think as recently as 2019, they wanted to test her clothing, but it was being left up to decision. And I don't know if they came to a decision about that.

[Elena]

Come on, guys. I know I know it's pushed to get it done.

[Ash]

Like, come on.

[Elena]

Like, look at the lady of the Dunes. Look at the Somerton man.

[Ash]

Well, those are the box. Those are the things that give you hope.

[Elena]

They've so old cases that they're never going to be solved. Yeah.

[Ash]

Even older than this case.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

I mean, the Golden State Killer. Obviously not older than this case. Like around.

[Elena]

But still, that was a massive one.

[Ash]

It's like, like, holy. That guy thought he was gonna live. Joseph James D'Angelo, whatever his name is, thought he was gonna go live the rest of his days. Boom. Interrupted. Let's interrupt the.

[Elena]

Yes.

[Ash]

Who took these people's lives away.

[Elena]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ash]

And let's. Because then it would. It would take away from the whole satanic panic and the cultist thing of it all. It would be like, nope, that's stupid.

[Elena]

Remove that part of the story.

[Ash]

Remove it. Yeah.

[Elena]

It can be what it is, what we've been saying it is, which is. And a distraction.

[Ash]

It's a monster of.

[Elena]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Oh, so sad.

[Elena]

Damn.

[Ash]

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?

[Elena]

Mark and Jesse, let's go.

[Ash]

Are you listening? Are you listening?

[Elena]

Love your books.

[Ash]

Oh, my God, I love you. Work foreign. If you like morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.