September 17, 2024 • 33 mins
In July of 1972, residents in the Tacony neighborhood of Philadelphia witnessed a violent abduction right outside their homes. Nobody called the police. The next morning, 17-year-old Dolores Della Penna was confirmed missing and her family was sick with worry. Law enforcement canvassed the area and interviewed more than 100 people as the city of brotherly love offered their support to the heartbroken Della Penna family. Ten days after the abduction, a gruesome discovery in the pine barrens of New Jersey would lead to a decades-long investigation and the horrifying reality of what happened to Dolores Della Penna.
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Method & Madness is researched, written, hosted, & produced by Dawn Cate
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____________________________________
Method & Madness is researched, written, hosted, & produced by Dawn Cate
Music by Tymur Khakimov from Pixabay
____________________________________
REACH OUT: methodandmadnesspod@gmail.com
CONNECT:
DIVE INTO MORE:
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com
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All sources are listed on the website, under each episode description.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This episode contains descriptions of violence that may be disturbing
to some listener. Discretion is advised. Let's dive in. Welcome
(00:39):
to Method and Madness. I'm your host, Dawn. This is
accused the murder of Dolores Delapenna. The phone at the
Delapenna home in northeast Philadelphia didn't ring that night without
fail Well, if seventeen year old Dolores were going to
(01:02):
be home past curfew, she'd call her parents and let
them know. One of them would then wait up. But
that night, July eleventh, nineteen seventy two, Ralph Delapenna sat
in the living room with the TV on. He waited
and waited, and never went to bed. Instead, Ralph and
(01:22):
his wife Helen found themselves sick with worry. Dolores had
plans to socialize with her friends Carol and Betty earlier
that evening. After making a few panicked phone calls, the
Dela Pennas confirmed that their daughter had in fact been
out with Carol and Betty that evening, and that Dolores
should have made it home by midnight. Earlier, around eight pm, Dolores, Carol,
(01:47):
and Betty hitchhiked to Carol's fiance's home in Kensington, a
neighborhood in Philadelphia. They spent a few hours there as planned,
and at approximately eleven pm, Delores and Carol left and
hopped on to the Route five trolley to head home.
The two parted ways after a short ride, as Dolores
(02:07):
needed to transfer to the Route fifty six trolley to
get to her neighborhood in the Taconi section of Philadelphia.
She said goodbye to Carol and groaned that she missed
her transfer and would have to wait another twenty minutes
for the next trolley. After confirming the evening's timeline with
their daughter's friends, Ralph and Helen, Della Penna had no
(02:30):
idea what happened to Dolores next, but by their calculations,
it was way after midnight. Too much time had passed,
and now their worry was turning into fear. They wondered
if the seventeen year old had decided to hitchhike rather
than wait the twenty minutes for her transfer, and if so,
(02:51):
did she encounter someone with nefarious intentions. More phone calls
were made, including one to the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority,
in hopes of finding out if Dolores had gotten onto
and successfully off of the final leg of her journey home,
(03:11):
described as a young white woman five foot three with
brown hair, wearing jeans, a halter top, and a maroon jacket.
A trolley motorman confirmed that someone matching Dolores's description successfully
boarded her trolley car home and got off at her
stop at Frankfort and Torres del Avenues. It was about
(03:33):
eleven fifty when the trolley reached Dolores's neighborhood. Dolores got
off the trolley and would have walked the three blocks
to her house at four nine zero two Rawl Street,
but something happened during that short walk, and Dolores never
made it to her front door. Now, her panicked parents
feared the worst. The police were called and a search
(03:56):
for Dolores was under way. Her friends had confers affirmed
her whereabouts from the night before. Joseph Kilcoin, the motorman,
confirmed the teen had gotten off the forty cent trolley
in her neighborhood. What had happened in the three blocks
between the trolley stop and the Delapenna home As the
neighborhood was canvassed, witnesses reported hearing screams around midnight. Nobody
(04:22):
had thought much of it at the time. It was
summer in a safe, blue collar neighborhood and kids were
always out playing and making a racket. But now that scream,
along with the missing seventeen year old, was cause for alarm.
The police shared the Delapenna's fear that Dolores may have
been abducted on her walk home. The nightmare got worse
(04:44):
as the sun rose. On Rawl Street, twenty five feet
from the Delapenna home, near the maple tree across the street,
a maroon jacket was found, the one that Dolores had
worn the night before. Near By, a cross and a crucifix,
gifts Dolores had received at her high school graduation were found,
(05:05):
and a key that opened the lock to the Delapenna's
back door was on the ground. In three separate areas
along the street were bloodstains. Something awful had happened on
Rawl Street. Forty seven year old Ralph Delapenna had been
up waiting for his daughter to come home, and he
(05:26):
hadn't heard or seen a thing. Someone had, though a
witness statement came in to the astonishment of Dolores's family,
and it angered a community. It raised questions about the
bystander effect, a theory that was first proposed in nineteen
sixty four when The New York Times reported that twenty
(05:48):
eight year old Queen's resident Kitty Genevese, had been murdered
outside of her apartment building and that thirty eight neighbors
heard it happening but didn't call the authorities. That theory
has since been scrutinized, as it was eventually discovered that
the New York Times article was full of errors. But
(06:09):
in the case of Dolores Dela Penna, police received a
chilling statement from one of her neighbors about what they
witnessed on the night that the seventeen year old disappeared. Quote.
I heard somebody faintly saying help me. I also noticed
a loud motor running, so I looked outside through my
(06:29):
kitchen window. I saw a man with bushy hair in
the middle of the street. He was trying to pick
something up. I thought it was a bundle. Then I
saw the girl's hair as he moved his arm. She
wasn't struggling, she was inert. He was trying to put
her in the back seat of a parked car. Two
(06:50):
other neighbors reported witnessing the same thing, a youth with
bushy hair dragging a girl from the street at twelve
ten a m. And then placing her limp body in
a dark colored car with a high rear bumper and
four rear red lights. The vehicle then took off. None
of the witnesses had called the police. Inside the Delapenna home,
(07:19):
a candle was lit in hopes that Dolores would be
found and returned home safely. Delores Marie Delapenna was born
on December thirteenth, nineteen fifty four, to Helen and Ralph.
She lived with her parents and big brother, Ralph Junior,
on Rall Street in the Daconi section of northeast Philadelphia.
(07:40):
Delores attended Saint Hubert's, an all girls Catholic high school,
and graduated in June of nineteen seventy two. That summer,
her plans were to rent a bungalow at the Jersey
Shore in Wildwood with three of her friends. The rent
was paid for by her parents as a gift for
graduating with honors. On the radio, you couldn't escape the
(08:04):
sounds of Bill Withers Lean on Me. The Godfather was
the number one movie in America for the fourth month
in a row. Nixon sat in the Oval office, and
the Vietnam War was in a crucial phase. And in
a modest home and a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia,
families were barbecuing and kids were running through sprinklers. Dolores,
(08:28):
who was described as family oriented and quiet, always made
time to help at at home, assisting her parents with
chores around the house, while also making time for a
social life with friends. After her graduation, Dolores joined her
family on vacation to Orlando, where they visited Walt Disney
World for ten days. They headed to Florida on July first,
(08:52):
and returned on Monday, July tenth. The following morning, Delares
got up early and helped her mother do laundry and
run errands. She played some songs on the family's organ,
painted her nails dark red, and stopped at the corner
store for some cigarettes. That night, she made plans with
friends Betty and Carol, and never returned home. Now imagining
(09:17):
the absolute worst, Dolores's family leaned on their priest father,
Arthur Centrella. Their faith was keeping them going. Each day
that passed, the family prayed for Dolores's safe return. Each
night was another heartbreaking reminder of the night she hadn't
come home. The past year had been full of joyful events.
(09:41):
Ralph Junior had gotten married, Dolores graduated with honors, and
would spend the summer at the beach with friends before
heading off to work. In the fall. There was the
trip to Disney World, which at the time was still
in its infancy, But now there was an empty chair
at the dinner table. With the news use of the
abductions spreading through the Philadelphia area, concerned locals offered their
(10:05):
support to the Delapenna family. One resident, Kathleen Carter, penned
an open letter to the witnesses to the abduction. The
letter was published in the Philadelphia Daily News and said,
quote to those who watched Miss Delapenna struggling with her
abductor and did not call the police, It's too bad
(10:25):
when people are so afraid that they fail to do
the right thing. I'm wondering if it happened to their daughter,
would they want people to just look out the window
and do nothing? How can you live with yourselves? Kathleen's
letter sparks an interesting discussion on ambiguity recently, on this podcast,
(10:46):
I covered the case of two women, Fong Hugh Tongue
and Lau Gay Hay, who were murdered in a mall
in broad daylight in Hong Kong while witnesses scurried away
nobody offering help. In that case, shoppers and mall employees
had assessed the situation were concerned for their own safety.
They ran away or locked themselves inside stores as the
(11:09):
man wielding the knife relentlessly stabbed two unsuspecting shoppers. But
there's a difference between being a hero intervening by facing
an assailant and potentially putting yourself in danger. That's a
far cry from making a call to the police that
you just watched a violent abduction from your living room window.
(11:31):
What makes a witness to a violent crime decide to
do nothing is fear a factor even when there's no
immediate danger to the witness. What prevents so on from
picking up the phone and calling for help. Police had
little information to go on a car description, a suspect description,
(11:51):
but the crime happened in the dark and was witnessed
from a distance, so there were factors that made it
difficult to track down The seventeen year old. Investigators were
canvassing the Filaria attempting to locate Delores, the car, the suspect.
They interviewed family members, friends, witnesses, but didn't have any
solid leads. Ralph Junior told reporters at the time, quote
(12:15):
the thing my parents miss most of all is the
noise she used to make. She played the record player
and run around the house. She was always doing something.
He went on to say, quote, we're afraid to pick
up the phone one day and hear there's no hope.
That phone call finally came ten days after Dolores was
(12:35):
abducted outside of her home, and the news was far
worse than the family could possibly imagine. There was a
moss covered clearing with small pine shrubs about eighty feet
(12:55):
from Stephen Saltis's summer home in Jackson Township, New Jersey,
near the pine barrens. As Stephen walked his dog on
July twenty second, nineteen seventy two, he smelled a strange
odor in the area and saw what he thought were
pieces of a doll that someone had discarded. He got
closer and the realization hit what he was looking at
(13:17):
were human arms. Stephen hurried home clutching his heart and
told his wife and son to stay away from the
clearing as he phoned the police. They arrived within ten minutes.
It was in that clearing where an unclothed torso was discovered,
about twenty five feet from the severed arms. The remains
(13:37):
were taken to the Ocean County morgue. The local police
worked with Alfred Keds, the Ocean County medical examiner, who
estimated that the victim's head had been severed and that
they'd been dead for two to four weeks. Jackson Township
resident David Van Arsdale found it unbelievable. He expressed his
(13:58):
surprise to reporters, saying that the clearing where the remains
were found was well lit by a nearby street lamp
and that neighbors were often out there taking walks. How
had the remains gone undiscovered for so long? Theme determined
that the victim was a female, most likely in her twenties,
and that she'd been murdered. Her fingertips had been shaven off,
(14:21):
all ten of them to prevent her identification. Shortly after
the discovery, authorities in New Jersey began working with agencies
in Philadelphia. There was a teenager missing from Philly, and
now the remains of a female discovered in New Jersey.
The Ocean County Medical Examiner's office worked with Philadelphia Medical
(14:42):
Examiner Marvin Arenson, who was certain that the remains were
of Dolores Delapenna. She was positively identified on July twenty
fourth through X rays. Months before Dolores Delapenna was abducted,
she'd been a patient at Nazareth Hospital, where she was
treated for back problem. While there, X rays were taken,
(15:03):
which were compared to X rays taken of the victim's spine.
It was a match. The victim's fingernails were painted dark red,
the same color that Dolores had used hours before she
was taken. Authorities were unable to determine a cause of death,
but felt confident that would come once the rest of
(15:23):
her remains were found. In the meantime, the family needed
to be contacted. The authorities called the Delapenna's priest, father Centrella,
was delegated the heart wrenching task of notifying Dolores's family
of the news. On Monday, July twenty fourth, the priest
arrived at the Delapenna home and informed Ralph At five
(15:45):
p m that the remains of his daughter were believed
to be found in New Jersey. When Ralph Junior came
by at five point thirty, father Centrella told him too.
The priest then waited for the family's doctor to arrive
before he informed Helen. She was asleep in her bedroom
and woke up to learn that her only daughter had
(16:06):
been murdered. After the doctor arrived, all three family members
were given sedatives. They were spared the gruesome details of
how their loved one was found seven miles away from
the clearing in Jackson Township. A week after the discovery
of the torso and arms, a senior citizen out for
a walk in a wooded area in Manchester made another discovery.
(16:30):
It was a human leg. When the police arrived, they
found a second leg. The toenails were painted a dark red.
More remains had been found of Dolorous Dela Penna, and
it was clear to the medical examiners that a knife
had been used to dismember her. Friends of hers continued
to be questioned from Philadelphia to Wildwood, New Jersey. Interviews
(16:54):
were conducted with various persons of interest, and polygraph exams
were administered, but police had yet to fire. They're smoking gun.
To this day, Dolores's head has never been found. Let's
take a break. Law enforcement announced that the evidence showed
(17:31):
that after Dolores's abduction, she was taken to a second
location and killed, but they didn't know if she was
killed in Philly or in New Jersey. Her killer or
killers then dismembered her and scattered her remains in different locations,
most likely tossing some of her remains from a moving vehicle.
But why. More than one hundred and fifty people were
(17:53):
questioned about the circumstances surrounding Delores's abduction and subsequent murder,
and the police reported that of the one fifty, several
people had failed light detector tests and some of Dolores's
friends seemed to know more than they would admit. For
the next several years, after Dolores's remains were found, police
continued to hunt down those responsible for her murder. There
(18:16):
were rewards offered for any information that would lead to
an arrest. Rewards were increased and the public was urged
to come forward with any information. The Delapennas moved to
a new home in the Holmesburg neighborhood of Philadelphia. They
fixed up one of the bedrooms to look identical to
the one Dolores had in their Tecone home. They honored
(18:36):
her birthdays by visiting her gravesite at Resurrection Cemetery in Binsalem, Pennsylvania.
Helen Delapenna sometimes slept in her daughter's bed, seeking comfort
and praying for answers. On January fifth, nineteen seventy nine,
an article in the Philadelphia News began the arrest of
(18:58):
a Kensington man on murder charges may have provided Philadelphia
police with the best lead they've ever had in solving
the nineteen seventy two decapitation murder of Dolores Delapenna. A
day earlier, a man named James Morrow, aged thirty one,
was admitted to Park View Hospital in Philadelphia. He had
(19:20):
suffered several gunshot wounds from a forty five caliber revolver,
including to his face and back. He was still conscious
as he lie in a hospital bed fighting for his life.
James told the responding police officers that the man who
shot him, John Egan, was an old acquaintance, and that
the two had gone out for a drive that night.
(19:43):
They ended up in a parking lot near Ed's steakhouse,
when James claimed that John pulled out a gun and
began talking about Dolores Delapenna. He told James, I am
in touch with Dolores and she is telling me what
to do. John then began fi wearing shots at James,
shouting this is for Dolores. James died at the hospital
(20:06):
later that night, and John Egan was arrested at his home.
The police told reporters that John Egan had been one
of the more than one hundred people interviewed nearly seven
years earlier about the murder of Dolores. At that time,
he had been given a lie detector test and passed.
He was later in prison with the victim, James Morrow,
both of them serving time for retail theft. Now arrested
(20:31):
for murder, Egan said there were others involved in the
killing of Dolores Delapenna. As police investigated his claims, they
moved forward cautiously, given that Egan had a history of
mental illness and irrational behaviour and he wasn't necessarily considered
a reliable narrator. Meanwhile, the news of the shooting death
(20:52):
made its way to the Delapenna home via the media,
where Helen and Ralph once again felt the torment caused
by their daughter's murder. Ralph told reporters, quote, who is
egan to avenge my daughter's death? Why Dolores's name? It
just doesn't make sense. Both Ralph and Helen were very
(21:13):
shaken up by the news and needed to be treated
by their physician, as they were too upset to even
report to work. It wasn't until after they'd heard the
news the detectives finally reached out to provide context and information.
Ralph was very vocal in his belief that John Egan
must have known something. Why else would he bring up
(21:33):
Dolores's murder Seven years after the fact. Egan was held
without bail and later deemed unfit to stand trial. He
was committed to Holmesburg Prisons psychiatric unit. At the time,
police said they were unable to link Egan's victim, James Morrow,
to the murder of Dolores Delapenna. There was a break
(22:01):
in the case in nineteen ninety four, when a grand
jury was convened to listen to testimony by a witness
who said he had information about Dolores's murder. The Delapennas
waited for the good news that justice may soon be coming,
that answers may be just around the corner. But another
couple of years passed with little movement, and in July
(22:23):
of nineteen ninety six, authorities identified nine men who they
believed were involved with the murder of Dolores. Of the
nine suspects, they said two were in prison, four were dead,
and three were residing in Philadelphia or Burke's County, Pennsylvania.
After twenty four years, Dolores's family finally saw a glimmer
(22:45):
of hope as reporters set up camp outside their home.
It was believed that at any time, at any moment,
District Attorney Lynn Abraham would announce arrest warrants, and the
press was eager to get Helen and Ralph's reactions, But
the announcement never came. The DA said there was insufficient
evidence for any arrests and that the key witness who
(23:08):
had provided a testimony to a grand jury was a
prison inmate and it was unlikely that information based on
his word alone would lead to any convictions. Heartbroke in
once again. Ralph and Helen Delapenna were back at square one,
reliving their pain and their grief as their hope of
justice was once again squashed. They told reporters they were
(23:32):
tired and now they wanted to know what the police knew.
They needed to make sense of it all. Dolores's parents
insisted on hearing all of the details. What the inmate
had told the grand jury, what the police knew about
all nine people involved, how Dolores had been caught up
(23:52):
in all of it, and what had happened to her,
what had she endured. Helen Delapenna told her, I needed
to know why she was killed? What was the secret?
I couldn't be more hurt than I already was. Helen
and Ralph were told twenty four years after the fact,
(24:12):
what had happened to their seventeen year old daughter. Much
of the information gathered by law enforcements started with that
inmate in Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, and for a few
years that information was meticulously combed through and verified by investigators.
The inmate informed a guard that back in nineteen seventy two,
(24:32):
when he was just sixteen years old, he went to
a garage on Jasper Street in the Kensington neighborhood of Philly.
Jasper Street is a one way road of row houses
and garages for rent. The young man was there to
drop off drugs in a prearranged deal late at night.
When he peaked inside the garage, he saw a young
(24:53):
woman gagged and bound to an old car seat. It
was Dolores Delapenna, he watched from outside. He said Dolores's
hands were tied behind her back and she had both
tears and blood streaming down her face. Standing around her
were four drug dealers. They were yelling, demanding money, and
(25:14):
beating her. He watched as one of the drug dealers
stabbed Dolores in the arm with a machete. The witness
feared for his own safety and left the garage without
contacting the police, but he had information that cleared up
a big question everyone's minds, why Dolores. Fast forward to
(25:35):
nineteen ninety six. After police had combed through all their tips, leads,
and sources, they informed the Dela Penna's what they knew.
Starting with the summer of nineteen seventy two, although Dolores
had originally planned on renting a bungalow with a few
friends in wild Wood that summer, two of them had
backed out and two acquaintances had taken their place. Those
(25:58):
girls along with their boyfriend, had been involved in the
local drug scene, and some reports say there was tension,
which was part of the reason Dolores chose to go
with her family to Disney World to escape for a
little while. While the Dela Pennas were in Florida, there
was a dispute in Wildwood regarding stolen drugs. It's been
(26:21):
reported that the drug dealers that were conducting business with
the friends in Wildwood were members of a motorcycle gang.
Some of those members had become incensed about a cache
of drugs that had gone missing, and there was a confrontation.
Two hundred dollars worth of drugs were stolen, the equivalent
of which would be about fifteen hundred dollars in twenty
(26:42):
twenty four. Out of fear, the Wildwood roommates pointed the
blame at Dolores, telling the drug dealers that she was
responsible for the theft, but it wasn't true. It was
a lie told out of fear, a lie that traveled
across state lines and into Pennsylvany, where a seventeen year
old fresh off of a trip to the Happiest place
(27:04):
on Earth was met with a horrifying ordeal. After extensive
conversations with the witness the prison inmate, the police were
led to another witness, also a prisoner. The second witness
filled in more blanks and told the police that back
in nineteen eighty one, he had heard about the murder
of Dolores from a fellow drug dealer. What he was
(27:27):
told is as follows. Two men members of the gang
were told that Dolores was the one who had stolen
the drugs. They knew precisely when she would be home
from vacation and had parked on her street the night
of July eleventh. They waited for Dolores to show up
to create a ruse, and as not to raise suspicion,
(27:48):
they opened the hood of their car to make it
look like they were doing a repair. When Dolores approached
after getting off the trolley, she was beaten, gagged, abducted,
and placed into the case hid napper's car. The men
then drove to a pre arranged destination, a garage in
the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. The intent was to hold
(28:10):
Dolores for ransom. Dolores, while bound and defenseless, begged for
her life and insisted she hadn't stolen any drugs. While
four men stood around her berating her. She was called
a bitch and told that she was going to pay.
While being tortured mentally and physically, sexually assaulted and screamed at,
(28:34):
Dolores went in and out of consciousness. No ransom request
was ever made, and while in the garage sometime in
the night, one of the men cut off Delores's head
with a machete. They wrapped her head in plastic and
battery wire and put her remains in the car. From
(28:54):
the garage, they drove fifteen miles until they got to
Dinosaur Lake, a swampy park in Ben Salem, where they
allegedly dropped Dolores's head in the lake. The area was
later searched, but her head wasn't found. After leaving Dinosaur Lake,
the killers drove to the Tecconi Pamaira Bridge, one of
the bridges that connect Philadelphia to New Jersey. There, the
(29:18):
rest of Dolores's body was dismembered with a machete and
scattered in two areas of the Garden State. Both witnesses,
as well as others interviewed by police, all corroborated that
Dolores had been falsely accused of the theft, and investigators
came to the same conclusion even the killers had discovered
(29:39):
after the murder that Dolores was not to blame. Instead
of spending a summer in the sun retelling her highlights
of her recent family trip to Disney, instead of starting
a new chapter of her life as an X ray
technician and going on to start a family, Dolores de
la Penna was accused of theft by her own friends,
(30:01):
and as a result, was mercilessly tortured and murdered at
the age of seventeen. After the break in the case
in the mid nineties, the Delapennas had received the gruesome
details as to what happened to Dolores and why falsely accused, abducted, tortured,
viciously murdered, dismembered and discarded. But the family would never
(30:23):
live to see the day where any resolution took place.
They would never sit in a courtroom and face their
daughter's murderers. They'd never go to sleep at night with
any sense of relief that the men responsible were behind bars,
because despite what witnesses knew and despite what investigators had uncovered,
no arrests were ever made for the murder of Dolores Delapenna.
(30:46):
The police had identified her killers, nine of them. The
district attorney said the case lacked sufficient evidence for indictments,
and Dolores's case is still unsolved to this day. Throughout
the investigation, more than five hundred people were questioned in
several states. Rewards were offered, and increased witnesses to the
(31:08):
crime named the killers. The man who loaned his car
to the murderers that night was identified. The police verified
the information, they put together a timeline. So it begs
the question what went wrong here? How can the police
not only know the nine names of the people involved,
but also know their whereabouts, know which of them were
(31:29):
still alive and which ones were in prison, but not
a single arrest can be made. Investigators who'd retired from
the case expressed their disbelief and emphasized how Dolores's case
had enough information to be solved and closed. In nineteen
ninety seven, Helen Delapenna told the Philadelphia Inquirer quote, I
(31:51):
was forty five when this happened. Now I'm seventy What
are they waiting for? Are they waiting until I'm dead?
I want to know before I close my eyes. Ralph
Dela Penna Senior passed away in two thousand and four
at the age of seventy nine. His wife, Helen passed
away in twenty fifteen at the age of eighty eight.
(32:16):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Method and Madness.
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(32:37):
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(32:57):
four one Boa
This episode contains descriptions of violence that may be disturbing
to some listener. Discretion is advised. Let's dive in. Welcome
(00:39):
to Method and Madness. I'm your host, Dawn. This is
accused the murder of Dolores Delapenna. The phone at the
Delapenna home in northeast Philadelphia didn't ring that night without
fail Well, if seventeen year old Dolores were going to
(01:02):
be home past curfew, she'd call her parents and let
them know. One of them would then wait up. But
that night, July eleventh, nineteen seventy two, Ralph Delapenna sat
in the living room with the TV on. He waited
and waited, and never went to bed. Instead, Ralph and
(01:22):
his wife Helen found themselves sick with worry. Dolores had
plans to socialize with her friends Carol and Betty earlier
that evening. After making a few panicked phone calls, the
Dela Pennas confirmed that their daughter had in fact been
out with Carol and Betty that evening, and that Dolores
should have made it home by midnight. Earlier, around eight pm, Dolores, Carol,
(01:47):
and Betty hitchhiked to Carol's fiance's home in Kensington, a
neighborhood in Philadelphia. They spent a few hours there as planned,
and at approximately eleven pm, Delores and Carol left and
hopped on to the Route five trolley to head home.
The two parted ways after a short ride, as Dolores
(02:07):
needed to transfer to the Route fifty six trolley to
get to her neighborhood in the Taconi section of Philadelphia.
She said goodbye to Carol and groaned that she missed
her transfer and would have to wait another twenty minutes
for the next trolley. After confirming the evening's timeline with
their daughter's friends, Ralph and Helen, Della Penna had no
(02:30):
idea what happened to Dolores next, but by their calculations,
it was way after midnight. Too much time had passed,
and now their worry was turning into fear. They wondered
if the seventeen year old had decided to hitchhike rather
than wait the twenty minutes for her transfer, and if so,
(02:51):
did she encounter someone with nefarious intentions. More phone calls
were made, including one to the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority,
in hopes of finding out if Dolores had gotten onto
and successfully off of the final leg of her journey home,
(03:11):
described as a young white woman five foot three with
brown hair, wearing jeans, a halter top, and a maroon jacket.
A trolley motorman confirmed that someone matching Dolores's description successfully
boarded her trolley car home and got off at her
stop at Frankfort and Torres del Avenues. It was about
(03:33):
eleven fifty when the trolley reached Dolores's neighborhood. Dolores got
off the trolley and would have walked the three blocks
to her house at four nine zero two Rawl Street,
but something happened during that short walk, and Dolores never
made it to her front door. Now, her panicked parents
feared the worst. The police were called and a search
(03:56):
for Dolores was under way. Her friends had confers affirmed
her whereabouts from the night before. Joseph Kilcoin, the motorman,
confirmed the teen had gotten off the forty cent trolley
in her neighborhood. What had happened in the three blocks
between the trolley stop and the Delapenna home As the
neighborhood was canvassed, witnesses reported hearing screams around midnight. Nobody
(04:22):
had thought much of it at the time. It was
summer in a safe, blue collar neighborhood and kids were
always out playing and making a racket. But now that scream,
along with the missing seventeen year old, was cause for alarm.
The police shared the Delapenna's fear that Dolores may have
been abducted on her walk home. The nightmare got worse
(04:44):
as the sun rose. On Rawl Street, twenty five feet
from the Delapenna home, near the maple tree across the street,
a maroon jacket was found, the one that Dolores had
worn the night before. Near By, a cross and a crucifix,
gifts Dolores had received at her high school graduation were found,
(05:05):
and a key that opened the lock to the Delapenna's
back door was on the ground. In three separate areas
along the street were bloodstains. Something awful had happened on
Rawl Street. Forty seven year old Ralph Delapenna had been
up waiting for his daughter to come home, and he
(05:26):
hadn't heard or seen a thing. Someone had, though a
witness statement came in to the astonishment of Dolores's family,
and it angered a community. It raised questions about the
bystander effect, a theory that was first proposed in nineteen
sixty four when The New York Times reported that twenty
(05:48):
eight year old Queen's resident Kitty Genevese, had been murdered
outside of her apartment building and that thirty eight neighbors
heard it happening but didn't call the authorities. That theory
has since been scrutinized, as it was eventually discovered that
the New York Times article was full of errors. But
(06:09):
in the case of Dolores Dela Penna, police received a
chilling statement from one of her neighbors about what they
witnessed on the night that the seventeen year old disappeared. Quote.
I heard somebody faintly saying help me. I also noticed
a loud motor running, so I looked outside through my
(06:29):
kitchen window. I saw a man with bushy hair in
the middle of the street. He was trying to pick
something up. I thought it was a bundle. Then I
saw the girl's hair as he moved his arm. She
wasn't struggling, she was inert. He was trying to put
her in the back seat of a parked car. Two
(06:50):
other neighbors reported witnessing the same thing, a youth with
bushy hair dragging a girl from the street at twelve
ten a m. And then placing her limp body in
a dark colored car with a high rear bumper and
four rear red lights. The vehicle then took off. None
of the witnesses had called the police. Inside the Delapenna home,
(07:19):
a candle was lit in hopes that Dolores would be
found and returned home safely. Delores Marie Delapenna was born
on December thirteenth, nineteen fifty four, to Helen and Ralph.
She lived with her parents and big brother, Ralph Junior,
on Rall Street in the Daconi section of northeast Philadelphia.
(07:40):
Delores attended Saint Hubert's, an all girls Catholic high school,
and graduated in June of nineteen seventy two. That summer,
her plans were to rent a bungalow at the Jersey
Shore in Wildwood with three of her friends. The rent
was paid for by her parents as a gift for
graduating with honors. On the radio, you couldn't escape the
(08:04):
sounds of Bill Withers Lean on Me. The Godfather was
the number one movie in America for the fourth month
in a row. Nixon sat in the Oval office, and
the Vietnam War was in a crucial phase. And in
a modest home and a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia,
families were barbecuing and kids were running through sprinklers. Dolores,
(08:28):
who was described as family oriented and quiet, always made
time to help at at home, assisting her parents with
chores around the house, while also making time for a
social life with friends. After her graduation, Dolores joined her
family on vacation to Orlando, where they visited Walt Disney
World for ten days. They headed to Florida on July first,
(08:52):
and returned on Monday, July tenth. The following morning, Delares
got up early and helped her mother do laundry and
run errands. She played some songs on the family's organ,
painted her nails dark red, and stopped at the corner
store for some cigarettes. That night, she made plans with
friends Betty and Carol, and never returned home. Now imagining
(09:17):
the absolute worst, Dolores's family leaned on their priest father,
Arthur Centrella. Their faith was keeping them going. Each day
that passed, the family prayed for Dolores's safe return. Each
night was another heartbreaking reminder of the night she hadn't
come home. The past year had been full of joyful events.
(09:41):
Ralph Junior had gotten married, Dolores graduated with honors, and
would spend the summer at the beach with friends before
heading off to work. In the fall. There was the
trip to Disney World, which at the time was still
in its infancy, But now there was an empty chair
at the dinner table. With the news use of the
abductions spreading through the Philadelphia area, concerned locals offered their
(10:05):
support to the Delapenna family. One resident, Kathleen Carter, penned
an open letter to the witnesses to the abduction. The
letter was published in the Philadelphia Daily News and said,
quote to those who watched Miss Delapenna struggling with her
abductor and did not call the police, It's too bad
(10:25):
when people are so afraid that they fail to do
the right thing. I'm wondering if it happened to their daughter,
would they want people to just look out the window
and do nothing? How can you live with yourselves? Kathleen's
letter sparks an interesting discussion on ambiguity recently, on this podcast,
(10:46):
I covered the case of two women, Fong Hugh Tongue
and Lau Gay Hay, who were murdered in a mall
in broad daylight in Hong Kong while witnesses scurried away
nobody offering help. In that case, shoppers and mall employees
had assessed the situation were concerned for their own safety.
They ran away or locked themselves inside stores as the
(11:09):
man wielding the knife relentlessly stabbed two unsuspecting shoppers. But
there's a difference between being a hero intervening by facing
an assailant and potentially putting yourself in danger. That's a
far cry from making a call to the police that
you just watched a violent abduction from your living room window.
(11:31):
What makes a witness to a violent crime decide to
do nothing is fear a factor even when there's no
immediate danger to the witness. What prevents so on from
picking up the phone and calling for help. Police had
little information to go on a car description, a suspect description,
(11:51):
but the crime happened in the dark and was witnessed
from a distance, so there were factors that made it
difficult to track down The seventeen year old. Investigators were
canvassing the Filaria attempting to locate Delores, the car, the suspect.
They interviewed family members, friends, witnesses, but didn't have any
solid leads. Ralph Junior told reporters at the time, quote
(12:15):
the thing my parents miss most of all is the
noise she used to make. She played the record player
and run around the house. She was always doing something.
He went on to say, quote, we're afraid to pick
up the phone one day and hear there's no hope.
That phone call finally came ten days after Dolores was
(12:35):
abducted outside of her home, and the news was far
worse than the family could possibly imagine. There was a
moss covered clearing with small pine shrubs about eighty feet
(12:55):
from Stephen Saltis's summer home in Jackson Township, New Jersey,
near the pine barrens. As Stephen walked his dog on
July twenty second, nineteen seventy two, he smelled a strange
odor in the area and saw what he thought were
pieces of a doll that someone had discarded. He got
closer and the realization hit what he was looking at
(13:17):
were human arms. Stephen hurried home clutching his heart and
told his wife and son to stay away from the
clearing as he phoned the police. They arrived within ten minutes.
It was in that clearing where an unclothed torso was discovered,
about twenty five feet from the severed arms. The remains
(13:37):
were taken to the Ocean County morgue. The local police
worked with Alfred Keds, the Ocean County medical examiner, who
estimated that the victim's head had been severed and that
they'd been dead for two to four weeks. Jackson Township
resident David Van Arsdale found it unbelievable. He expressed his
(13:58):
surprise to reporters, saying that the clearing where the remains
were found was well lit by a nearby street lamp
and that neighbors were often out there taking walks. How
had the remains gone undiscovered for so long? Theme determined
that the victim was a female, most likely in her twenties,
and that she'd been murdered. Her fingertips had been shaven off,
(14:21):
all ten of them to prevent her identification. Shortly after
the discovery, authorities in New Jersey began working with agencies
in Philadelphia. There was a teenager missing from Philly, and
now the remains of a female discovered in New Jersey.
The Ocean County Medical Examiner's office worked with Philadelphia Medical
(14:42):
Examiner Marvin Arenson, who was certain that the remains were
of Dolores Delapenna. She was positively identified on July twenty
fourth through X rays. Months before Dolores Delapenna was abducted,
she'd been a patient at Nazareth Hospital, where she was
treated for back problem. While there, X rays were taken,
(15:03):
which were compared to X rays taken of the victim's spine.
It was a match. The victim's fingernails were painted dark red,
the same color that Dolores had used hours before she
was taken. Authorities were unable to determine a cause of death,
but felt confident that would come once the rest of
(15:23):
her remains were found. In the meantime, the family needed
to be contacted. The authorities called the Delapenna's priest, father Centrella,
was delegated the heart wrenching task of notifying Dolores's family
of the news. On Monday, July twenty fourth, the priest
arrived at the Delapenna home and informed Ralph At five
(15:45):
p m that the remains of his daughter were believed
to be found in New Jersey. When Ralph Junior came
by at five point thirty, father Centrella told him too.
The priest then waited for the family's doctor to arrive
before he informed Helen. She was asleep in her bedroom
and woke up to learn that her only daughter had
(16:06):
been murdered. After the doctor arrived, all three family members
were given sedatives. They were spared the gruesome details of
how their loved one was found seven miles away from
the clearing in Jackson Township. A week after the discovery
of the torso and arms, a senior citizen out for
a walk in a wooded area in Manchester made another discovery.
(16:30):
It was a human leg. When the police arrived, they
found a second leg. The toenails were painted a dark red.
More remains had been found of Dolorous Dela Penna, and
it was clear to the medical examiners that a knife
had been used to dismember her. Friends of hers continued
to be questioned from Philadelphia to Wildwood, New Jersey. Interviews
(16:54):
were conducted with various persons of interest, and polygraph exams
were administered, but police had yet to fire. They're smoking gun.
To this day, Dolores's head has never been found. Let's
take a break. Law enforcement announced that the evidence showed
(17:31):
that after Dolores's abduction, she was taken to a second
location and killed, but they didn't know if she was
killed in Philly or in New Jersey. Her killer or
killers then dismembered her and scattered her remains in different locations,
most likely tossing some of her remains from a moving vehicle.
But why. More than one hundred and fifty people were
(17:53):
questioned about the circumstances surrounding Delores's abduction and subsequent murder,
and the police reported that of the one fifty, several
people had failed light detector tests and some of Dolores's
friends seemed to know more than they would admit. For
the next several years, after Dolores's remains were found, police
continued to hunt down those responsible for her murder. There
(18:16):
were rewards offered for any information that would lead to
an arrest. Rewards were increased and the public was urged
to come forward with any information. The Delapennas moved to
a new home in the Holmesburg neighborhood of Philadelphia. They
fixed up one of the bedrooms to look identical to
the one Dolores had in their Tecone home. They honored
(18:36):
her birthdays by visiting her gravesite at Resurrection Cemetery in Binsalem, Pennsylvania.
Helen Delapenna sometimes slept in her daughter's bed, seeking comfort
and praying for answers. On January fifth, nineteen seventy nine,
an article in the Philadelphia News began the arrest of
(18:58):
a Kensington man on murder charges may have provided Philadelphia
police with the best lead they've ever had in solving
the nineteen seventy two decapitation murder of Dolores Delapenna. A
day earlier, a man named James Morrow, aged thirty one,
was admitted to Park View Hospital in Philadelphia. He had
(19:20):
suffered several gunshot wounds from a forty five caliber revolver,
including to his face and back. He was still conscious
as he lie in a hospital bed fighting for his life.
James told the responding police officers that the man who
shot him, John Egan, was an old acquaintance, and that
the two had gone out for a drive that night.
(19:43):
They ended up in a parking lot near Ed's steakhouse,
when James claimed that John pulled out a gun and
began talking about Dolores Delapenna. He told James, I am
in touch with Dolores and she is telling me what
to do. John then began fi wearing shots at James,
shouting this is for Dolores. James died at the hospital
(20:06):
later that night, and John Egan was arrested at his home.
The police told reporters that John Egan had been one
of the more than one hundred people interviewed nearly seven
years earlier about the murder of Dolores. At that time,
he had been given a lie detector test and passed.
He was later in prison with the victim, James Morrow,
both of them serving time for retail theft. Now arrested
(20:31):
for murder, Egan said there were others involved in the
killing of Dolores Delapenna. As police investigated his claims, they
moved forward cautiously, given that Egan had a history of
mental illness and irrational behaviour and he wasn't necessarily considered
a reliable narrator. Meanwhile, the news of the shooting death
(20:52):
made its way to the Delapenna home via the media,
where Helen and Ralph once again felt the torment caused
by their daughter's murder. Ralph told reporters, quote, who is
egan to avenge my daughter's death? Why Dolores's name? It
just doesn't make sense. Both Ralph and Helen were very
(21:13):
shaken up by the news and needed to be treated
by their physician, as they were too upset to even
report to work. It wasn't until after they'd heard the
news the detectives finally reached out to provide context and information.
Ralph was very vocal in his belief that John Egan
must have known something. Why else would he bring up
(21:33):
Dolores's murder Seven years after the fact. Egan was held
without bail and later deemed unfit to stand trial. He
was committed to Holmesburg Prisons psychiatric unit. At the time,
police said they were unable to link Egan's victim, James Morrow,
to the murder of Dolores Delapenna. There was a break
(22:01):
in the case in nineteen ninety four, when a grand
jury was convened to listen to testimony by a witness
who said he had information about Dolores's murder. The Delapennas
waited for the good news that justice may soon be coming,
that answers may be just around the corner. But another
couple of years passed with little movement, and in July
(22:23):
of nineteen ninety six, authorities identified nine men who they
believed were involved with the murder of Dolores. Of the
nine suspects, they said two were in prison, four were dead,
and three were residing in Philadelphia or Burke's County, Pennsylvania.
After twenty four years, Dolores's family finally saw a glimmer
(22:45):
of hope as reporters set up camp outside their home.
It was believed that at any time, at any moment,
District Attorney Lynn Abraham would announce arrest warrants, and the
press was eager to get Helen and Ralph's reactions, But
the announcement never came. The DA said there was insufficient
evidence for any arrests and that the key witness who
(23:08):
had provided a testimony to a grand jury was a
prison inmate and it was unlikely that information based on
his word alone would lead to any convictions. Heartbroke in
once again. Ralph and Helen Delapenna were back at square one,
reliving their pain and their grief as their hope of
justice was once again squashed. They told reporters they were
(23:32):
tired and now they wanted to know what the police knew.
They needed to make sense of it all. Dolores's parents
insisted on hearing all of the details. What the inmate
had told the grand jury, what the police knew about
all nine people involved, how Dolores had been caught up
(23:52):
in all of it, and what had happened to her,
what had she endured. Helen Delapenna told her, I needed
to know why she was killed? What was the secret?
I couldn't be more hurt than I already was. Helen
and Ralph were told twenty four years after the fact,
(24:12):
what had happened to their seventeen year old daughter. Much
of the information gathered by law enforcements started with that
inmate in Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, and for a few
years that information was meticulously combed through and verified by investigators.
The inmate informed a guard that back in nineteen seventy two,
(24:32):
when he was just sixteen years old, he went to
a garage on Jasper Street in the Kensington neighborhood of Philly.
Jasper Street is a one way road of row houses
and garages for rent. The young man was there to
drop off drugs in a prearranged deal late at night.
When he peaked inside the garage, he saw a young
(24:53):
woman gagged and bound to an old car seat. It
was Dolores Delapenna, he watched from outside. He said Dolores's
hands were tied behind her back and she had both
tears and blood streaming down her face. Standing around her
were four drug dealers. They were yelling, demanding money, and
(25:14):
beating her. He watched as one of the drug dealers
stabbed Dolores in the arm with a machete. The witness
feared for his own safety and left the garage without
contacting the police, but he had information that cleared up
a big question everyone's minds, why Dolores. Fast forward to
(25:35):
nineteen ninety six. After police had combed through all their tips, leads,
and sources, they informed the Dela Penna's what they knew.
Starting with the summer of nineteen seventy two, although Dolores
had originally planned on renting a bungalow with a few
friends in wild Wood that summer, two of them had
backed out and two acquaintances had taken their place. Those
(25:58):
girls along with their boyfriend, had been involved in the
local drug scene, and some reports say there was tension,
which was part of the reason Dolores chose to go
with her family to Disney World to escape for a
little while. While the Dela Pennas were in Florida, there
was a dispute in Wildwood regarding stolen drugs. It's been
(26:21):
reported that the drug dealers that were conducting business with
the friends in Wildwood were members of a motorcycle gang.
Some of those members had become incensed about a cache
of drugs that had gone missing, and there was a confrontation.
Two hundred dollars worth of drugs were stolen, the equivalent
of which would be about fifteen hundred dollars in twenty
(26:42):
twenty four. Out of fear, the Wildwood roommates pointed the
blame at Dolores, telling the drug dealers that she was
responsible for the theft, but it wasn't true. It was
a lie told out of fear, a lie that traveled
across state lines and into Pennsylvany, where a seventeen year
old fresh off of a trip to the Happiest place
(27:04):
on Earth was met with a horrifying ordeal. After extensive
conversations with the witness the prison inmate, the police were
led to another witness, also a prisoner. The second witness
filled in more blanks and told the police that back
in nineteen eighty one, he had heard about the murder
of Dolores from a fellow drug dealer. What he was
(27:27):
told is as follows. Two men members of the gang
were told that Dolores was the one who had stolen
the drugs. They knew precisely when she would be home
from vacation and had parked on her street the night
of July eleventh. They waited for Dolores to show up
to create a ruse, and as not to raise suspicion,
(27:48):
they opened the hood of their car to make it
look like they were doing a repair. When Dolores approached
after getting off the trolley, she was beaten, gagged, abducted,
and placed into the case hid napper's car. The men
then drove to a pre arranged destination, a garage in
the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. The intent was to hold
(28:10):
Dolores for ransom. Dolores, while bound and defenseless, begged for
her life and insisted she hadn't stolen any drugs. While
four men stood around her berating her. She was called
a bitch and told that she was going to pay.
While being tortured mentally and physically, sexually assaulted and screamed at,
(28:34):
Dolores went in and out of consciousness. No ransom request
was ever made, and while in the garage sometime in
the night, one of the men cut off Delores's head
with a machete. They wrapped her head in plastic and
battery wire and put her remains in the car. From
(28:54):
the garage, they drove fifteen miles until they got to
Dinosaur Lake, a swampy park in Ben Salem, where they
allegedly dropped Dolores's head in the lake. The area was
later searched, but her head wasn't found. After leaving Dinosaur Lake,
the killers drove to the Tecconi Pamaira Bridge, one of
the bridges that connect Philadelphia to New Jersey. There, the
(29:18):
rest of Dolores's body was dismembered with a machete and
scattered in two areas of the Garden State. Both witnesses,
as well as others interviewed by police, all corroborated that
Dolores had been falsely accused of the theft, and investigators
came to the same conclusion even the killers had discovered
(29:39):
after the murder that Dolores was not to blame. Instead
of spending a summer in the sun retelling her highlights
of her recent family trip to Disney, instead of starting
a new chapter of her life as an X ray
technician and going on to start a family, Dolores de
la Penna was accused of theft by her own friends,
(30:01):
and as a result, was mercilessly tortured and murdered at
the age of seventeen. After the break in the case
in the mid nineties, the Delapennas had received the gruesome
details as to what happened to Dolores and why falsely accused, abducted, tortured,
viciously murdered, dismembered and discarded. But the family would never
(30:23):
live to see the day where any resolution took place.
They would never sit in a courtroom and face their
daughter's murderers. They'd never go to sleep at night with
any sense of relief that the men responsible were behind bars,
because despite what witnesses knew and despite what investigators had uncovered,
no arrests were ever made for the murder of Dolores Delapenna.
(30:46):
The police had identified her killers, nine of them. The
district attorney said the case lacked sufficient evidence for indictments,
and Dolores's case is still unsolved to this day. Throughout
the investigation, more than five hundred people were questioned in
several states. Rewards were offered, and increased witnesses to the
(31:08):
crime named the killers. The man who loaned his car
to the murderers that night was identified. The police verified
the information, they put together a timeline. So it begs
the question what went wrong here? How can the police
not only know the nine names of the people involved,
but also know their whereabouts, know which of them were
(31:29):
still alive and which ones were in prison, but not
a single arrest can be made. Investigators who'd retired from
the case expressed their disbelief and emphasized how Dolores's case
had enough information to be solved and closed. In nineteen
ninety seven, Helen Delapenna told the Philadelphia Inquirer quote, I
(31:51):
was forty five when this happened. Now I'm seventy What
are they waiting for? Are they waiting until I'm dead?
I want to know before I close my eyes. Ralph
Dela Penna Senior passed away in two thousand and four
at the age of seventy nine. His wife, Helen passed
away in twenty fifteen at the age of eighty eight.
(32:16):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Method and Madness.
If you haven't already, please leave a rating or review,
and don't forget to hit the follow button to connect.
I'm on x at method Pod, on Instagram at method
at maddness Pod, and you can find me on TikTok
and Facebook as well to chat, suggest a case, or
(32:37):
to discuss the episode. Reach out to me at method
at Madness Pod at gmail dot com. Method and Madness
is researched, written and hosted by me. That's it for
this week. Until next time, take care of yourself. You matter.
For crisis support, text hello to seven four one seven
(32:57):
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