August 7, 2025 • 41 mins
Right now in true crime: Travis Decker still on the run, captured Tennessee man wanted for 4 homicides, Menendez brothers update
In August of 1972, 16 year old Jeannette DePalma disappeared in Springfield NJ. Her boy would be found about a month later with a lot of speculation about her death and possibly occult connections. Her story is one of New Jerseys most famous cold cases. Let’s discuss it, all the speculation and where it stands today.
Sources for episode:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeannette_DePalma
https://weirdnj.com/weird-news/jeannette-depalma/
https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/Witches-Coven-The-Bizarre-Death-of-Jeannette-DePalma
https://allthatsinteresting.com/jeannette-depalma
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/zDjFGvKazR
Petition: https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-jeannette-depalma-change-her-death-from-a-suspicious-death-to-a-homicide?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwL01_NleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHkzqQlUqg1ZjRDLPFYVl6EeGkpbiSySTuphV0SVdYj6rNTXOpVGP-QrC1CsB_aem_xqh3QXvvw82z8bd3dNk11Q
Justice for Jeannette FB page: https://www.facebook.com/share/19V8jsnH2H/?mibextid=wwXIfr
In August of 1972, 16 year old Jeannette DePalma disappeared in Springfield NJ. Her boy would be found about a month later with a lot of speculation about her death and possibly occult connections. Her story is one of New Jerseys most famous cold cases. Let’s discuss it, all the speculation and where it stands today.
Sources for episode:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jeannette_DePalma
https://weirdnj.com/weird-news/jeannette-depalma/
https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/Witches-Coven-The-Bizarre-Death-of-Jeannette-DePalma
https://allthatsinteresting.com/jeannette-depalma
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/zDjFGvKazR
Petition: https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-jeannette-depalma-change-her-death-from-a-suspicious-death-to-a-homicide?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwL01_NleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHkzqQlUqg1ZjRDLPFYVl6EeGkpbiSySTuphV0SVdYj6rNTXOpVGP-QrC1CsB_aem_xqh3QXvvw82z8bd3dNk11Q
Justice for Jeannette FB page: https://www.facebook.com/share/19V8jsnH2H/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen
with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie.
Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together
we are going to work on warming up some cold cases.
Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of
Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to get into
(00:20):
a few right now in true crime, housekeeping type of situations,
kind of going over a few things that we need
to catch up on because there has been a lot
kind of randomly going on over this last week. So
they are still searching for thirty two year old Travis Decker,
who murdered his three daughters, Olivia, Evelyn, and Hayton on
(00:45):
June second, that is when they were discovered, and they
were first reported missing on May thirtieth, after he failed
to return them back home to their mom. They had
a court ordered visitation with Travis and he has been
on the run ever since, and in my opinion, he
has to have somebody that's helping him. So on Friday
(01:10):
last week in Washington, the King County Sheriff's Office did
receive a report that there was a possible Travis Decker
sighting on the Pacific Crest Trail. They went and searched
the area. They had a helicopter out kind of combing
through the mountains, and they again turned up empty handed.
(01:31):
So this guy is definitely still out there. He was
ex military, so he does have a lot of survival
tips under his belt. He probably has a lot of
knowledge of how to kind of live off the grid
and blend into society, and that's exactly what's happening here.
So I am hopeful that they're going to catch him soon.
(01:55):
But he has been on the run for a two
months now at this point in time, now that we're
in August. So we'll continue to keep you updated if
there's anything breaking. But if you were in that area,
especially on any type of hiking trails or anything, please
please please keep an eye out for Travis. So case
update out of Tennessee. This is not a case I
(02:17):
previously had talked about, but there were four people who
were killed in Tennessee. They were identified as James Wilson,
who was twenty one, Adriana Williams who was twenty along
with her maternal grandmother Courtney Rose thirty eight, and maternal
uncle Brandon Williams fifteen. So those four people had their
(02:42):
lives stolen from them, and then there was a baby
that was taken, and seven month old baby and was
located safely. The baby was found July twenty ninth in
a car seat in a front yard. So from there
(03:03):
an investigation ensues, of course, and they have a person
of interest who is a man who is named Austin Drummond,
and he was on the run for about a week.
They did capture him on Tuesday in a wooded area
in Tennessee. He is twenty eight years old. He is
a convicted felon. He has alleged ties to a violent
(03:25):
Streak gang and get this, he was out on bail
on an attempted murder charge and he was dating one
of the victim's sisters. His criminal history dates back to
July of twenty thirteen. He was only sixteen years old
at this point in time, and he robbed a Circle
K convenience store in Jackson right after midnight. He pulled
(03:47):
out a pistol, pointed it at a store employee, and
demanded money. He was then convicted in twenty fourteen of
aggravated robbery and sentenced to ten years in prison, there
was a trial and he ended up calling his father
from behind bars, and he had made some threats against
the jurors and the robbery victim. And then in twenty fifteen,
(04:12):
he pled guilty to retaliation for past action and was
sentenced to three more years in prison. The District Attorney's
office did not want to parole him and called him
a dangerous felony offender. He ended up not being paroled
and eventually was released last September from the Northwest Correctional
Complex in Tiptonville after eleven years. He then was facing
(04:35):
some new chargers related to his time in prison. There
was a drug arrest the day he was released, then
one later on the attempted murder case. And this attempted
murder situation took place inside of the prison. So Courtney
Rose's sister was Austin Drummond's girlfriend, and it has been
(04:56):
confirmed that the sister who he was dating was a
corrections officer at Northwest Correctional Complex when he was incarcerated,
so obviously that is where they met. There were photos
of them posted on social media together after Austin was released.
Obviously this is somebody that the family knew and trusted
and was probably a very welcomed part of their family.
(05:19):
And for him to go and do something like this,
to take four lives, to take this baby's parents away
they were young, twenty and twenty one, and then killing
Courtney who was thirty eight and Brayden who was fifteen,
it's just horrible. There have also been other people arrested
(05:41):
in connection with helping him, So it's going to be
interesting to see all of this play out and kind
of see the direction that they go with things, what
all he decides to come forward with, and it's going
to be interesting to see it play out, nonetheless, so
I will be sure to keep you guys updated on
it all. Right, last thing I want to talk about
real quick is they have officially ordered new DNA testing
(06:06):
in the West Memphis three case. Officially, after all of
this time, they have approved testing of new DNA evidence.
So if you guys have in any way, shape or
form followed the West Memphis three, this is huge to
propel this case forward, and I think that there are
(06:26):
probably some people out there who are feeling a little
bit uncomfortable with this new DNA being tested. I'm not
going to say any names, but I could talk about
the West Memphis three case for the rest of my life.
Maybe I'll have to do a summer series on it
or episodes on it, because there's so much bad stuff
(06:47):
going on there, and it just really boggles my mind
that it still has not been solved to this day
and that it was a box investigation from the very start, unfortunately.
So we'll continue to keep you up date on that.
The Menendos Brothers have their hearing coming up this month,
so we'll keep you updated on that, And we are
(07:08):
going to go ahead and get into today's episode. Alrighty guys,
today we are jumping into a brand new unsolved case
on this week's episode, I'm going to be telling you
about the nineteen seventy two homicide of a sixteen year
old girl named Jeanette de Palma out of Union, New Jersey.
(07:28):
Her murder remains unsolved and there has been a lot
of talk and speculation surrounding her death over the years.
This story was featured on Weird New Jersey as well
as covered in a book called Death on the Devil's Teeth.
There are a lot of rumors that suggested that Jeanette's
death was related to an occult sacrifice. So we are
(07:50):
going to break it all down. We're going to talk
about everything and talk about where the case stands today.
For my research, I will link all the articles below.
And I also watched a show on Hulu called out
There Crimes of the Paranormal. This particular episode was season one,
episode four, and like I said, you can find that
(08:12):
on Hulu. I am going to link it below as well.
They interview many family members and people from law enforcement,
so you really get a full picture of Jeanette's story.
As always, we are going to talk a little bit
about Jeanette and who she was so we can get
to the part where we're talking about her unfortunate death.
(08:33):
Jeanette Christine de Palma was born on August third of
nineteen fifty six in Jersey City, New Jersey, to her parents,
Salvatore and Florence to Palma. The couple already had several
children by the time Jeanette was born, and they would
add their last daughter and child just a year later.
The family was a very large Catholic Italian family. They
(08:55):
had five daughters and three sons. In the mid nineteen sixties,
the family and ended up moving from Roselle, New Jersey,
to the township of Springfield, New Jersey, and those two
locations were about thirty minutes apart from each other. Springfield
had a very good reputation and from what the Dipoma
family knew, they thought that this would be a great
(09:17):
place for them to raise their family. They moved into
a beautiful home that was five bedrooms four bathrooms at
four Clearview Road, and they bought the house for sixty
five thousand dollars. Can you even imagine buying a house
that big in New Jersey for sixty five thousand dollars.
The Dipoma family was pretty low key and they really
(09:39):
didn't socialize too much with those that were around them.
Jeanette was described as somebody who was just a normal teenager.
She was quiet, funny, sweet, and a very good friend.
She loved rock music and she enjoyed hanging out with
her friends and every so often she would attend different
parties typical teenage behavior. Off in times to get around town,
(10:01):
Jeannette would hitchhike, which was very common back in those
days and a common mode of transportation for a lot
of young teens and adults alike. Jeannette attended Jonathan Dayton
Regional and was a junior at the time of her death,
and she had been making plans to attend Trinity Bible
Institute in North Dakota after she graduated the following year. Unfortunately,
(10:24):
she never got that chance. Once the DePalma family moved
to Springfield, New Jersey, they started to attend the Assemblies
of God evangel Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and they
kind of took this to the extreme and would attend
this church multiple times a week, and they would also
go on to label themselves as born again Evangelical Christians.
(10:48):
And those that surrounded the DiPalma family thought that this
was interesting because they did come from such a strict
Italian Catholic family and they had kind of taken this
new level of Christianity to the extreme. There were even
some people that speculated that the Dipoma family were part
of the mafia, and there were people that said that
(11:11):
the members of the Dipoma family were rude and just
weird in general. But honestly, my personal opinion is that
the Dipomas were new to town. They weren't going out
of their way to be social with people, and I
think unfortunately a lot of different religious groups and people
can be very judgmental, and I think that's probably what
(11:35):
was going on here. The Dipomas probably just weren't super
social people, and besides doing their church activities and everything,
I think they just basically kept to themselves, and people
that surrounded them in their neighborhood just thought, for whatever
reason that they were not very nice. But it doesn't
sound like the people that they went to church with
(11:56):
felt this way, So I think it was very much
just them trying to mind their own and probably not
being super social with those that were outside of their circle.
And I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that,
and it does sound like they did have a pretty
good community in this church. There was even a point
in time where Jeannette dated the pastor of the church's son,
(12:20):
and although they did date, he said they never really
saw each other outside of church because they did live
in different towns, so they eventually decided to part ways,
and this was about a month before Jeanette went missing.
This was also at a time in our country where
a lot of people were turning from drugs to religion,
and they were very much involved in the religion of
(12:43):
it all and taking it to the extreme. So again
that the palma's moving from Roselle to Springfield turning on
this new religious leaf. I'm sure there were a lot
of people that judged and speculated, and being the new
people in town, people also didn't really know them. One
of Janette's nephews is quoted as saying that they were
(13:07):
very much looked upon as second class citizens once they
moved to Springfield. So I think the consensus is that
the Dipoma family wasn't very well known in Springfield, but
they also had a lot of speculation and rumor surrounding them,
and because they didn't go out of their way to
(13:29):
be overly friendly to those that surrounded them, they were
just kind of like the black sheep, which is unfortunate
given where our story goes. It is very unfortunate because
I think that has fueled a lot of the rumor
and speculation surrounding Jeanette's death. But I did want to
kind of put all of that out there because I
(13:49):
think it's important for our story and I think it's
important to why this case still hasn't been solved to
this day. So, like I said, said, Jeanette was in
high school. She was just described as a normal girl.
She also worked part time at the community office of
the church, and it was in this job that she
(14:13):
had that she was helping with a church program that
supported at risk youth that were in the area. So
it's obvious that Jeannette had a lot of tendencies of
wanting to help others, being very caring. But she also
enjoyed being a teenager and occasionally she went to a party,
(14:33):
she would hitchhike there, and occasionally she would smoke marijuana,
but she wasn't doing anything that was harming anyone else,
and she really did have a good head on her shoulders.
So we're now going to get into the day that
Jeanette disappeared, which was August seventh of nineteen seventy two.
This was a Monday, and on this particular day, Jeannette
(14:56):
had called one of her friends who was named Gail,
and had told Gail that she wasn't going to be
able to hang out with her that day because she
had some extra chores to do. Now, Jeanette and Gail
had previously made plans the day before to hang out
on this particular day, but these extra chores happened about
because Jeanette had a cousin named Lisa who had run
(15:21):
away from home and she had been gone for about
a month, but for whatever reason, Jeanette's parents didn't tell
her about Lisa being gone because they thought that Lisa
would come back. Well after about a month, they decided,
we need to tell Jeanette what's going on with Lisa.
And when they told Janette, she was obviously upset. She
(15:42):
was frustrated that her parents didn't tell her that Lisa
had run away, and Jeanette reacted in a way that
you would when your parents kept something from you that
you think you should have been told. So she kind
of stormed off to her room. I'm sure she probably
slammed under the door and stomped off as a teenager
(16:02):
would do. So because of this, she was punished and
given these extra chores. So although she and Gail had
made plans, she was going to have to cancel them
because she had these chores now. Gail later states in
a twenty fourteen interview that her and Jeannette had made
plans for that day with two boys that they had
(16:24):
met the night before at a park, and Gail said,
she really isn't a bully, but she just kind of
told Jeanette, like, you can't leave me hanging. You're the
one that kind of got me into these plans, so
I really want you to come through and not cancel
these plans. So it did take some convincing from Gail,
(16:46):
but Jeanette did agree that she was going to leave
the house and head to Gail's house. Now, Gail lived
about eight miles away from where Jeanette did, so, of
course Jeannette decided that she was going to hitch hike.
So it was around one twenty in the afternoon Jeanette
left her house and she had told her mom that
(17:07):
she was going to walk to the train station and
take the train into Berkeley Heights, and her mom, Florence,
was hesitant to let her walk the three miles, but
decided that she was going to let her go. Now,
Florence let her go under the pretense of Jeanette was
going to work and that is why she was cutting
out early on her chores and she was going to
(17:29):
take the train to go to work. Obviously, if Florence
had realized that Jeanette's plan was to hitchhike to Gil's home,
she never would have let her go. So Jeanette decided,
of course, to hitchhike, and she was picked up by
a nineteen year old woman named Robin. Now, this gal
said she typically would not pick up a hitchhiker. It
(17:52):
wasn't something she would normally do, but she said she
saw this young girl standing on the corner with her
thumb out and thought to herself that if she didn't
pick her up, somebody else possibly could, and she was
concerned about her safety. So she pulled over and she
picked Jeanette up. Jeannette got in and Robin said that
they made small talk, but Robin said that Jeannette was
(18:15):
very quiet, and she was fiddling a lot with the
cross necklace that she had around her neck. She could
tell that there was something on her mind and that
she was very nervous. She dropped her off, and unfortunately,
that was the last time that Jeanette would be seen alive.
Jeannette unfortunately never made it to Gail's home, and as
(18:36):
the day turned into evening and the evening came and went,
Jeannette never returned home. Salvator and Florence decided that they
were going to call nine one one around ten pm
because they knew something was wrong, and of course, in
true fashion, police would not take a missing persons report
for another twenty four hours. Now, the depamas did not
(18:59):
really know if Jeanette left on her own, ran away,
or was truly a missing person, and for this the
authorities were not very helpful to the family, and they
unfortunately kind of had to take things into their own hands,
because even if Jeannette did disappear on her own, she
(19:19):
was still just a young teenage girl who should not
be out and about in New Jersey on her own,
God knows where doing, God knows what with, God knows
who unsafe. Not cool, but it does kind of make
sense that her parents felt like this because she was
obviously upset that her parents hadn't shared with her about
(19:40):
her cousin running away, so in their mind, I think
maybe they thought that Jeannette had done the same thing,
and maybe in their mind she was going off to
search for her cousin. I don't really know, but still
I don't really think it matters from a law enforcement standpoint,
because when parents come to you and say that their
teenage daughter who's only sixteen, is not safe in her
(20:04):
home in her bed at nighttime, something could possibly be
wrong in every second counts, So, like I said, the
diplomas decided they had to do something. But unfortunately, no
attempts that were made were successful in finding out where
Jeanette was. Weeks came and went with no sign of Jeanette,
(20:25):
and then, unfortunately, on Tuesday, September nineteenth of nineteen seventy two,
a discovery was made. So there was a woman who
was unpacking groceries at her apartment complex on Wilson Avenue,
and she had noticed that her dog had come out
of the woods and he was carrying what she thought
was a bone in his mouth. Now she quickly realized
(20:47):
that this was not a bone, and it was in
fact a human forearm. She of course called the authorities
and an official search party was formed and conducted. As
they knew there had to be more parts of this body,
and since they knew that Jeannette was missing, they thought
that it possibly could be her remains. One of the
officers that was working with the search party found on
(21:10):
top of a forty foot cliff known to the locals
as the Devil's Teeth, the remains of Jeanette. She was
found face down. She was wearing a blue tshirt and
tan pants, and there were a pair of flip flops
lying on the ground nearby her. Her necklace was missing.
They said that her face was almost gone, her toes
(21:31):
were gone, and animals had obviously eaten away at her remains.
They were able to successfully identify the remains, like I said,
as belonging to Jeanette, via dental records, because the body
was so decomposed that this was the only way that
they could identify. According to several witnesses that were at
the scene, Jeanet's remains were surrounded by a series of
(21:55):
strange and what some describe as possible occult objects. Now,
there are various descriptions of these objects, but it seems
that the most commonly agreed upon account of this states
that her remains were found inside of a coffin shaped
perimeter of fallen branches and logs, and inside of this
(22:17):
perimeter were several small makeshift wooden crosses. While there is
a lot of back and forth and there's a lot
of discrepancy with a lot of people saying this isn't true.
There's people that say, if she was found in a
coffin like structure, but she was found facing down. That
doesn't really drive And there's people that say she was
(22:39):
found with sticks and shrubs surrounding her body because she
was found in the woods. That's nothing satanic or colt
like or anything like that. It's really hard to differentiate
between the fact here and speculation. There's a lot. There
was also some Springfield residents that said that her remains
were found on a pinch, also surrounded by mutilated animal remains. However,
(23:04):
at this point, all of that is speculation on the
part of some Springfield residents and has been debunked by
investigators and said not to be true. And I really
don't like to talk speculation on the pod. But the
reason I'm doing it is because it's very important to
the story, and it has been so sensationalized, and it's
(23:26):
been brought up in every way, shape and form. And
this is one of the most infamous New Jersey cold cases.
So the reason I'm bringing it up is because it's
important to our story. And because Jeanette was so deeply religious,
her family was so deeply religious, they think that she
could have possibly been targeted because of this. So it
(23:48):
all ties into the story. So investigators start their investigation
and they perform an autopsy on Jeanette, but they could
not figure out the cause of death. She didn't have
any bone fractures or bullet wounds or any type of
stab wounds. Her body was so badly decomposed that they
had a really difficult time performing this autopsy. So, for
(24:11):
reasons unknown, the medical examiner went ahead and determined the
cause of death to be strangulation. Now, there were also
people involved in this investigation that said that this medical
examiner wasn't necessarily qualified and competent to be conducting forensic autopsies,
And there's a lot of chatter and rumor that some
(24:34):
of the samples and tests that were conducted at that
time have since been lost, and that's a big problem
in this case. I think that's a big part of
why this case is still unsolved. But regardless of that,
for one reason or another, the medical examiner decided that
strangulation was going to be the cause of death, which
(24:55):
made it more of a suspicious death instead of what
it really was, which in my opinion, was a homicide.
Investigators also went ahead and collected Jeanette's clothing. They collected
her shirt, her pants, her underwear, and they also collected
some soil from the scene where she was found, and
they tested every single one of these items, and they
(25:18):
were able to get some hair from a brush that
was in Jeanette's dresser drawer at home, and they tested
that against the hair that was found on Jeanette's body
and her clothes, and they determined that there was no
apparent foreign hairs that were found on Jeanette's body or
on her clothes. There were some stains that were found
in her underwear and also on her bra and her shirt,
(25:41):
but unfortunately, they said that because of the decomposition, it
was too hard to classify them as blood or semen.
But take that for what you will. It was nineteen
seventy two, and I'm sure that they were very, very
limited with the technology that they had. Investigator was named
(26:01):
ed Kish also very much paid a Jeannette as a
bad girl and a partier, which I'm sure didn't help
the investigation go in the right direction. Now, you guys
know how I feel about this. I don't care if
Jeannette was a bad girl quote unquote and a partier.
I do not care what lifestyle she led. I don't
(26:22):
think Jeanette was a bad girl. I think she was
a teenager, she enjoyed a party or two, and then
she worked at a church, So I don't really think
that matters in the grand scheme of things. She was
still horrifically murdered, and I think that that's what we
need to focus on here, not what she did in
her extracurricular times. So unfortunately, I do think that this
(26:44):
did impede the investigation because the guy who was ahead
of the investigation maybe didn't give it his all because
he had these preconceived notions about who Jeanette was. But
Jeannette was sixteen years old at the end of the
day and her life mattered. So about two weeks after
Jeanette's remains were found, there were several newspapers, including the
(27:06):
Nork Star Ledger and the New York Daily News, that
began reporting about the death. And they were reporting that
Jeanette could have been a victim of an occult sacrifice
and this is all kind of during the time of
the Satanic panic and all of that kind of stuff,
and in their eyes, this sacrifice was carried out by
(27:29):
either a Satanist or a local coven of witches that
operated inside the watch On reservation, which was local to
the area. Even some of the local families and the
church pastor kind of added to this theory as well.
And everybody had a different theory about what could have
(27:52):
happened to Jeanette and who is responsible and the different
items that surrounded her body. And also you really do
have to keep in mind that this happened in nineteen
seventy two, and it happened in Springfield, New Jersey, and
not even ten months earlier, John List had murdered his
entire family, his wife, his mom, and his children and
(28:14):
left them all lined up in a row in their
very expensive Westfield, New Jersey home and had gone on
the run. So Union County was very much reeling from that,
and now they have Jeanette's death. And I think that
the List family murders very much tie into some of
the panics surrounding Jeanette's death, because John List was a
(28:36):
very extreme religious human and ultimately thought that killing his
family was the sacrifice that he needed to make to
save their souls. And his daughter, Patty List was very
into witchcraft and had several books on it, and John
was losing his mind about all of this and decided
to kill his whole family, and it was a whole thing.
(28:56):
If you don't know the John List story, I highly
sugg you look it up because it is a rabbit
hole if there ever was one. So these two towns
are very close together, and it all kind of coincided
around the same time, just ten months apart, between John
List and then Jeanette's murder. So where does the investigation
(29:17):
go from here? So early on in the investigation, there
was a homeless man who was living in the area
who went by the nickname Red, and somebody had brought
up a tip to the authorities about Red because he
lived near the area where Jeanette was found. And they
said that after Jeannette first went missing, he fled the area.
(29:38):
So I honestly think at this point in time they
really didn't have much else other than this tip about Red.
So they investigated him, questioned him, and decided that he
had nothing to do with Jeanette's death. And as time
went by, a little information would come in from the
public and eventually Jeanette's case went cold. Now, the Springfield
(30:01):
Police Department did at one point try to elude that
Jeanette could have passed away as a result of a
drug overdose, but this was debunked because there was no
drugs or drug paraphernalia found on or near Jeanette's body,
and she was not really known to be a drug
user besides the occasional marijuana. Now, this is an interesting fact,
(30:23):
and we're going to get into this a little more
when I give my opinion on what I think happened
or who I think is involved. But Jeanette's purse was
found at the scene. However, for one reason or another,
it was never entered into evidence, and I think this
is a huge part of why this case isn't solved today. Allegedly,
(30:46):
the purse was picked up by a law enforcement officer
and was searched and ended up being put down, and
then later when whoever from law enforcement went back to
get the purse, the purse was gone. My question is,
who the hell has the purse and where did it go?
So it's very obvious that this case was not handled
(31:08):
appropriately by the Springfield Police Department. Things were lost, and
unfortunately the focus of this case was on this very
much being some type of Satanic ritual or something to
that effect, and I think Jeanette very much got lost
in this whole thing other than it being about the
(31:28):
fact that a sixteen year old girl was horrifically murdered
and whoever did it got away with it. That's where
the focus should have been. I'm not saying we can't
talk about the fact that maybe it was a Satanic
sacrifice of some sort, but doesn't really matter. A sixteen
year old girl lost her life in a very horrific way. Now,
(31:50):
there's also rumors that whoever was involved was in or
connected to law enforcement, and that this whole thing was
a giant cover up for what really happened, Although there
isn't really any proof of that, it's still, in my opinion,
worth mentioning because it wouldn't be the first time something
like this had happened and it was covered up by
(32:11):
law enforcement, a police department, anything like that. And this
was a small town, Springfield small town, so it's not
out of the realm of possibility that this could have
been a cover up. And why did the purse disappear?
Who has the purse? So this case goes cold. And
then in twenty fourteen, two individuals named Ed Salzano and
(32:37):
Holly Zool decided to start investigating this case on their
own now. They both lived in Springfield and decided to,
like I said, dig in to Janette's case, and they
actually started Justice for Denette to Palma. They have a
Facebook group and a website. I will link both below.
(32:59):
So during this documentary that I watched, they were asked
about how they thought the satanic element came to be,
how the witchcraft element came to be, and although they
said they don't know exactly who first said it or
when it was said, and how it came to be.
This is a quote. A review of death scene photos,
(33:23):
according to reports, is leading authorities to believe the girl's
deaths may have been in nature of a sacrifice. End quote.
So that was published. That was a newspaper article that
was published. I believe so Ed and Holly do believe
that Jeanette was killed by teenagers that were possibly into
(33:43):
witchcraft and Satanism, and they might have possibly been trying
to pull Janett into it, and she, of course, being
a very religious girl, was trying to sway them the
other way, and she was killed for her beliefs and
as a sacrifice. Ed and Holly have done their research.
They know this case very well, so I do trust
(34:04):
their opinion, and all of this speculation about the satanic
aspect of this case had to have come from somewhere.
They also said that after Jeanette went missing, her room
was searched and she did have a booklet on demonism
and Satanism. So this is interesting because Jeanette was very
involved in the church, She was very religious, and there
(34:29):
has to be something that was bothering her that day.
Due to the way that she was acting when she
was hitchhiking, she was playing with her cross necklace. There
was obviously something on her mind and it just makes
you wonder what was really going on behind the scenes.
Jeanette also kept a diary, and shortly before her disappearance
(34:50):
she had written about two boys who she had met
at a party, and she wrote about how one of
them was basically pouring Southern comfort down her throat and
coming on to her, which again is interesting, probably not
appropriate for this guy to be pouring alcohol down her
throat and then trying to take advantage of her. And
(35:12):
the gal Robin who picked her up that night, said
that she saw after she dropped Jeannette off, she saw
Jeanette walk up to her friends and it was two
or three young guys and one girl. So although Jeannette
had originally planned to hitchhike to Gail's house, that is
not where she was dropped off. She was dropped off
(35:34):
somewhere else with these people who Jeanette told Robin were
her friends, so Robin didn't know any better. Of course,
that's where she wanted to be dropped off, so that's
where Robin dropped him off. So after Jeanette's body was found,
Robin went to the police and told them and reported
(35:55):
all of this, and none of this is written in
the original report. It only talks about the girl. It
doesn't mention the boys at all, which is interesting. Why
doesn't it mention the boys? I have questions. Did they
ever locate and talk to these people? Were these the
people that took Jeannette's life? Were they the children of
(36:15):
law enforcement officers? And that's why it was so badly
handled and covered up. I have questions. We all have questions.
It's all, like I said, speculation, But these are the
questions we have to ask. And why isn't it in
the original report if Robin went and talked to them
and told them, Robin has no skin in the game.
(36:38):
Why would she make that up. Of course she went
and told them what she knew, because she is the
one that technically last saw her alive. Except for the
people that took her life, none of it makes any
sense to me. Like I said, it really doesn't matter
in my opinion, who did this, because whoever they are,
whether it's one person, whether it's two, whether it's a
(36:59):
group of people, they are evil and vile and they
need to be off the streets. Ed Kish, who is
now retired, told the producers of the Hulu show that
there was no basis for the witchcraft theory and is
quoted as saying that the cops are only as good
as the evidence left behind, and in Jeanette's case, there
was zero evidence left behind except for the purse that
(37:21):
mysteriously disappeared. That is me saying that. Not ed. He
also said, quote kids don't talk. Whoever has knowledge, if
they're dead, they're taking it to their grave. End quote.
This case is still very much unsolved, and Ed and
Holly are still very much pushing for justice for Jeanette.
(37:42):
Like I said, I'm going to link their Facebook and
website below, And there's also a petition that I encourage
you guys to sign. It's basically a petition to help
encourage law enforcement to change the manner of Jeanette's death
from suspicious to uahamaide because if the death is just suspicious,
(38:03):
there's really nothing to investigate. We need to change this
manner of death to a homicide. Although this case is
almost fifty three years old, it's still just as important
as the day it happened. And it's important that whoever
did this is off of the streets because they are
a dangerous, dangerous human. They've probably killed since. And if
(38:25):
it was a Satanic ritual, if it was kids just
messing around and taking advantage of Jeannette, we really don't know.
And I think that's why this one is so important
to cover, because there is so much speculation and rumor
surrounding it that Jeanette has kind of gotten lost in
the mix, and I don't like that. I think Jeanette's
(38:47):
life is worth more than that. I think her legacy
is worth more than that. She was obviously a very
good person. She had a lot of faith, she loved
her family, she loved her friend, she was making plans
for her future, and she didn't deserve any of the
stuff that has happened to her, and whoever did this,
(39:10):
I hope that they sleep terrible at night and that
they feel the weight of this every single day, and
every time somebody reports on Jeanette's case, they get a
little bit more and more uncomfortable. I am going to
be posting some pictures of Jeannette on my Instagram and
Facebook pages along with the area kind of where Jeanette
was found. And I do encourage you guys, if you're
(39:33):
interested in more in depth to read the book, because
the book was very, very interesting. There's a lot of
good information in there. Again, there's a lot of speculation
about the Satanic stuff, and there has to be a
basis for that in some way, shape or form. I
do know a lot of those rumors, and a lot
(39:54):
of the speculation was fueled by the pastor of the
church that the Dipomas went to. That's a whole different
can of worms. That's a whole different episode. But at
the end of the day, Jeanette's life matters, and finding
her killer matters and getting it right matters. So I
wanted to kind of just put it all out there,
(40:15):
all the rumors, all the speculation, all the things we know,
but my question is where is her purse and where's
her necklace? Because somebody went through her purse that day
and then it disappeared. Where's the purse? That's my question.
That's like the biggest thing for me is where is
the purse? And why were so many other pieces of
(40:37):
evidence lost or mishandled. Apparently there was some stuff that
was lost in a flood that happened in New Jersey.
A lot of the evidence was lost in that. I
just have major questions about how some of these evidence
pieces are being handled and stored and kept safe from
(40:57):
natural disasters like floods and and all of that. I
have questions. I feel like we should be doing better
as a society at this point in time. So anyways,
that is Jeannette's story. Please share this episode, check out
the Hulu documentary that I talked about the episode I
talked about, check out book. There is a lot of
(41:18):
publications online about this story as well. There's a ton
it is very overwhelming. There's a whole Reddit thread which
you can get sucked into very very easily if you
want some more information and you want other people's thoughts
and opinions. But that is the episode. Check out my
Instagram and Facebook pages for some photos, and I will
(41:39):
see you guys next week for a brand new Unsolved case.
Have a good one bye,
Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen
with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie.
Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together
we are going to work on warming up some cold cases.
Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of
Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to get into
(00:20):
a few right now in true crime, housekeeping type of situations,
kind of going over a few things that we need
to catch up on because there has been a lot
kind of randomly going on over this last week. So
they are still searching for thirty two year old Travis Decker,
who murdered his three daughters, Olivia, Evelyn, and Hayton on
(00:45):
June second, that is when they were discovered, and they
were first reported missing on May thirtieth, after he failed
to return them back home to their mom. They had
a court ordered visitation with Travis and he has been
on the run ever since, and in my opinion, he
has to have somebody that's helping him. So on Friday
(01:10):
last week in Washington, the King County Sheriff's Office did
receive a report that there was a possible Travis Decker
sighting on the Pacific Crest Trail. They went and searched
the area. They had a helicopter out kind of combing
through the mountains, and they again turned up empty handed.
(01:31):
So this guy is definitely still out there. He was
ex military, so he does have a lot of survival
tips under his belt. He probably has a lot of
knowledge of how to kind of live off the grid
and blend into society, and that's exactly what's happening here.
So I am hopeful that they're going to catch him soon.
(01:55):
But he has been on the run for a two
months now at this point in time, now that we're
in August. So we'll continue to keep you updated if
there's anything breaking. But if you were in that area,
especially on any type of hiking trails or anything, please
please please keep an eye out for Travis. So case
update out of Tennessee. This is not a case I
(02:17):
previously had talked about, but there were four people who
were killed in Tennessee. They were identified as James Wilson,
who was twenty one, Adriana Williams who was twenty along
with her maternal grandmother Courtney Rose thirty eight, and maternal
uncle Brandon Williams fifteen. So those four people had their
(02:42):
lives stolen from them, and then there was a baby
that was taken, and seven month old baby and was
located safely. The baby was found July twenty ninth in
a car seat in a front yard. So from there
(03:03):
an investigation ensues, of course, and they have a person
of interest who is a man who is named Austin Drummond,
and he was on the run for about a week.
They did capture him on Tuesday in a wooded area
in Tennessee. He is twenty eight years old. He is
a convicted felon. He has alleged ties to a violent
(03:25):
Streak gang and get this, he was out on bail
on an attempted murder charge and he was dating one
of the victim's sisters. His criminal history dates back to
July of twenty thirteen. He was only sixteen years old
at this point in time, and he robbed a Circle
K convenience store in Jackson right after midnight. He pulled
(03:47):
out a pistol, pointed it at a store employee, and
demanded money. He was then convicted in twenty fourteen of
aggravated robbery and sentenced to ten years in prison, there
was a trial and he ended up calling his father
from behind bars, and he had made some threats against
the jurors and the robbery victim. And then in twenty fifteen,
(04:12):
he pled guilty to retaliation for past action and was
sentenced to three more years in prison. The District Attorney's
office did not want to parole him and called him
a dangerous felony offender. He ended up not being paroled
and eventually was released last September from the Northwest Correctional
Complex in Tiptonville after eleven years. He then was facing
(04:35):
some new chargers related to his time in prison. There
was a drug arrest the day he was released, then
one later on the attempted murder case. And this attempted
murder situation took place inside of the prison. So Courtney
Rose's sister was Austin Drummond's girlfriend, and it has been
(04:56):
confirmed that the sister who he was dating was a
corrections officer at Northwest Correctional Complex when he was incarcerated,
so obviously that is where they met. There were photos
of them posted on social media together after Austin was released.
Obviously this is somebody that the family knew and trusted
and was probably a very welcomed part of their family.
(05:19):
And for him to go and do something like this,
to take four lives, to take this baby's parents away
they were young, twenty and twenty one, and then killing
Courtney who was thirty eight and Brayden who was fifteen,
it's just horrible. There have also been other people arrested
(05:41):
in connection with helping him, So it's going to be
interesting to see all of this play out and kind
of see the direction that they go with things, what
all he decides to come forward with, and it's going
to be interesting to see it play out, nonetheless, so
I will be sure to keep you guys updated on
it all. Right, last thing I want to talk about
real quick is they have officially ordered new DNA testing
(06:06):
in the West Memphis three case. Officially, after all of
this time, they have approved testing of new DNA evidence.
So if you guys have in any way, shape or
form followed the West Memphis three, this is huge to
propel this case forward, and I think that there are
(06:26):
probably some people out there who are feeling a little
bit uncomfortable with this new DNA being tested. I'm not
going to say any names, but I could talk about
the West Memphis three case for the rest of my life.
Maybe I'll have to do a summer series on it
or episodes on it, because there's so much bad stuff
(06:47):
going on there, and it just really boggles my mind
that it still has not been solved to this day
and that it was a box investigation from the very start, unfortunately.
So we'll continue to keep you up date on that.
The Menendos Brothers have their hearing coming up this month,
so we'll keep you updated on that, And we are
(07:08):
going to go ahead and get into today's episode. Alrighty guys,
today we are jumping into a brand new unsolved case
on this week's episode, I'm going to be telling you
about the nineteen seventy two homicide of a sixteen year
old girl named Jeanette de Palma out of Union, New Jersey.
(07:28):
Her murder remains unsolved and there has been a lot
of talk and speculation surrounding her death over the years.
This story was featured on Weird New Jersey as well
as covered in a book called Death on the Devil's Teeth.
There are a lot of rumors that suggested that Jeanette's
death was related to an occult sacrifice. So we are
(07:50):
going to break it all down. We're going to talk
about everything and talk about where the case stands today.
For my research, I will link all the articles below.
And I also watched a show on Hulu called out
There Crimes of the Paranormal. This particular episode was season one,
episode four, and like I said, you can find that
(08:12):
on Hulu. I am going to link it below as well.
They interview many family members and people from law enforcement,
so you really get a full picture of Jeanette's story.
As always, we are going to talk a little bit
about Jeanette and who she was so we can get
to the part where we're talking about her unfortunate death.
(08:33):
Jeanette Christine de Palma was born on August third of
nineteen fifty six in Jersey City, New Jersey, to her parents,
Salvatore and Florence to Palma. The couple already had several
children by the time Jeanette was born, and they would
add their last daughter and child just a year later.
The family was a very large Catholic Italian family. They
(08:55):
had five daughters and three sons. In the mid nineteen sixties,
the family and ended up moving from Roselle, New Jersey,
to the township of Springfield, New Jersey, and those two
locations were about thirty minutes apart from each other. Springfield
had a very good reputation and from what the Dipoma
family knew, they thought that this would be a great
(09:17):
place for them to raise their family. They moved into
a beautiful home that was five bedrooms four bathrooms at
four Clearview Road, and they bought the house for sixty
five thousand dollars. Can you even imagine buying a house
that big in New Jersey for sixty five thousand dollars.
The Dipoma family was pretty low key and they really
(09:39):
didn't socialize too much with those that were around them.
Jeanette was described as somebody who was just a normal teenager.
She was quiet, funny, sweet, and a very good friend.
She loved rock music and she enjoyed hanging out with
her friends and every so often she would attend different
parties typical teenage behavior. Off in times to get around town,
(10:01):
Jeannette would hitchhike, which was very common back in those
days and a common mode of transportation for a lot
of young teens and adults alike. Jeannette attended Jonathan Dayton
Regional and was a junior at the time of her death,
and she had been making plans to attend Trinity Bible
Institute in North Dakota after she graduated the following year. Unfortunately,
(10:24):
she never got that chance. Once the DePalma family moved
to Springfield, New Jersey, they started to attend the Assemblies
of God evangel Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and they
kind of took this to the extreme and would attend
this church multiple times a week, and they would also
go on to label themselves as born again Evangelical Christians.
(10:48):
And those that surrounded the DiPalma family thought that this
was interesting because they did come from such a strict
Italian Catholic family and they had kind of taken this
new level of Christianity to the extreme. There were even
some people that speculated that the Dipoma family were part
of the mafia, and there were people that said that
(11:11):
the members of the Dipoma family were rude and just
weird in general. But honestly, my personal opinion is that
the Dipomas were new to town. They weren't going out
of their way to be social with people, and I
think unfortunately a lot of different religious groups and people
can be very judgmental, and I think that's probably what
(11:35):
was going on here. The Dipomas probably just weren't super
social people, and besides doing their church activities and everything,
I think they just basically kept to themselves, and people
that surrounded them in their neighborhood just thought, for whatever
reason that they were not very nice. But it doesn't
sound like the people that they went to church with
(11:56):
felt this way, So I think it was very much
just them trying to mind their own and probably not
being super social with those that were outside of their circle.
And I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that,
and it does sound like they did have a pretty
good community in this church. There was even a point
in time where Jeannette dated the pastor of the church's son,
(12:20):
and although they did date, he said they never really
saw each other outside of church because they did live
in different towns, so they eventually decided to part ways,
and this was about a month before Jeanette went missing.
This was also at a time in our country where
a lot of people were turning from drugs to religion,
and they were very much involved in the religion of
(12:43):
it all and taking it to the extreme. So again
that the palma's moving from Roselle to Springfield turning on
this new religious leaf. I'm sure there were a lot
of people that judged and speculated, and being the new
people in town, people also didn't really know them. One
of Janette's nephews is quoted as saying that they were
(13:07):
very much looked upon as second class citizens once they
moved to Springfield. So I think the consensus is that
the Dipoma family wasn't very well known in Springfield, but
they also had a lot of speculation and rumor surrounding them,
and because they didn't go out of their way to
(13:29):
be overly friendly to those that surrounded them, they were
just kind of like the black sheep, which is unfortunate
given where our story goes. It is very unfortunate because
I think that has fueled a lot of the rumor
and speculation surrounding Jeanette's death. But I did want to
kind of put all of that out there because I
(13:49):
think it's important for our story and I think it's
important to why this case still hasn't been solved to
this day. So, like I said, said, Jeanette was in
high school. She was just described as a normal girl.
She also worked part time at the community office of
the church, and it was in this job that she
(14:13):
had that she was helping with a church program that
supported at risk youth that were in the area. So
it's obvious that Jeannette had a lot of tendencies of
wanting to help others, being very caring. But she also
enjoyed being a teenager and occasionally she went to a party,
(14:33):
she would hitchhike there, and occasionally she would smoke marijuana,
but she wasn't doing anything that was harming anyone else,
and she really did have a good head on her shoulders.
So we're now going to get into the day that
Jeanette disappeared, which was August seventh of nineteen seventy two.
This was a Monday, and on this particular day, Jeannette
(14:56):
had called one of her friends who was named Gail,
and had told Gail that she wasn't going to be
able to hang out with her that day because she
had some extra chores to do. Now, Jeanette and Gail
had previously made plans the day before to hang out
on this particular day, but these extra chores happened about
because Jeanette had a cousin named Lisa who had run
(15:21):
away from home and she had been gone for about
a month, but for whatever reason, Jeanette's parents didn't tell
her about Lisa being gone because they thought that Lisa
would come back. Well after about a month, they decided,
we need to tell Jeanette what's going on with Lisa.
And when they told Janette, she was obviously upset. She
(15:42):
was frustrated that her parents didn't tell her that Lisa
had run away, and Jeanette reacted in a way that
you would when your parents kept something from you that
you think you should have been told. So she kind
of stormed off to her room. I'm sure she probably
slammed under the door and stomped off as a teenager
(16:02):
would do. So because of this, she was punished and
given these extra chores. So although she and Gail had
made plans, she was going to have to cancel them
because she had these chores now. Gail later states in
a twenty fourteen interview that her and Jeannette had made
plans for that day with two boys that they had
(16:24):
met the night before at a park, and Gail said,
she really isn't a bully, but she just kind of
told Jeanette, like, you can't leave me hanging. You're the
one that kind of got me into these plans, so
I really want you to come through and not cancel
these plans. So it did take some convincing from Gail,
(16:46):
but Jeanette did agree that she was going to leave
the house and head to Gail's house. Now, Gail lived
about eight miles away from where Jeanette did, so, of
course Jeannette decided that she was going to hitch hike.
So it was around one twenty in the afternoon Jeanette
left her house and she had told her mom that
(17:07):
she was going to walk to the train station and
take the train into Berkeley Heights, and her mom, Florence,
was hesitant to let her walk the three miles, but
decided that she was going to let her go. Now,
Florence let her go under the pretense of Jeanette was
going to work and that is why she was cutting
out early on her chores and she was going to
(17:29):
take the train to go to work. Obviously, if Florence
had realized that Jeanette's plan was to hitchhike to Gil's home,
she never would have let her go. So Jeanette decided,
of course, to hitchhike, and she was picked up by
a nineteen year old woman named Robin. Now, this gal
said she typically would not pick up a hitchhiker. It
(17:52):
wasn't something she would normally do, but she said she
saw this young girl standing on the corner with her
thumb out and thought to herself that if she didn't
pick her up, somebody else possibly could, and she was
concerned about her safety. So she pulled over and she
picked Jeanette up. Jeannette got in and Robin said that
they made small talk, but Robin said that Jeannette was
(18:15):
very quiet, and she was fiddling a lot with the
cross necklace that she had around her neck. She could
tell that there was something on her mind and that
she was very nervous. She dropped her off, and unfortunately,
that was the last time that Jeanette would be seen alive.
Jeannette unfortunately never made it to Gail's home, and as
(18:36):
the day turned into evening and the evening came and went,
Jeannette never returned home. Salvator and Florence decided that they
were going to call nine one one around ten pm
because they knew something was wrong, and of course, in
true fashion, police would not take a missing persons report
for another twenty four hours. Now, the depamas did not
(18:59):
really know if Jeanette left on her own, ran away,
or was truly a missing person, and for this the
authorities were not very helpful to the family, and they
unfortunately kind of had to take things into their own hands,
because even if Jeannette did disappear on her own, she
(19:19):
was still just a young teenage girl who should not
be out and about in New Jersey on her own,
God knows where doing, God knows what with, God knows
who unsafe. Not cool, but it does kind of make
sense that her parents felt like this because she was
obviously upset that her parents hadn't shared with her about
(19:40):
her cousin running away, so in their mind, I think
maybe they thought that Jeannette had done the same thing,
and maybe in their mind she was going off to
search for her cousin. I don't really know, but still
I don't really think it matters from a law enforcement standpoint,
because when parents come to you and say that their
teenage daughter who's only sixteen, is not safe in her
(20:04):
home in her bed at nighttime, something could possibly be
wrong in every second counts, So, like I said, the
diplomas decided they had to do something. But unfortunately, no
attempts that were made were successful in finding out where
Jeanette was. Weeks came and went with no sign of Jeanette,
(20:25):
and then, unfortunately, on Tuesday, September nineteenth of nineteen seventy two,
a discovery was made. So there was a woman who
was unpacking groceries at her apartment complex on Wilson Avenue,
and she had noticed that her dog had come out
of the woods and he was carrying what she thought
was a bone in his mouth. Now she quickly realized
(20:47):
that this was not a bone, and it was in
fact a human forearm. She of course called the authorities
and an official search party was formed and conducted. As
they knew there had to be more parts of this body,
and since they knew that Jeannette was missing, they thought
that it possibly could be her remains. One of the
officers that was working with the search party found on
(21:10):
top of a forty foot cliff known to the locals
as the Devil's Teeth, the remains of Jeanette. She was
found face down. She was wearing a blue tshirt and
tan pants, and there were a pair of flip flops
lying on the ground nearby her. Her necklace was missing.
They said that her face was almost gone, her toes
(21:31):
were gone, and animals had obviously eaten away at her remains.
They were able to successfully identify the remains, like I said,
as belonging to Jeanette, via dental records, because the body
was so decomposed that this was the only way that
they could identify. According to several witnesses that were at
the scene, Jeanet's remains were surrounded by a series of
(21:55):
strange and what some describe as possible occult objects. Now,
there are various descriptions of these objects, but it seems
that the most commonly agreed upon account of this states
that her remains were found inside of a coffin shaped
perimeter of fallen branches and logs, and inside of this
(22:17):
perimeter were several small makeshift wooden crosses. While there is
a lot of back and forth and there's a lot
of discrepancy with a lot of people saying this isn't true.
There's people that say, if she was found in a
coffin like structure, but she was found facing down. That
doesn't really drive And there's people that say she was
(22:39):
found with sticks and shrubs surrounding her body because she
was found in the woods. That's nothing satanic or colt
like or anything like that. It's really hard to differentiate
between the fact here and speculation. There's a lot. There
was also some Springfield residents that said that her remains
were found on a pinch, also surrounded by mutilated animal remains. However,
(23:04):
at this point, all of that is speculation on the
part of some Springfield residents and has been debunked by
investigators and said not to be true. And I really
don't like to talk speculation on the pod. But the
reason I'm doing it is because it's very important to
the story, and it has been so sensationalized, and it's
(23:26):
been brought up in every way, shape and form. And
this is one of the most infamous New Jersey cold cases.
So the reason I'm bringing it up is because it's
important to our story. And because Jeanette was so deeply religious,
her family was so deeply religious, they think that she
could have possibly been targeted because of this. So it
(23:48):
all ties into the story. So investigators start their investigation
and they perform an autopsy on Jeanette, but they could
not figure out the cause of death. She didn't have
any bone fractures or bullet wounds or any type of
stab wounds. Her body was so badly decomposed that they
had a really difficult time performing this autopsy. So, for
(24:11):
reasons unknown, the medical examiner went ahead and determined the
cause of death to be strangulation. Now, there were also
people involved in this investigation that said that this medical
examiner wasn't necessarily qualified and competent to be conducting forensic autopsies,
And there's a lot of chatter and rumor that some
(24:34):
of the samples and tests that were conducted at that
time have since been lost, and that's a big problem
in this case. I think that's a big part of
why this case is still unsolved. But regardless of that,
for one reason or another, the medical examiner decided that
strangulation was going to be the cause of death, which
(24:55):
made it more of a suspicious death instead of what
it really was, which in my opinion, was a homicide.
Investigators also went ahead and collected Jeanette's clothing. They collected
her shirt, her pants, her underwear, and they also collected
some soil from the scene where she was found, and
they tested every single one of these items, and they
(25:18):
were able to get some hair from a brush that
was in Jeanette's dresser drawer at home, and they tested
that against the hair that was found on Jeanette's body
and her clothes, and they determined that there was no
apparent foreign hairs that were found on Jeanette's body or
on her clothes. There were some stains that were found
in her underwear and also on her bra and her shirt,
(25:41):
but unfortunately, they said that because of the decomposition, it
was too hard to classify them as blood or semen.
But take that for what you will. It was nineteen
seventy two, and I'm sure that they were very, very
limited with the technology that they had. Investigator was named
(26:01):
ed Kish also very much paid a Jeannette as a
bad girl and a partier, which I'm sure didn't help
the investigation go in the right direction. Now, you guys
know how I feel about this. I don't care if
Jeannette was a bad girl quote unquote and a partier.
I do not care what lifestyle she led. I don't
(26:22):
think Jeanette was a bad girl. I think she was
a teenager, she enjoyed a party or two, and then
she worked at a church, So I don't really think
that matters in the grand scheme of things. She was
still horrifically murdered, and I think that that's what we
need to focus on here, not what she did in
her extracurricular times. So unfortunately, I do think that this
(26:44):
did impede the investigation because the guy who was ahead
of the investigation maybe didn't give it his all because
he had these preconceived notions about who Jeanette was. But
Jeannette was sixteen years old at the end of the
day and her life mattered. So about two weeks after
Jeanette's remains were found, there were several newspapers, including the
(27:06):
Nork Star Ledger and the New York Daily News, that
began reporting about the death. And they were reporting that
Jeanette could have been a victim of an occult sacrifice
and this is all kind of during the time of
the Satanic panic and all of that kind of stuff,
and in their eyes, this sacrifice was carried out by
(27:29):
either a Satanist or a local coven of witches that
operated inside the watch On reservation, which was local to
the area. Even some of the local families and the
church pastor kind of added to this theory as well.
And everybody had a different theory about what could have
(27:52):
happened to Jeanette and who is responsible and the different
items that surrounded her body. And also you really do
have to keep in mind that this happened in nineteen
seventy two, and it happened in Springfield, New Jersey, and
not even ten months earlier, John List had murdered his
entire family, his wife, his mom, and his children and
(28:14):
left them all lined up in a row in their
very expensive Westfield, New Jersey home and had gone on
the run. So Union County was very much reeling from that,
and now they have Jeanette's death. And I think that
the List family murders very much tie into some of
the panics surrounding Jeanette's death, because John List was a
(28:36):
very extreme religious human and ultimately thought that killing his
family was the sacrifice that he needed to make to
save their souls. And his daughter, Patty List was very
into witchcraft and had several books on it, and John
was losing his mind about all of this and decided
to kill his whole family, and it was a whole thing.
(28:56):
If you don't know the John List story, I highly
sugg you look it up because it is a rabbit
hole if there ever was one. So these two towns
are very close together, and it all kind of coincided
around the same time, just ten months apart, between John
List and then Jeanette's murder. So where does the investigation
(29:17):
go from here? So early on in the investigation, there
was a homeless man who was living in the area
who went by the nickname Red, and somebody had brought
up a tip to the authorities about Red because he
lived near the area where Jeanette was found. And they
said that after Jeannette first went missing, he fled the area.
(29:38):
So I honestly think at this point in time they
really didn't have much else other than this tip about Red.
So they investigated him, questioned him, and decided that he
had nothing to do with Jeanette's death. And as time
went by, a little information would come in from the
public and eventually Jeanette's case went cold. Now, the Springfield
(30:01):
Police Department did at one point try to elude that
Jeanette could have passed away as a result of a
drug overdose, but this was debunked because there was no
drugs or drug paraphernalia found on or near Jeanette's body,
and she was not really known to be a drug
user besides the occasional marijuana. Now, this is an interesting fact,
(30:23):
and we're going to get into this a little more
when I give my opinion on what I think happened
or who I think is involved. But Jeanette's purse was
found at the scene. However, for one reason or another,
it was never entered into evidence, and I think this
is a huge part of why this case isn't solved today. Allegedly,
(30:46):
the purse was picked up by a law enforcement officer
and was searched and ended up being put down, and
then later when whoever from law enforcement went back to
get the purse, the purse was gone. My question is,
who the hell has the purse and where did it go?
So it's very obvious that this case was not handled
(31:08):
appropriately by the Springfield Police Department. Things were lost, and
unfortunately the focus of this case was on this very
much being some type of Satanic ritual or something to
that effect, and I think Jeanette very much got lost
in this whole thing other than it being about the
(31:28):
fact that a sixteen year old girl was horrifically murdered
and whoever did it got away with it. That's where
the focus should have been. I'm not saying we can't
talk about the fact that maybe it was a Satanic
sacrifice of some sort, but doesn't really matter. A sixteen
year old girl lost her life in a very horrific way. Now,
(31:50):
there's also rumors that whoever was involved was in or
connected to law enforcement, and that this whole thing was
a giant cover up for what really happened, Although there
isn't really any proof of that, it's still, in my opinion,
worth mentioning because it wouldn't be the first time something
like this had happened and it was covered up by
(32:11):
law enforcement, a police department, anything like that. And this
was a small town, Springfield small town, so it's not
out of the realm of possibility that this could have
been a cover up. And why did the purse disappear?
Who has the purse? So this case goes cold. And
then in twenty fourteen, two individuals named Ed Salzano and
(32:37):
Holly Zool decided to start investigating this case on their
own now. They both lived in Springfield and decided to,
like I said, dig in to Janette's case, and they
actually started Justice for Denette to Palma. They have a
Facebook group and a website. I will link both below.
(32:59):
So during this documentary that I watched, they were asked
about how they thought the satanic element came to be,
how the witchcraft element came to be, and although they
said they don't know exactly who first said it or
when it was said, and how it came to be.
This is a quote. A review of death scene photos,
(33:23):
according to reports, is leading authorities to believe the girl's
deaths may have been in nature of a sacrifice. End quote.
So that was published. That was a newspaper article that
was published. I believe so Ed and Holly do believe
that Jeanette was killed by teenagers that were possibly into
(33:43):
witchcraft and Satanism, and they might have possibly been trying
to pull Janett into it, and she, of course, being
a very religious girl, was trying to sway them the
other way, and she was killed for her beliefs and
as a sacrifice. Ed and Holly have done their research.
They know this case very well, so I do trust
(34:04):
their opinion, and all of this speculation about the satanic
aspect of this case had to have come from somewhere.
They also said that after Jeanette went missing, her room
was searched and she did have a booklet on demonism
and Satanism. So this is interesting because Jeanette was very
involved in the church, She was very religious, and there
(34:29):
has to be something that was bothering her that day.
Due to the way that she was acting when she
was hitchhiking, she was playing with her cross necklace. There
was obviously something on her mind and it just makes
you wonder what was really going on behind the scenes.
Jeanette also kept a diary, and shortly before her disappearance
(34:50):
she had written about two boys who she had met
at a party, and she wrote about how one of
them was basically pouring Southern comfort down her throat and
coming on to her, which again is interesting, probably not
appropriate for this guy to be pouring alcohol down her
throat and then trying to take advantage of her. And
(35:12):
the gal Robin who picked her up that night, said
that she saw after she dropped Jeannette off, she saw
Jeanette walk up to her friends and it was two
or three young guys and one girl. So although Jeannette
had originally planned to hitchhike to Gail's house, that is
not where she was dropped off. She was dropped off
(35:34):
somewhere else with these people who Jeanette told Robin were
her friends, so Robin didn't know any better. Of course,
that's where she wanted to be dropped off, so that's
where Robin dropped him off. So after Jeanette's body was found,
Robin went to the police and told them and reported
(35:55):
all of this, and none of this is written in
the original report. It only talks about the girl. It
doesn't mention the boys at all, which is interesting. Why
doesn't it mention the boys? I have questions. Did they
ever locate and talk to these people? Were these the
people that took Jeannette's life? Were they the children of
(36:15):
law enforcement officers? And that's why it was so badly
handled and covered up. I have questions. We all have questions.
It's all, like I said, speculation, But these are the
questions we have to ask. And why isn't it in
the original report if Robin went and talked to them
and told them, Robin has no skin in the game.
(36:38):
Why would she make that up. Of course she went
and told them what she knew, because she is the
one that technically last saw her alive. Except for the
people that took her life, none of it makes any
sense to me. Like I said, it really doesn't matter
in my opinion, who did this, because whoever they are,
whether it's one person, whether it's two, whether it's a
(36:59):
group of people, they are evil and vile and they
need to be off the streets. Ed Kish, who is
now retired, told the producers of the Hulu show that
there was no basis for the witchcraft theory and is
quoted as saying that the cops are only as good
as the evidence left behind, and in Jeanette's case, there
was zero evidence left behind except for the purse that
(37:21):
mysteriously disappeared. That is me saying that. Not ed. He
also said, quote kids don't talk. Whoever has knowledge, if
they're dead, they're taking it to their grave. End quote.
This case is still very much unsolved, and Ed and
Holly are still very much pushing for justice for Jeanette.
(37:42):
Like I said, I'm going to link their Facebook and
website below, And there's also a petition that I encourage
you guys to sign. It's basically a petition to help
encourage law enforcement to change the manner of Jeanette's death
from suspicious to uahamaide because if the death is just suspicious,
(38:03):
there's really nothing to investigate. We need to change this
manner of death to a homicide. Although this case is
almost fifty three years old, it's still just as important
as the day it happened. And it's important that whoever
did this is off of the streets because they are
a dangerous, dangerous human. They've probably killed since. And if
(38:25):
it was a Satanic ritual, if it was kids just
messing around and taking advantage of Jeannette, we really don't know.
And I think that's why this one is so important
to cover, because there is so much speculation and rumor
surrounding it that Jeanette has kind of gotten lost in
the mix, and I don't like that. I think Jeanette's
(38:47):
life is worth more than that. I think her legacy
is worth more than that. She was obviously a very
good person. She had a lot of faith, she loved
her family, she loved her friend, she was making plans
for her future, and she didn't deserve any of the
stuff that has happened to her, and whoever did this,
(39:10):
I hope that they sleep terrible at night and that
they feel the weight of this every single day, and
every time somebody reports on Jeanette's case, they get a
little bit more and more uncomfortable. I am going to
be posting some pictures of Jeannette on my Instagram and
Facebook pages along with the area kind of where Jeanette
was found. And I do encourage you guys, if you're
(39:33):
interested in more in depth to read the book, because
the book was very, very interesting. There's a lot of
good information in there. Again, there's a lot of speculation
about the Satanic stuff, and there has to be a
basis for that in some way, shape or form. I
do know a lot of those rumors, and a lot
(39:54):
of the speculation was fueled by the pastor of the
church that the Dipomas went to. That's a whole different
can of worms. That's a whole different episode. But at
the end of the day, Jeanette's life matters, and finding
her killer matters and getting it right matters. So I
wanted to kind of just put it all out there,
(40:15):
all the rumors, all the speculation, all the things we know,
but my question is where is her purse and where's
her necklace? Because somebody went through her purse that day
and then it disappeared. Where's the purse? That's my question.
That's like the biggest thing for me is where is
the purse? And why were so many other pieces of
(40:37):
evidence lost or mishandled. Apparently there was some stuff that
was lost in a flood that happened in New Jersey.
A lot of the evidence was lost in that. I
just have major questions about how some of these evidence
pieces are being handled and stored and kept safe from
(40:57):
natural disasters like floods and and all of that. I
have questions. I feel like we should be doing better
as a society at this point in time. So anyways,
that is Jeannette's story. Please share this episode, check out
the Hulu documentary that I talked about the episode I
talked about, check out book. There is a lot of
(41:18):
publications online about this story as well. There's a ton
it is very overwhelming. There's a whole Reddit thread which
you can get sucked into very very easily if you
want some more information and you want other people's thoughts
and opinions. But that is the episode. Check out my
Instagram and Facebook pages for some photos, and I will
(41:39):
see you guys next week for a brand new Unsolved case.
Have a good one bye,
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