Hey, weirdos! Elena here.
If you're looking to kick back and relax with Morbid, Wondery Plus is the way to go.
It's like having a cozy seat in our haunted mansion.
No ads, just you, and early access to new episodes.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
Life doesn't happen bi -weekly, so why should Payday?
The money you earn can be in your hands today with Earning.
Earning is an app that gives you access to your pay as you work, up to $150 per day, with a max of $750 between paydays.
Just download the Earning app and verify your paycheck.
Then, access up to $100 a day as you work and leave an optional tip.
Any money you access plus tips are automatically repaid from your next paycheck.
Download Earning today, spelled E -A -R -N -I -N, in the Google Play or Apple App Store.
When you download the Earnin' app, type in Morbid under podcast when you sign up.
It'll really help the show.
Morbid under podcast.
Earnin' is a financial technology company, not a bank.
Cash outs are based on your available earnings.
Standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees.
Option to expedite your transfer for a fee tips are voluntary and don't affect the service.
See the Cash Out User Agreement for Details services not available in all states.
This episode is brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition.
Every shelter pet deserves a second chance, and you're making it possible for thousands of them every day.
Because when you feed your pet Hills, you help feed a shelter pet, which makes them healthy, happy, and more adoptable, changing their life forever so they can change yours.
Over 15 million shelter pets fed and adopted.
Science did that. Visit hillspet .com slash podcast to learn more.
Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid.
This is Morbid. What is that squishy thing that you have?
So this is, what is it called?
Is it like a stress ball?
It's called like Neato or something.
Yeah, it's like a stress ball, but I actually got it for the kids for like a stocking stuffer, I think.
Yeah. it's like this little teardrop of a thing that's like go with gel almost and you can squeeze it mess around with it as much as you want and it just turns back into that shape throw me it caught it oh yeah can i have one yeah oh wow can i have one you can like really stretch this oh wow i could work
some anger out on this yeah it's literally called me doe knee n -e -e doe So there's a lot of dog hair on there.
Sorry, that was a really aggressive throw.
That was. Luckily, I played softball, man.
Same, but not as well.
No, these things are great.
I recommend a stress ball for everybody.
I think it should be, they should be passed out in the United States right now.
Actually, I think. Honestly, as you know, this comes out so much later than anything, but our hearts really go out to anybody affected by that plane crash.
it is we are only a couple days out from um the helicopter uh slamming into the passenger plane the u .s airways passenger plane in dc at reagan uh airport and it has been weighing on my mind so heavy because it uh like victims names people are being identified i mean there's still people they're still
doing the recovery right now and we're two days out it is so many kids a lot of them were from like the boston skating um club like locally um six victims were from like only a couple towns over from us i think so it's it's like really it's got wrenching it's i can't wrap my brain around it and i can't
wrap my brain around the response to it i can't wrap my brain around how it happened i just feel i for everybody for i feel really really horrible for everybody involved and it's like breaking my heart every time somebody gets identified it just like shatters me so it really said and if you're in the dc
area i'm sure you're just like feeling it extra hard feeling the weight of that and if you know any of the people that were involved like fuck i'm so sorry so so so because holy shit this seemed entirely avoidable yeah 100 yeah it's been a real bummer we would be very remiss not to say anything no matter
how late this comes out yeah just wanted to touch on that for sure um unfortunately i don't have anything happier to talk about i know i'm trying to think if there's any like a real exciting thing to throw out there oh i think i don't i mean it looks like it's confirmed guys i'm gonna switch gears entirely
just to get us into like a yeah we gotta do a neutral space here a little palate cleanser uh i think matthew lillard is gonna be in scream seven everybody it looks like he is a lot of reports saying he is and he did a little video where he wrote my mom and dad are going to be so mad at me on a piece
of paper so bad and i don't know how to properly contain my excitement i hope he comes back with his wonderful sweater that he wore i that that beige sweater i sweater i hate beige but I love that that sweater was torn to shit he's gonna have so many scars on his face oh he's gonna come back gnarly
when he comes back it's gonna be awesome and do you think so do you think he's gonna come back current or do you think it's gonna be a flashback kind of deal I think I will feel uh a little cheated if it's if it's a flashback deal no same um that would not be my favorite thing that would not be my favorite
if you're listening right now don't do that to us please don't do that I don't think anybody would be happy with that no we need him to come back like no i've been saying since i've been saying since the dawn of time that's you lived through that whole thing john keeps telling me i'm crazy but i can't
wait to go downstairs and rub this in his face no i was sick the other day and whenever i'm sick i watch scream because it's a comfort movie it's how alena raised me um and he he moans after the tv settles he groans like he goes he does a little groan yeah literally yeah that's the exact noise the actual
yeah so he's alive he is and he's cut me he's gonna be in scream 7 guys so when is that supposed to come out i'm ready for it february next year so only like a year from now shit that's crazy i hope it's early february february it is the latest it could be without being the last day of the 27th yeah
wow wow i'm manifesting that it's early february you're like like close close but no cigar close but not at all it's a short month yeah you know yeah there you go i made a really good coffee today i'm in my at home barista era yeah you are you you made a really yummy one for me this morning is it good
i got new beans and they're a lot better yeah the beans were beaning the beans were beaning i've been making this cookie butter latte thing everybody it's so shit you literally just like smear cookie butter around a cup and then you put like a tablespoon of it in your little like glass that you're gonna brew
your espresso over put that put some milk in your cup over ice that espresso shot in there that's it it's that simple it's that fucking simple it's so good it's like a morning treat it is it's delicious i love it i don't need to go get coffee anywhere anymore because ash just brings me one it's true
i'm great i'm very blessed yeah never stressed still still very stressed but i literally as soon as i said that I was like I'm still very stressed as well still the most stressed but very blessed I have a whole new appreciation for baristas though because that shit is not easy yeah it's not it's a science
I had to order like so many accoutrements to go with my fucking I was like oh good espresso machine that's it it was like buy these other five things like you want it to taste good yeah it's like its own thing there yeah but my coffee bar's cute so so that's all that matters well that's all the good
things we can think of coffee neato and uh matthew lillard that's a great thing it's a rough thing sandwich is what it is yeah and um we are going to be talking about an unsolved murder today this one is this is a very interesting case it breaks your heart on so many different levels because we're gonna be
talking about the murder of janette de palma and i do remember this one yeah it happened it was like uh it was like the late 60s early 70s so I'm sure you've heard it like talked about in passing yes so I haven't heard the details it's wrapped up in an era of satanic panic and that plays such a crucial
role in this case to the point where Jeanette's memory really gets lost and kind of clouded yeah I can definitely see that which is really shitty yeah But we're going to tell it obviously the best we can.
And Dave did a really great job with this one making sure to get – there's so many people that thought they knew Jeanette and said all these things about her.
But then her family and close friends said things on the complete opposite spectrum.
And obviously they're the people that really knew her.
So I'm glad that he was able to gather a lot more of those quotes.
Yeah. So let's get into it.
Who was Jeanette De Palma?
She was born August 3rd, so she's a Leo, 1956 in Jersey City, New Jersey.
And she was the sixth of seven children, born to Florence and Salvatore de Palma.
Florence was a homemaker, and Salvatore was an auto mechanic.
Right around the early 1960s, the family moved to Spring Township, New Jersey, which is just a quiet suburb.
It's about 30 miles away from New York City.
It seemed like a perfect place to Florence and Salvatore to raise their kids.
It was quiet. It was far away from a very increasingly violent city life.
One resident said there were no gangs to speak of in Springfield, but there were a few interesting characters in town.
This is iconic. There was Tilly, an extremely short woman with one huge breast.
There was the lady who swept the moonbeams off her driveway all night long.
I'm obsessed. As well as the mailman who ended up living in a dumpster.
Wow. I said, I love an eccentric group of people.
Hell yeah. Sign me up.
Sign me up. what an array there what an array what a smorgasbord of humans yeah that's that is a that's a town yeah that's a that's a group of people it's weirdly giving like stars hollow yeah you know it really is yeah i want to know more about each of those people especially the the lady who's sweeping
moonbeams off her driveway yeah all night i would never sweep a moonbeam off my driveway like tell me go basking it story i know so the de palma family had always been close -knit and relatively private which immediately caught their new neighbors off guard one of their former neighbors said something
wasn't 100 right with that family they were weird and to make matters worse by the early 1970s sal and florence became the center of several rumors around the town because the police were constantly being called to their house former patrolman uh ed kish said sal and florence would get into a fight
somebody would call us but by the time we got there, Florence would turn us away.
Sounded like a lot of domestic disputes were going on between the parents.
Yeah. Rachel Sajewski, Sal and Florence's granddaughter, also remembered the De Palma house as one of constant turmoil and chaos, and she said her grandfather, Sal, was quote -unquote rotten to her grandmother.
Aw. So, there was a lot going on.
That makes me sad. Yeah.
In time, it wasn't just Sal and Florence that fueled the rumors around town, though, but the children a former teacher in town margaret vandrowski said judging by what i heard from the other students janette was a little on the wild side she acknowledged what a lot of people considered wild in the 70s
and late 60s is pretty different from today's standards so she added i don't think wild meant anything other than that janette was not the perfect christian child that her mother believed her to be yeah which like which like who is relatively that's not wild Exactly.
Ed Kish also commented that Jeanette was what they would refer to as a party girl.
He said, I can recall quite a few instances where I had to pull that kid out of the backseat of some guy's car over at Bryant Park.
Oh, man. In my words, she was living her best life.
You know about that.
She's being a teenager.
Yeah. Let her live.
Yeah. While some of those who knew Jeanette back then remember her in the terms of rumors around town, those who knew her best completely rejected the characterization that was being painted of her as like this wild party girl out of control.
Her best friend Gail Donahue said, I don't think that was Jeanette at all.
I mean, she and I both had crushes on these two Italian guys in Berkeley Heights, but I wasn't even allowed to date until I was 16.
so there she's like yeah so you liked people but it wasn't like that yeah jeanette's sister cindy was more to the point in refuting the town elders opinions and no uncertain terms she said this cop seems to be feeding people a lot of bullshit i love how just like to the point she's like no that's bullshit
that's a bunch of bullshit that's a sister right there that is a sister florence jeanette's mother also agreed but disagreed excuse me with the opinion that her daughter was this crazy wild child when Jeanette's body ended up being found in 1972 Florence told reporters my daughter was more a Christian than anything
else I think the most important thing she loved to do was lead children to Jesus she loved to help the kids out with their problems well that sounds nice yeah which was at least partially true because when she wasn't at school Jeanette actually worked part -time at the community office of the evangel
church and a program that was supporting at -risk youth in the area damn so she was giving back to the community and it's really fucked up that everybody's like oh i had to pull her out of the back seat of a car and you know i heard from other students that she was so cuckoo yeah and it's like she was doing
more for her community than most teenagers are to be honest literally helping at -risk children but yeah even detective sergeant sam calabrese the lead detective on janette's case told reporters that janette quote had no record of trouble with authorities see so that's all just like hearsay It's like,
she can't have been too wild because there's literally no reports.
Unless she was like a criminal genius, criminal mastermind out here, getting away with everything.
Which I doubt. And also giving back to her community.
At the same time, yeah.
Yeah. It's really unclear why the locals in Springfield have such dramatically different memories of Jeanette De Palma.
But it's very highly possible that in the 50 years that have passed since her murder, the rumors surrounding her death have tainted the recollection of those who didn't really know her very well.
That absolutely makes sense.
And just like with a lot of female victims of crime at the time, people were quick to question the victim's behavior.
Oh, yeah. And just straight up blame the victim for what happened instead of placing the sole blame on the person who committed the heinous crime in the first place.
Yeah, her favorite pastime.
Yeah. But to those who were closest to her, janette was a pretty ordinary teenager her cousin linda said we were hippie jesus freaks who smoked weed we used to smoke and listen to rock music janice joplin was her favorite damn which is hippie jesus freaks listening to rock music and smoking like that's
literally what you pretty much picture for teenagers of the 60s and 70s absolutely like maybe not so much the jesus freak part of it honestly probably yeah fairly common yeah you know and when it came to the rumors of Jeanette being promiscuous or engaging in heavy drug use, people started saying that kind
of thing. Lisa just rejected those claims with an emphatic, hell no.
She's like, uh -oh. Now in 1970, Jeanette convinced her parents to let her transfer from Union Catholic School to the public school, which was Jonathan Dayton High School.
Former teacher, Margaret Bandrowski, the one we were talking about before, she said, The impression that we had was that Jeanette's mother was convinced of her daughter's religious nature and had removed her from union catholic because kids in the public school needed her example more wow which is nice
but like it doesn't sound like this teacher was janette's teacher because she literally said like from the account of other students and the impression that i had i'm like so did you talk first hand yeah like did you ever talk to her yeah uh it appears her memory could be clouded by the passage of time
because she only knew janette by sight and reputation and then on the flip side of that coin, a close friend of Jeanette's from school, Grace Petrilli DeMuro, said, she never mentioned to me that she was religious or devoted to a Christian lifestyle, although if being a good Christian meant being a good
friend, looking out for you, helping you if she could, that's what I saw.
Oh, that's nice. Yeah.
But how weird. It's so wild that a lot of people are like - Very conflicting ideas.
Complete opposite ends of the spectrum, but it's the people who were not close to her are like, oh this want to hear this fact about Jeanette and then the people who actually knew her like no like she was a good friend and she was pretty fun to hang out with she liked Janis Joplin like Janis Joplin like
that's and it's like that seems more the real thing I think a lot of people in town had opinions of the family yeah as a whole and Jeanette kind of got scapegoated in a way there yep I think so and I also think and we'll come to find out that the rumors like I said in the in the beginning of this the rumors
surrounding the nature of her death yeah really made an imprint on people's opinions it really colored in what what the image of her now is yes exactly since Jeanette's case gained a certain amount of notoriety once details became public it's difficult to discern the real Jeanette De Palma from the murder
victim of local legend which is really sad that is really sad but relying more on the information from her friends and family again she just seemed like an ordinary teenager.
Yeah. Who was a good friend, a good example.
Yeah. Did some stuff for her community, helping at -risk kids.
Yeah. She sounds like a cool girl.
A cool chick. She loved music.
Like we know she loved Janice Joplin.
She loved clothes. She was under her style.
Yeah. She liked boys.
And like other teenage girls, she allowed her parents to believe the best in her, even if that wasn't always what was true at the time.
Yeah, of course. Same.
Who among us. Retweet.
Her friend Grace said, the thing about Jeanette was this.
When you first saw her, you assumed this preconceived notion of her being this tough fast wild girl but when you would start talking to her she was so sweet honest and funny but she didn't take anyone's crap good for her yeah fuck yeah i'm like maybe she had a duality that literally none of you could understand yeah
maybe that's what it was maybe she was so far ahead of her time and that she could that you just couldn't grasp that she could be multifaceted exactly she could lean on both sides of her personality well in the early summer of 1972 jeanette's cousin lisa who she was always really close to, ended up
running away from home.
It was not the first time that Lisa had run away, so the family assumed that she would come back in a few days, and they figured it was best not to tell Jeanette because they didn't want to upset her for no reason.
But after a month passed and Lisa still hadn't returned, Sal and Florence decided finally to sit Jeanette down, and this was on the morning of August 7th, and they told her what was going on with her cousin.
Lisa later remembered hearing about Jeanette's reaction and said she was pissed.
She was very angry that her parents had waited so long to tell her so she left the table and stormed off back to her room which like i don't blame her i'd be pissed if they kept that from me but as a punishment for her behavior that morning janet's mother gave her additional chores to do even though
she actually had plans to meet up with some friends that afternoon i think it was like a you know you got an attitude thing you're you can't act like that yeah like you stormed off into your room now you get an extra chore right so according to her friend gail donahue their plan was to meet up at Echo
Lake Park with two boys from school, and they had both really been looking forward to it.
So Gail was upset when Jeanette called and had to cancel.
Gail said, I'm not a bully, but I bugged her to come over because she put me in this position, and she told me, all right, I'll hitchhike over.
And that was the last time I heard from her.
Oh, no. Yeah. With HelloFresh, you get farm -fresh, pre -portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to you to a step.
Skip those trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable.
That's why it's America's number one meal kit.
Are you tired of figuring out what is for dinner night after night after night, especially on those busy weekdays?
That gets super tough.
Well, it doesn't have to be.
Get dinner done the easy way thanks to HelloFresh.
It is so easy to find time to eat well with 50 wholesome and hassle -free meals to choose from each week that are delivered right to your door drew and i love hellofresh it's just nice i feel like some days it will hit me like halfway through the day like oh crap what am i going to cook for dinner and then
i remember nine out of ten times i've got a couple hellofresh meals in the fridge ready to go the other night i had that moment i was like what are we going to eat tonight and then i was like oh we got the caramelized onion and mushroom flatbreads let me tell you it probably took like five minutes to
prep and like 20 minutes to cook if that we had dinner in about a half hour which some nights it can take over an hour, but not with HelloFresh.
Get up to 10 free meals and a free high -protein item for life at HelloFresh .com slash HelloFresh podcast.
One item per box with active subscription.
Free meals applied as discount on the first box.
New subscribers only varies by plan.
That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals.
Just go to HelloFresh .com slash HelloFresh podcast.
HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit.
There's a lot in life that feels like it should be guaranteed, but it just isn't.
Things like your friends being on their way when they text you OMW or getting out the same number of socks from the dryer that you put in.
AT &T is introducing a new guarantee, the AT &T Guarantee, because there's a lot in life that's not guaranteed.
The AT &T Guarantee means connectivity you can depend on, deals you want, and service you deserve, or they'll make it right.
Visit att .com slash guarantee to learn more.
AT &T connecting changes everything.
Terms and conditions apply.
Visit att .com slash guarantee for details.
Now there are, again, varying accounts of what happened that afternoon, but they all end the same way.
According to Jeanette's sister, Cindy, Jeanette asked her if she actually would come with her to Gail's house in Berkeley Heights, about eight miles away.
Cindy said, Jeanette was seeing a guy named Tommy who I had never met.
She wanted to meet up with him at Gail's house before work at the same time though Cindy was having trouble with her own boyfriend and said she didn't feel like going out so she declined but then on the flip side of the coin when asked about this Gail Donahue denied Cindy's version of events and said
she didn't remember anybody named Tommy that Jeanette was seeing and said Jeanette had never said anything about even bringing Cindy with her this afternoon she said Cindy was a year younger and they didn't really hang out with her often so again very 50 years had passed by the time a lot of these people
started talking or continue talking about this yeah your memory is not going to serve you perfectly well but no i mean no like my memory is terrible yeah i barely remember what i had for breakfast yeah i could not remember any kind of intricate i i don't know because i always think about it i'm like
but if it's like an event like this does it help your memory or hurt it you know what I mean because it's such a tragic and life tainting event you know yeah I don't know it's just interesting like some people are like oh she was going to meet Tommy and then other people are like I'd never heard of Tommy
like who are you talking about yeah but who knows I mean people have secrets that we don't know that's very true while they're living like the memory of Jeanette herself the time that's passed has clouded a lot of people's memories of the day she went missing but the details could have been more important
than just trivial plans of teenage girls given the circumstances in which Jeanette would be found the existence of this secret boyfriend actually could have been a pretty significant piece of the puzzle yeah but unfortunately throughout the investigation and the years that followed no one could actually
settle on whether or not she had a boyfriend they didn't know oh that's so hard because it's like you want like It makes – I get so scared of, like, teenage years with – Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Because you're, like, you want to maintain such consistent communication but sometimes kids throw up roadblocks.
Oh, and they can shut you out completely.
You know, and they can shut you right out and that's, like, my biggest fear.
Yeah, it's scary. It's, like, not having that consistent line of communication where they feel like they can tell you anything.
I think, luckily, these days you're in a lot better of a situation because the amount of shit you can put on those kids' phones – You can track their ads everywhere.
But parents in the 60s and 70s, how the fuck did they do it?
Oh my God, it was the Wild West out there.
Because if your kid wasn't telling you what they were going to say, oh, I'm going to go do this.
But actually, they went and did that, which how many of us do as teenagers?
Oh, yeah. It's like they just went around the dark side of the moon.
You just lost communication and hopefully it comes back.
You can't see them, can't hear them.
And you're just like, well, I hope they come around the other way.
Yeah, it's scary. But those that believe Jeanette did have a boyfriend at this time couldn't remember a name or any details which you know doesn't help no so anyway after finishing her chores that afternoon janette told her parents that she was scheduled to work a shift that night and she made another
call to one of her friends and then grabbed her purse told her mom she was going to walk the three miles to the train station and summit and head to work okay from there she actually planned to take the train to berkeley heights to go see gail to follow through on their plan which you know florence
obviously didn't know she was concerned enough about her daughter walking the three miles to the station by herself but she did agree to let her go had she known that jeanette's actual plan was to hitchhike to gail's house obviously florence never would have let jeanette leave the house that day now
one of the last people believed to have seen jeanette that day was her friend donna i believe it's bladis who lived a few houses down according to donna's husband now, John Rosensky, Jeanette stopped at the house on her way to Berkeley Heights and tried to get Donna to go with her.
He said Jeanette was having a fight with her boyfriend and was looking for a ride somewhere.
According to Rosensky, Jeanette even went so far as to ask Donna's mother for a ride, which Jeanette's friends later said would have been pretty unlikely because I guess Donna's parents didn't really like Jeanette.
Oh, OK. But whatever the case, Donna's mother refused so Jeanette left the Vladis house and continued down the road in the direction of Berkeley Heights okay intending to continue hitchhiking later that night several hours after Jeanette should have returned home Sal and Florence DePalma started to
worry because she wasn't in the habit of coming home late regardless of where she had been and on the occasions where she would have been late she always called them so after a few hours of waiting they decided it was time to start reaching out to some of Jeanette's friends and classmates to find out
if anybody had seen her or heard from her that afternoon but none of the people they spoke to had heard from Jeanette at all now when their phone calls failed to produce any information the DePalmas gave in and they reported Jeanette missing to the Springfield police to their surprise though they were told
that they would have to wait a full 24 hours before reporting their daughter missing that's that's wild to me nothing about that makes sense no Ed Kish said it was strange how runaway situations were not handled the same way back then as they are today.
Back then, runaways did not garner much attention because they left willingly and running away from home wasn't a criminal offense.
But just like so many aspects of the case, there are also discrepancies around the De Palma's call to the police.
Sal and Florence maintained that they reported their daughter missing when they called the police.
But according to several retired Springfield police officers who were with the department at the time, Sal and Florence, quote, claimed that Jennette had run away when they reported her missing.
So there's major discrepancies there.
Yeah and it's like where's the record?
Exactly. Where are any of the records?
That's a big question.
That's the thing. Clearly the rumors around town about the De Palma family and Jennette's behavior started affecting the case almost immediately.
Even as they took down the report the responding officers noted that Sal and Florence were giving short and vague answers.
Former officer Don Schwartz said there was talk in the station house that they weren't very cooperative it was like let's keep this quiet and not be out in the public with it the family didn't really come out right away and give interviews or anything as far as i know at least okay which is like they
don't have to yeah they don't want also they're already the center of a lot of rumors in town this is probably the last thing that they want getting out is that their daughter's now missing you know like you're going to the police the people who are going to help you here yeah i mean look at how people
are already talking exactly they don't want to just fuel it.
And you don't know what you would do unless you're in that position.
Yeah. And also at the time of Jeanette's disappearance again like late 60s early 70s parents weren't encouraged to react as quickly as they would be today.
And it wasn't customary for ordinary people to reach out to the media and arrange press conferences or other media.
Yeah it's very different.
That's something that happens more often now.
Yeah. But of course even though the behavior of parents in the wake of their kids disappearance is always pretty relevant to investigators we all know that people deal with stress in different ways it's so tough it doesn't always seem rational it doesn't always make sense but it doesn't mean they're
guilty and that's the thing it's like it is 100 human nature not a great part of human nature to look at how somebody's reacting to something and deduce what you will deduce from it that is human nature of course nobody's a bad person for you know being like i don't know they see me we all do a little
weird we all do it yeah again not our best our best you know quality quirk that we have as a species but there it is but also we know that it is not always helpful and it is no not always indicative of what they are actually feeling people in shock act crazy they will just straight up shut down and it
looks like nothing is bothering them when in fact their entire nervous system has just gone into orbit and it's actually just the body's response to this trauma because our bodies self -preserve in these situations we're designed to do that we are and everybody's body does it a little different or they
react to it a little different or they allow their body to do it in a certain way right so it's like i know it's easy to do that and again human nature and sometimes it's dead on oh yeah sometimes how they react to it and you go that's fucked up and then yeah it was fucked up it just can't be the only
thing look at Chris Watts.
Chris Watts is a perfect example.
Haunting. I watched that man's haunting fucking little interviews and I said that man knows something.
Yeah. I knew the second.
There is a science to some things.
Yeah of course. Like body language and all that.
For sure. That people do but it's such a tight it's a it's a dangerous and tight line to walk.
Yeah for sure. Exactly.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
I know it's it's that's not even a soapbox.
No it's because it comes up a lot that's just straight up yeah but regardless of how cooperative springfield police remember sal and florence being at the time they were never considered suspects and no one investigation wise ever really thought they had anything to do or that tells you anything they
they weren't the reason that their daughter ran away or that they knew anything exactly yeah the rumors about the de palma family also might have contributed to the relatively underwhelming response from the community once word got out that janet was missing that's pretty shameful it's really sad that's
pretty fucking shameful that community she's a teenager that literally just missing disappeared into thin air and then when you find out what did happen to her you're like cool that nobody was searching yeah years later william nelson said it was my understanding that janet just ran away uh he was just
one of many people who either assumed or had heard that janet ran away rather than she actually disappeared yeah mary star another neighbor at the time heard the news framed in similar terms she said i did hear the rumor that janet was running away janet would not have surprised me if she had run away
from home janet would have been more inclined to go against her parents i think see even more more mystery because it's like everyone's got a different idea of what she would or wouldn't have done even if it was a kid which i'll tell you right up at the shop it's not she didn't run away no that's not what was happening
but it's like so many people could have pictured her running away yeah it's just I just feel bad that she's been categorized in such a way after she's unable to defend herself and especially when like show who she is yeah and when it's clear that like obviously she was dealing with a lot at home I mean like
no matter what the police were getting called to that house frequently and she's you know like their own granddaughter said that sal was pretty awful to florence yeah like that's like she was seeing that and dealing with that you should have empathy for her yeah and it doesn't really seem like a lot
of people did at all she's a child yeah she's still a kid and like this is a teenager no matter what she's troubled if that's going on and if that's the case then she does need help and everybody needs to be because no matter what even if she did run away she could still be in danger yeah like she's
a kid on the run absolutely yeah it's unclear why rumors of janette having run away persisted as long as they did according to authors mark moran and jesse pollack florence and salvatore de palma made no reference to janette having run away during several interviews that they gave to the elizabeth daily
journal and the new york star ledger each time insisting that their daughter had simply left home to visit her friend in berkeley heights but either way the rumors absolutely affected the response to her disappearance after several days passed with no word from janette or the springfield police department
either like they called reported their daughter missing the springfield police department said okay you have to wait a full 24 hours before we're going to do anything about this and then more days passed and they didn't do anything it makes no sense so sal and florence ended up organizing their own
search party for their daughter but by then it was too late yeah i mean which is like the first 48 hours are like the most that's why that always astounded me that it was like we have to wait 24 let's cut that in half yeah let's let's cut our time that we could find them in half when do you know when that was that they
established that the first 48 are the most crucial it had to have been after this time period because clearly nobody was following yeah because that's actually such a good point yeah because you're literally just chopping it in half throwing those 24 hours for the wind so it says then this is according
to google's ai there isn't a single definitive date marking when the first 48 hours concept was established as crucial in investigations but it's generally considered to have gained widespread recognition and application with police practices over the course of the late 20th century due to advancements
in forensic science that makes and investigative techniques that highlighted the importance of immediate evidence collection in the initial stages of crime i love that in the beginning they were like like that that it came to a point where they were like shit we should probably pay attention it would be
awesome if we collected evidence right away now like it's just like who came who's like who was like light bulb oh if evidence doesn't get to be disturbed and decayed it might be more helpful we might do better at this who before that was like we should just let evidence get tainted for a little while
yeah and then we can just work harder to try to figure out who did it a lot of people actually a lot of people were in that bot like what in that boat i meant to say what an aha moment for that person to be like wow the earlier we do this the easier our job is and the funniest thing to think about too
is not funny but like ironic that they were probably met with pushback 100 it's like the first person who was hey we should wash our hands if we work in a hospital and people were like throw that guy in jail it's a fucking crazy person telling us to wash our hands well this is about to take a very i
mean it's already very sad but it's about to take an even sadder turn so on the morning of september 19th a resident of the newly built baltus roll gardens i looked up how to say that so don't come at me it was an apartment complex one of the residents opened the back door to her apartment for her dog
who immediately darted out of the apartment in the direction of a nearby quarry Unbeknownst to its owner, that dog would return a short time later, carrying in its mouth a badly decomposed human arm, which it dropped in the yard just before heading back into the apartment.
Holy shit! Again, unbeknownst to the owner.
Oh my god. Just moments after the dog had entered the apartment, the building superintendent stepped outside and made her way down the steps onto the lawn, where she then found the arm lying in the grass.
officer don schwert recalled the call came in around 11 o 'clock dispatch radioed me that this woman had found an arm on the lawn of her apartment complex where she lived i honestly thought it was a prank i figured it was going to be a mannequin's arm because this lady was always being harassed by a few
kids that lived in that apartment complex but when he arrived at the complex he quickly realized that this was not any kind of prank he said i looked at it and i said to myself this is human i could see the fingernails and the color of the skin oh my god so So Officer Schwart grabbed his camera and took
several photos of the arm before returning to the car to report what he had found and request additional officers be dispatched to the scene ASAP.
The superintendent told the officers she thought it was entirely likely that her dog, who she also let out earlier that morning, had found the arm in the woods and brought it back to the yard.
But when the officers saw the dog, they knew that probably wasn't what had happened.
Schwart said, the lady brought me over to a puppy.
So he didn't think that that puppy would have been able to carry the arm, most likely.
OK. I guess. Yeah. Although it was unlikely that her dog had found the arm, the notion that a dog had found it and dropped it in the yard did seem like the most likely scenario.
So the officers went door to door looking for other large dogs until they finally found one resident with a large Dalmatian.
Schwartz said, that tenant told me she had let her dog out to run earlier that morning.
and we determined that this Dalmatian had most likely brought the arm home from wherever it had been roaming.
So the officers packed the arm into a cardboard box and returned to the station, all of them considering whether or not they just found Jeanette DePalma or part of Jeanette DePalma.
That afternoon, the on -duty members of the Springfield Police Department broke up into small teams and they started combing the wooded area behind and around the apartment complex, including the Hoodai Quarry.
Located a short distance from the apartment complex, the Hoodai Quarry was this large open area that actually at the time was being mined for greenakite, which is a mineral rich with cadmium, I think it is.
It was also a spot known to be popular with teenagers and other locals, including the Springfield Police, who actually used the area for target practice.
Schwartz said, We were over by the quarry searching the bed that had been laid out for Interstate 78, when we found the upper portion of the arm so they found that's the other part of it once they found the upper portion of the arm investigators assumed that the rest of the remains couldn't be far so they
spread out across the quarry and kept on searching a little after 6 p .m remember that arm was found earlier in the morning at about 11 it took them until 6 p .m schwart and one of the other officers found janette's badly decomposed body about 400 yards from the road at the top of a steep cliff that the locals
referred to as the devil's teeth so that ended up gaining a lot of traction later even though it's literally just a made -up name for a fucking cliff yep by locals wow janette's body was laying face down at the top of the steep incline just a few feet from the edge actually she was found fully clothed
in a blue t -shirt and tan pants and a pair of flip flops were lying on the ground nearby schwartz said i immediately remembered that this was the description of the clothing janette de palma was wearing on the day she went missing also on the ground near the body was a woman's pocketbook detectives
at the scene opened it hoping that they might find something inside to identify the body but it contained nothing of note okay janette's remains had been exposed to the element at that point for nearly six weeks six weeks had gone by.
Wow. So they were badly decomposed by the time they were discovered.
Remember, she went missing in August.
Holy shit. Yeah. To make matters worse, the parts of the body that were uncovered, primarily her feet, ankles, and head, had been eaten away by animals and insect activity.
Other than that, there were no apparent signs of trauma or an immediately recognizable cause of death at that point.
But still, in a press conference the following day assistant union county prosecutor michael mitzner told reporters janette's death is being treated as a homicide by the police but they confirmed they had no leads zero of all the details of the case that are shrouded in rumor and myth none are more
heavily debated and controversial than the scene where janette's body was found according to don schwert quote there was a wooden cross over her head that was made out of two sticks there were also some stones arranged around the top of her head in the shape of a semi a semi -circle almost like a halo
okay which would have been strange absolutely Schwart was just one of the officers at the scene who found the arrangement of sticks and rocks to appear intentional to Howard Thompson who arrived at the top of the hill shortly after Schwart the objects around Jeanette's body looked like quote -unquote
witchcraft oh personally I don't know any witches that do anything like that but have you ever grown tired of searching for your favorite movies and tv shows across numerous streaming accounts it's so frustrating to have all your favorite shows live across multiple logins and apps i'm like trying to
watch one show i'm like wait what's my login here On Prime Video, though, you can add over 100 subscriptions like Max, Apple TV +, and Paramount Plus all in one app.
Experience the convenience of having your favorite subscriptions in your Prime Video account with one login and one password.
There's a hundred more premium and specialty subscriptions to unlock a world of movies, TV, and sports all in one app.
Super duper easy to not have to log in to like 45 different streaming services.
Check out subscriptions on Prime Video.
Morbid is sponsored by Squarespace.
Squarespace is the all -in -one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.
Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place and all on your terms.
Squarespace makes it easy to sell access to content on your websites, like online courses, blogs, videos, memberships, and you can earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall.
All you have to do is set the price and choose whether you want to charge one time or if you want to do a subscription for access.
You can connect major social and multimedia accounts to your website in a few clicks as icons, direct links, or embedded feeds, your choice.
You build visitor trust while updating content only where you need it, extending your brand's footprint.
Sellers can also sync their product catalog directly with Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Google to reach more customers and reduce the steps for a purchase.
Head to squarespace .com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, www .squarespace .com slash morbid to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.
A few minutes later, a number of detectives arrived at the top of the hill and effectively took over the investigation from that point forward schwartz said once the detective bureau came on the scene we were pushed aside and everything became secretive they treated the rest of us patrolmen like a bunch
of dunces anyway the silence is deafening yeah because of the steep incline detectives opted to remove janet's remains by using a stretcher lowered down the cliff face by means of a rope and pulley system so this was tough yeah once on the ground dr bernard erenberg pronounced the victim dead and the body
was taken by ambulance to sullivan funeral home for an autopsy during the autopsy the following day dr erenberg had the body x -rayed for any evidence of bone fractures or any other skeletal damage but it seemed like there was none there also appeared to be no external signs of physical trauma there's
no bullet hole no knife that they found so ultimately erenberg concluded that the body was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death that sucks but suspected that strangulation could have been the cause okay that evening Jeanette's body was identified by a dental comparison which is just
whenever that happens I know that adds such a layer of like sadness well like the reason I said that sucks is like just to not know what happened to her yeah like her family absolutely and that must be tough to not have it be 100 concrete yeah you just don't know like you just left to wonder you'd wonder for the rest
of your life exactly sucks now according to ed kish the autopsy was poorly performed by dr aarenberg who kish felt was not trained or experienced enough to conduct pathological exams oh good yeah awesome that's great kitch said bernie aarenberg was not competent enough as far as i'm concerned to have been
conducting forensic autopsies Wow.
And he might have been right because it does appear that the autopsy wasn't held to any rigid standards.
And a lot of the samples and tests conducted at the time have since been lost.
Wow. Like completely lost.
I don't know how that happens.
So there's no hope of determining whether she had, you know, drugs in her system, alcohol in her system, anything like that at the time of her death.
Wow. And I'm not saying like that she did drugs.
But if somebody like poisoned her.
She was poisoned. Yeah, exactly.
Drugged her, did anything like that.
Exactly. there's that's a huge piece of the puzzle missing how do you lose samples like that couldn't tell you we couldn't if we tried in the morgue we couldn't have lost that shit if we tried yeah well in the absence of any evidence or viable leads the investigation and press coverage quickly turned
to the more sensational and dubious acts aspects of the case within a week of the discovery the local press started reporting that the police were quote investigating the possibility that black witchcraft and Satan worshiped were involved in Jeanette's death or you could just look for a murderer yeah
you could do that because usually that's who kills people I mean 99 .99999 if not 100 % of the time it's a murderer who murders people it's not a ritualistic sacrifice it's not usually it's just they want to murder someone hiding in the woods yeah it's not the devil reincarnate it's when had how like
how many times has it been a random witch coven hiding in the woods that has been responsible for a murder i would say approximately zero like let's let's be like real here like be so for real right now like be so for real and start looking at actual suspects instead of this bullshit that did not happen
this is only going to get and that's why this is unsolved it's exactly to this day oh and it's just wait just wait it's exactly why according to one article in the daily journal of elizabeth searchers who found the girl's body said pieces of wood were crossed on the ground over her head and more wood
framed the body like a coffin no one ever said that i was just gonna say where did that one ever said that these rumors and reports were often contrasted with quotes from jeanette's own parents describing their daughter as somebody who quote tried to lead others to jesus the black magic angle though
was quickly associated with the murders of the list family in nearby Westfield, which had happened less than a year earlier.
In that case, if you're not familiar, five members of the List family were shot and killed by the father of the family, John List, who went on the run after committing those murders.
In the search of the List home, investigators found a, quote, number of books on witchcraft in 16 -year -old Susan List's bedroom and were, quote, trying to determine if the crimes had any link to a coven or witchcraft group thought to exist in that area nope just her mentally ill father yeah and it's
like who killed the entire family like let's not make a joke of it because you're being like oh it's got to be witches no it's just it's usually just a man it's usually just a man and like that's statistically true like can we stop can we please stop the fakery here it doesn't help anything it makes
cases like this remain unsolved and it just makes a mockery of it all and it makes their family and their loved ones have to wait wait for so long if forever to get answers when they could have got it just makes me like do actual detective work don't stop looking to the forces of the dark world that's
silly and there's no time for silly no like come on silliness is for fiction stories now any belief that jeannette's death was related to the list case would soon be abandoned but the witchcraft angle would remain the central piece of this case and that's where we get to the satanic panic of it all
so let's talk about that for a little bit throughout the 80s and early 90s a wave of what we now refer to as satanic panic swept across north america fueled almost entirely by rumors and widespread religious fears in a very broad sense satanic panic was what's known as moral panic or this widely shared
fear among a group or society that some negative influence poses a threat to the safety and well -being of one particular group in this case apparently New Jersey yeah the majority of New Jersey just New Jersey the majority of these panics usually surround kids or young adults and they tend to come out
during times of generational shifts and social transformations in the case of satanic panic in North America rumors and false reports of these ritualistic child abuse at schools and daycare centers fueled the belief that secret groups of witches and devil worshipers existed across America and were involving
young people in their rituals for evil purposes.
Yeah, for sure. We found that to be the case in a lot of these cases, right?
Even though there was actually no evidence of any such groups or activities existing in the US, and tons of tons of people were swept up in false and completely outrageous claims that in some cases led innocent people to become outcasts in their community or led people to even be jailed for long periods
of time based on rumors and lies and just tom motherfucking foolery like ridiculous be so for real yeah now the origin of the satanic panic of the 1980s is actually most often traced back to the book michelle remembers which was a supposedly true account of satanic ritual abuse which was published in 1980
and while it's true that michelle remembers kicked off the widespread fears of ritual abuse it's fair to say that the roots of the panic can also be found in america's suburbs in the 1970s according to the independent scholar sarah hughes the panic was part of a backlash to social movements in the late
1960s and 70s that challenged white patriarchal norms in simpler terms to older generations the culture among young people in the 60s and early 70s was so foreign and posed such an existential threat that they just had to attribute it to some outside nefarious dark influence and theories about this supposedly
evil influence reached into suburban homes were ultimately supported by the release of movies like rosemary's baby the exorcist the whole nine yeah just basically depicting the lives of ordinary americans being upended by witchcraft satanic influence and diamonds diamonds it's never a Damon.
In suburban New Jersey, it wasn't just the discovery of Susan List's books about witchcraft that ultimately took Jeanette De Palma's case in a strange direction.
The books were part of a series of events, actually, that spurred the fears of Satanism in this area.
Because the year before Jeanette's death, the drowning death of 20 -year -old Patrick Newell in Vineland, New Jersey, about an hour south of Springfield, shocked the region when it was initially reported on.
The case prompted one reporter to ask, is it really possible that the pleasant town of 48 ,000 people could harbor Satan cults?
Wow. No. The answer is, no.
The reason they asked that is because early in the summer of 1971, Patrick's body was discovered floating in a pond in Millville, New Jersey.
His hand and feet were bound with adhesive tape and upon investigation, two of Patrick's closest friends, Richard Williams and Wayne Schweikert, told police that Patrick Newell quote belonged to a satan worshippers sect and felt that he had to die violently in order to be put in charge of 40 leagues
of demons i i don't know what to say i don't know what to say about that i'll tell you more about what they said so you can you can just sit tight yeah so they said he enlisted the two of them to aid him in a quote satanic ritual where he would be the sacrifice And they would push him in the pond and allow
him to drown so that he could die violently and be in charge of this league of demons.
During the investigation, police did find a, quote, considerable amount of literature on satanic cults and witchcraft in Patrick Newell's bedroom.
And they also learned that, among other things, this is very sad, he had previously attempted suicide on multiple occasions.
And this is a trigger warning for animal cruelty.
he had quote sacrificed hamsters by shaking them up in a wooden box into which sharp nails had been driven oh my god yeah awful finally and perhaps most importantly investigators learned that quote hard drugs were involved in a party prior to the killing so what you're seeing here is that this actually
really doesn't have anything to do with quote -unquote satanism or black magic or any of that dumb shit that people want to label it with it has to do with mental illness and trouble drug abuse situation yeah drug abuse like there's plenty of factors here and i can tell you that satan isn't one of them
no he's absolutely not patrick newell's death was ultimately listed as a quote suicide with assistance and would likely have been assumed to be a very tragic result of drug abuse slash mental illness had it not been for reverend harry snook pastor of the chestnut assembly of god snook spent a lot of his time
doing outreach to local teens and adolescents preaching in what was described as a quote fervent pentecostal style of old -time religion so very like theatrical and shouty like scare tactic -y kind of preaching that's literally nightmarish to me it is it's very scary it's what you would picture i think
in a lot of horror horror movies yes you know yeah he claimed that he quote talked with half a dozen or more young people who confess to having taken part in devil worship rats i like how you went i just had to like your preacher voice that's my preacher voice uh no i no i i don't believe him i think
i think you scared these kids yeah i just don't believe him i think unfortunately this is the only thing they're allowed to do so they don't get to use their imagination elsewhere so you're giving them the perfect place to use it and ever heard of the Salem witch trials that's exactly exactly what I
heard of it you know where that started bored kids yeah bored kids being influenced by religious trauma essentially yeah exactly but he wasn't the only one who claimed that satanism had infiltrated their region reverend joseph uh dunchez i believe a pastor at the first presbyterian church quote estimated
the number of young devil worshipers in vineland at between 80 and 90 oh okay i don't know thank you what fact that's based off of but he said i'd say 80 or 90 give or take you know what let's take this guy into one of those contests where you get to guess the amount of jelly beans in the jar and you
get something special yeah he sounds really good at it i think he might be because he can he can pick out the devil worshipers yeah just like you're 90 or so just like the jelly beans boom it's unclear where either of these bozos got their information because like i said earlier there has literally
never been evidence of an organized group of devil worshippers active in the united states no uh but in most crimes where ritual sacrifice or other occult symbols are involved it's obviously the result of mental illness unfortunately drug abuse or teenage pranks exactly or just somebody knowing that a bunch
of bozos will latch onto it if they put a pentagram at a crime scene yeah and that it will take them completely in the wrong direction leaving that person to scoot scoot scoot away and never get looked at exactly i mean let's it's like you're giving them oh you're giving them a route to take we gotta rub
some neurons together and see what like it's so easy give it a shot it's so easy it's literally the look over here yeah it is tactic it is and everybody looks over there it's like look over there yeah stop looking over there yeah this person's running away and they're getting away with it now well in fact
snook and john uh dunchez themselves and even the investigators and patrick the patrick newell case acknowledge the prominent role that drug abuse played in the lives of these supposed devil worshippers yeah so it's like let's blame it on what is actually the root cause here and actually try to do some
work on that yeah maybe exactly instead of being like it's the devil and it's like no they're just seeing things because they're on many drugs yeah exactly maybe you should help maybe make this not a thing not an epidemic yeah in november 1971 richard williams and wayne schweikert pleaded guilty and they
were both sentenced to a maximum term of 10 years at the correction center at yardville for their role in patrick newell's death however while their sentence may have effectively brought that case to a close the supposed influence of satanic and occult beliefs would just go on to spread around the state
and become the defining aspect of Jeanette's murder, at least as far as the police and the press were concerned.
Yeah. Although the cases of Patrick Newell, the List family, and Jeanette De Palma weren't linked in literally any evidence or any fact, they still became associated with each other because in the absence of evidence at all or a suspect, investigators turned to the more sensational rumors of devil worship
and this youth culture that had, as far as adults could tell, gotten completely out of control.
Yeah, it was nuts. It's also unknown whether it was Don Schwart or one of the other officers at the scene, but somehow the news about the supposed evidence of witchcraft at the site where Jeanette's body was found was leaked to the press, which just renewed and fed the fears of the occult being in suburban New
Jersey. In no time at all, Jeanette's murder was being mentioned alongside other evidence of the occult in the area including police having found quote burning candles and a bowl of blood and feathers and pigeons with their necks snapped at a nearby reservation and elsewhere in the area somebody said
they found a dead goat that they believed had been sacrificed.
This is always what happens in these cases.
It's as soon as it gets mentioned this must be the devil worshipers all of a sudden people are finding dead animals yep it's like they weren't finding them before the same thing as soon as it gets mentioned all of a sudden dead animals all over the place the same thing happened uh close by to us um
was it mariana ruta yeah yeah she was killed by a monster of a human being literally and everybody claimed it was like the satanic cult but it's like no it's a monster of a human being yeah and they were like oh we're finding all this stuff around the bridgewater triangle and it's all so spooky and blah
blah blah it's like no this is a human being who's responsible for this maybe we should go find them can we stop blaming it on some like it's it's just ridiculous it's so annoying but within a few days of the new angle being pursued in the press sal and florence de palma both like we know deeply religious
people were being quoted in the press as agreeing that their daughter quote could have been the victim of black witchcraft and satanism There were also rumors that, with no leads to go on, the Springfield police had actually consulted with an area witch on the case.
Florence told a reporter, we were afraid the witch would try to bring Jeanette back from the dead.
The police, on the other hand, refused to comment on the rumors of a witch being involved in the investigation.
Police Chief George Parcell said, I heard that some people from the department brought a witch out there, but I know nothing about it.
It's getting kooky.
It's getting real kooky.
like like guys can we put the nose to the grindstone here and actually look for the person who did this let's look this is a teenage girl who was murdered in the woods let's look for evidence let's look for evidence let's try to find the person who did this to her let's look for look at the boyfriend
angle start talking to more people like what are you doing yeah you had a perfect angle going there that there might be a secret boyfriend go look into it why did that suddenly come to an end it's like nah it's probably not that it's probably just this fictional group of witches that we've come up with it's
like no or the devil there's like real avenues to go down here yeah and no one's going down them yeah meanwhile Jeanette's just her case is just going to be unsolved to this day it and it is within a few weeks of her body being discovered Jeanette went from being the victim of a tragic and mysterious
murder to the potential victim of a quote, sacrificial rite of black magic, with both theories being treated as equally valid, which is insane.
In the span of just a few days, the news about the arrangement of sticks around Jeanette's body spun into something far more sinister than they were originally described to be.
Reverend James Tate told a reporter, the logs and branches were supposedly arranged in a manner that would have indicated occult symbolism and perhaps a human sacrifice.
I'm sure Jeanette herself was not involved in anything like that but i know that many of the other young people in this area are involved can i name one nope could i point one out to you absolutely i can tell you maybe 10 to 12 people but i'll tell you yeah give me that jar of jelly beans i'll tell
you Yeah. your skin is literally thirsty for the peptides and nutrients packed into this powerhouse product.
It's like a protein shake for your face, replenishing depleted skin and restoring it to that firm bouncy state that we're all after.
Proteiny is a breakthrough moisturizer that delivers daily moisture.
It visibly firms and strengthens the skin, and it improves the appearance of skin's texture and tone, fine lines, and signs of sun damage.
I love this product.
It feels super lightweight on your skin.
It is not heavy at all.
And it's that gel cream consistency.
It just delivers daily moisture, especially when it's so dry out.
Lately, my skin was feeling dry, but I added the Drunk Elephant Proteiny Polypeptide Cream and now I am hydrated and living my best life.
Discover Proteiny Polypeptide Cream at Ulta Beauty stores and also at ulta .com.
Like the religious leaders in Vineland, Reverend Tate was convinced that Springfield had some sort of organized group of occultists or satanists operating under the cover of darkness though why he believed that is entirely unclear and doesn't seem to be supported by literally anything other than rumor because why
not but further complicating that theory was that while don schwart and one or two other officers remembered seeing what appeared to be that intentional arrangement of sticks at the crime scene the cross and like the semicircle other officers remember no such thing huh ed kish said of the discovery
she was found lying in the middle of the woods for christ's sakes there were sticks and stones everywhere yeah like hello that's the thing and even don schwart who was one potential source of the story eventually told reporters from weird new jersey magazine he had quote no memory of any sticks or branches
framing janette's body like a coffin huh so he was like i wouldn't go that far well and even if there was a cross what does that have to do is it upside down yeah what does it have to do that's it to me that looks like a grave marker right exactly that's a christian grave marker to me like you know
like i don't understand why the cross would immediately lead you to satanism unless it's upside down also if anything i feel like that would just lead you more to the pathology of your killer exactly like look more into that and like take really look at it you know don't look at it and go satanism look
at it and be like why would they do that right did they do that but unfortunately profiling was no of course not far off but it's like just common sense like just start thinking with your brain you would think and then to hear all these dudes be like some of them are like yeah it was a cross and a semi
-circle around her head of of like like a halo stones and all that and then the other one to be like there's sticks and stones everywhere i didn't see anything like that how did one part like how did somebody see that and another person at the scene didn't it obviously wasn't that obvious if it was there
which makes me think it wasn't intentional and it was just sticks looking a little weird in the woods i mean you could walk through the woods and find any number of arrangements of sticks that are naturally occurring that would make you be like whoa ever since i've seen the blair witch project i see
those in the woods all the time yeah and it's like so it obviously wasn't if they were really setting this up so that when she was found everybody a main attraction would have said it they all would have saw it because it would have been obvious it would have been made to be obvious it would have been
made to be something you saw yes to me it sounds like it wasn't it sounds like it could have been either yeah not intentional and just organically there or it was like an afterthought well that's exactly it yeah given the general imperfection of human memory especially in this case yeah and the number
of times that this story changed over the years we'll likely never know why the sticks and rocks were interpreted as evidence of witchcraft or perceived to be arranged in a way that associated them with the occult.
And that's something you would remember.
But the thing is, in the year leading up to Jeanette's death, New Jersey residents had followed two highly unusual murder cases, both of which had some supposed supernatural or occult influence on them.
There you go. So under those circumstances and the growing fears of the occult influence on american teens it's possible that the officers there saw what they wanted to see yeah or interpreted random the random arrangement of nature as something that it wasn't just out of fear yeah but regardless of their
motives or their reasons the belief that janette's death was somehow related to devil worship stuck to the case and not only influenced the investigation but ultimately how janette was remembered by those who didn't really know her very well yeah to some like reverend james tate janet's devout faith
made her a target he said she was so religious that she would often talk to friends and acquaintances about god which we've already heard is not the case i'm like her own friend some of her closest friends like um i think it was gail donahue earlier was like i didn't even know that she was religious
so yeah that's interesting that's really crazy but it was his belief that janet had met some local occultists you know of course just out and around town yeah And she, quote, tried to lecture them about Jesus, the person these people detest.
Their fanaticism arose and they killed her.
So he thought that whilst hitchhiking or, you know, going about her merry way, Jeanette came across a group of occultists, how she would have known.
Who hate Jesus now.
They don't believe he exists.
How she would have even known that they were occultists.
I'd love to know. Maybe they were dressed in all black.
They were wearing black.
Shrouded in. They had black fingernails.
Come on. Yeah, like weird makeup.
Yeah, come on. uh and she said can i can i tell you about jesus and they were like absolutely not we're gonna kill you they said that guy i fucking hate that guy that's literally they don't believe in that when has that ever happened that'd be the whole shtick also when has that when ever happened and also where did
this happen where did she run into a cultist in the woods and no one's just in the woods excuse me just in the woods i forgot there you know i'm always thinking that i'm like the the devil's teeth or whatever yeah that you know we better not take a walk through the woods because we're running to some
occultists it's actually we're just waiting it's usually why i head into the woods yeah let's go but it's like friends that doesn't make no literally any sense no and again to have they are spinning this narrative that is so infuriating that's like her friends are literally saying i didn't even know
she was that christian yeah like i did she wasn't out here she was a cool person like preaching to all of us like it just she was just a good person but of course the reverend has to be like she was trying to tell them the word she was out there spreading the word of god and it's like she wasn't first
of all if she was she was but it's like second of all if everyone close to her is saying that's not doesn't sound like so i don't think she was just randomly doing it one day and again i don't know and for them to be sitting there saying this like i don't know janet de palma no i know what i am finding
out about her through people that knew her and these people who don't even know her are sitting there being like i know exactly what happened she was out there preaching the word of god to some occultist that she met randomly in the middle of the fucking woods and it's like no no what are you doing
like what to derail a case like this with this nonsense is criminal is infuriating it should be criminal because she she should have been the focus and the focus became look at it they used this oh yeah they used this that this like particular branch of this community yeah 100 use Jeanette's murder
to further their whole conspiracy yeah of the youth of today is getting corrupted by satanists that are wandering around in the woods and it's like okay so we're just gonna forget about Jeanette 16 year old Jeanette who got murdered right we're just gonna forget about her exactly because now she's furthered
your narrative well it's like your case that you just covered Bobby Dunbar it sold papers yeah salacious weird shit sells papers and people take that and they run with it and then the truth of what the poor victim went through is literally lost forever and their memory yeah they just check their own
humanity at the door yeah before they go and print this shit yep they pick it up on the way out but it's like it's so gross it is they used her to further this bullshit conspiracy she became a satan worshipers wandering around the forest and it's like nope the focus should be on Jeanette and what was going
on here and figure out who did this to her exactly and they didn't well and on the completely flip side of thing other people took a far less sympathetic approach to the story and just associated Jeanette with hippie culture and blamed her murder on drugs wow even though there was literally no evidence
evidence that she had done drugs wow and it's like okay and if she had done drugs does that mean she deserves to be murdered in the middle of the woods to some people like damn yeah that's nice that's cool apparently everybody's checking their humanity somewhere yeah i don't know what was going on jesus
on these parts well about a year into the investigation a young man referred to as terry rickle i don't know if that was like a um pseudonym it kind of seems like it is um he He approached Ed Kish, Officer Ed Kish, and said he had some information about the case.
According to Terry, there was a local unhoused man who went by the name Red Kira, I think it is, and he was living at a campsite at the quarry very close to where Jeanette's body was found.
Terry said he was a weird -looking guy.
He looked like an old hippie.
Kish and his partner went out to the campsite and found that it was abandoned, but eventually they did locate Red Kira, and they interviewed him about the murder.
apparently I'm like I'm like just on the suspicion that he lived there and looked strange yeah that's the thing it's like really I'm like I feel like we're doing the same thing over and over again in this case we're not getting the best results Kish said I want to say that red was cleared and that he
was no longer a viable suspect I was told this was because of the differences in age and lifestyle between red and Jeanette but I'm like it can't have just been the difference between age and lifestyle because yeah older people in very different lifestyles murder people in younger very different lifestyles
literally every single day yeah so i there's more to that but yeah he was cleared the press continued to focus heavily on you know of course the supposedly occult aspects of the case going so far as to literally interview members of the church of satan for their perspective on the case behind the scenes
though investigators were getting nowhere of course and And with the exception of Red Kira, no new leads had been uncovered.
Zero. By the following year, the case had gone entirely cold, and the story slipped further and further from the front pages of the local papers until the press just stopped reporting on it at all.
Because satanic panic eventually did die down.
Wow. So, I mean, they really showed their ass on that one.
Oh, yeah. They were just like, well, we were using it to further this narrative that sold papers and got everybody riled up, and now that that's over, Yeah.
We don't really care what happened.
People are interested in something else now, so let's put that to rest.
That's not shameful at all.
Just forget the memory of the 16 -year -old girl who was murdered brutally in the woods in the middle of the day.
Yeah. Well, by the late 1990s, Weird New Jersey magazine started writing about Jeanette's case, and through their heavy reporting on the case, they sought out anybody associated with the case for comment.
The resulting articles attracted the attention of several members of the Springfield community who remembered the case, and soon anonymous letters started coming into the weird new jersey office jesse pollock uh correspondent for the magazine remembered we got a tip from a relative of one of these other
victims found in the area they said you better take a look at this because the mo's are very similar now this is the first time you will ever hear actual investigation into this and it's compelling but it's literally like weird new jersey it's done by weird new jersey good for them we love i was just
gonna say weird uh there's so many like different state offshoots there's so much yeah like but like good for them yeah and it's like i can't believe it came down to them having to do it yeah one when you hear what they found you're like how was that not investigated at the because it wasn't important
because this is genuinely so compelling yeah none of this was important it was furthering that narrative of satanic panic which is devastating yeah jesse Jesse and his writing partner, Mark Morin, I think it is, started digging into similar murders committed around that part of New Jersey in the few
years before and after Jeanette's death.
And they discovered a number of murder victims who were very similar to Jeanette.
Jesse said all were young, attractive brunettes with the same hairstyle.
Come on. All were between 16 and 24, average height, all thin, Caucasian, and all supposedly picked up hitchhiking.
all were killed by obstruction to the airway all found dead arranged face down in a wooded area come on there are not that many motherfucking coincidences in life everybody let's be real literally same mo same victim profile same body disposal same method of killing all in the same area within a span of years
before janet was killed when janet was killed and after janet was killed i'm shook by the fact that they were they just ignored all of that weird new jersey had to be the people that reported on this and like decades later decades later that the police and i'm like there's no way that the police that didn't
come across their desk that you know all of these thin young attractive brunettes with the same hairstyle between a very similar age i think they weren't looking similarly to see if there was anything anything connected i think all they were looking for across the face though all they were looking for you
don't even have to look for that well because it didn't fit their narrative so they're not going to look at it because it doesn't fit what they were trying to get across they went looking for ritualistic crime scenes which you're not gonna find things to do with satan and things to do with like leading
a fucking band of demons and all that shit all the really important stuff that you should look at when you are trying to solve a case of a 16 -year -old girl's murder.
Meanwhile, look at all of that.
And instead, you're supposed to be saying, huh, are there any victims in the area that are of the same profile, were killed in the same way?
Are there anything that we can link to this?
None of them did that.
Tons. None of them did that because it didn't further that narrative.
It's insane. There was a preconceived idea of what they wanted to get across when Jeanette was killed and she was used for that purpose.
How wild is that, though?
Now I want to get these guys on the same podcast i'm like let's fucking solve to talk to them jeanette's case man if you come on the show guys because you're at any time that's very impressive that you guys were insanely impressive yeah and we love your books we literally have a whole stack of them
in the office we do we've used them for like cryptids and shit before too yeah they're awesome but back to this story at the time of the murders law enforcement agencies operated independently and like we've seen in a lot of cases they were not very good at communicating with one another And even if they
had been able to, the concept of a serial killer was still a few years away from entering the public consciousness.
So it's really actually unlikely that they would have had the resources and relevant information that would have led them to that conclusion way back then.
but still jesse pollack and mark morin believe one man was responsible for several of these murders committed in the area during the 70s including janet de palma pollack said either one person committed all these crimes or the other option which is a lot scarier is that you have multiple killers operating
in the same area at the same time with the same mo yeah which is even scarier even scarier i don't think that's the case i think somebody was operating in and around new jersey had a victim profile was murdering these young women in the same manner and disposing of their bodies in similar ways and got
away with it because everybody was like siten siten i agree i think they are on to something huge now more than 50 years have passed since janet's body was discovered at the quarry and police have made no additional progress toward closing this case to some the occultist and uh devil worship angle is still
a sufficient explanation for janet's death and to them i say grow up yeah do truly seek help yeah but others like pollock and morin believe the more modern theory that janette was murdered by an experienced killer who would go on to kill again and again and again and then there are those who hold on to
their biases and preconceived notions in 2019 don schwart told a reporter they were probably doing drugs and she od'd wow despite a complete lack of evidence of wow literally no evidence to that but sure but yeah totally the circumstances of jeanette's death honestly at this point might not ever be
known and her killer may never be identified in a 2024 interview ed kish summed things up and agreed telling a reporter he didn't believe the case would ever be solved he said the cops are only as good as the evidence left behind and in this case there was virtually no evidence left at the scene and according
to kish kids tend not to talk and whoever had knowledge of what may have happened would be taking it to their graves wow that's devastating unreal that that is the turn that that story took i just like i and i i hate hearing it's probably never going to be solved because i refuse to believe that i refuse
to believe that too i think i think the work that the guys over at weird new jersey did has some fucking legs yeah and i think you get the right eyes on that i mean there has to be some kind of dna left at one of those scenes and genealogical dna is so fascinating to me i think it really is some of them
going to solve so many more crimes and if you can connect to those things yeah connect a few of those figure out who it could be start pulling that backwards and see if you can connect her back to it start there's got to be a connection there's got to be like it's there's got to be something i mean the thing
that's awful about janette's case is that they really i mean they lost vital records and it looks like they half -assed the autopsy they half -assed the autopsy i don't even know i don't think anything was even discovered that's pretty shameful you know but i really really hope that they can do something
i know at one point i think as recently as 2019 um they wanted to test her clothing but it was being left up to decision uh and i don't know if they came to a decision about that come on guys i know i know it's push to get it done like come on like look at the Lady of the Dunes look at the Somerton man well
those are the things those are the things that give you hope they've so old cases that even were never gonna be solved yeah even older than this case yeah I mean the Golden State Killer obviously not older than this case like around but still that was a massive one it's like holy shit that guy thought
he was gonna live Joseph James D 'Angelo whatever his name is thought he was gonna go live the rest of his days boom interrupted let's interrupt the motherfucker yes who took these people's lives away yeah absolutely and let's because then it would it would take away from the whole satanic panic and occultist
thing of it all it would be like nope that's stupid remove that part of the story remove it yeah get rid of it can be what we've been saying it is which is bullshit and a distraction it's a monster of a human yeah oh so sad damn so sad but i really hope that at some point it got solved yes and in the meantime
we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you don't go tell the weird new jersey guys that we want to have them on to talk to them about this case because how great would that be mark and jesse let's go are you listening are you listening love your book oh my god
i love your work Thank you.
If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad -free on Amazon Music.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.
expose the shadowy underbelly of power.
Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets to advance U .S.
intelligence during the Cold War.
These aren't just old conspiracy theories.
They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today.
The stories are real.
The secrets are shocking.
Follow Redacted, Declassified Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to Redacted early and ad -free right now on Wondery+.
