Death of Jeannette DePalma

On the afternoon of Monday, August 7, 1972, 16-year-old Jeannette DePalma left her home on Clearview Road in Springfield Township, New Jersey, telling her mother that she was going to take a train to a friend's house.[2][5]

When she did not arrive at her friend's home or return later that evening, her parents filed a missing person report with the Springfield Police Department the following day.

Six weeks later, on September 19 DePalma's remains were found atop a cliff inside of Springfield's Houdaille Quarry. This occurred after a local dog brought her decomposing right forearm and hand back to its owner.[6][7][8]

According to several witnesses at the scene, Jeannette's skeletal remains were surrounded by a series of strange and possibly occult objects.[1][3] Descriptions vary, but the most commonly agreed-upon account states that the remains were found inside a coffin-shaped perimeter of fallen branches and logs, and inside this perimeter were several small makeshift wooden crosses.[9][10][11][12]

Later, some Springfield residents claimed that DePalma's remains were actually found lying on a pentagram, surrounded by mutilated animal remains.[13] Law enforcement authorities have denied that this was true. Further controversy was aroused when it was discovered that the body had been found on a cliff known to locals for several decades as "The Devil's Teeth".[14][4]

The Springfield Police Department began an investigation of Jeannette DePalma's death after an autopsy did not reveal a cause of death.[15][2][5]

Her remains and clothing showed no evidence of bone fractures, bullet wounds, or knife strikes.[16] No drug paraphernalia was found on or around the body. For undisclosed reasons, the coroner suspected that strangulation was the cause of death,[7] leading the Union County Prosecutor's Office to treat the case as an unsolved homicide. The coroner also discovered an unusually high amount of lead in the remains, but no explanation was found for this occurrence either.[5][17]

Early in the investigation, the Springfield Police Department received a tip regarding a homeless man living in the woods near the place where the body was found. This man was known to locals simply as "Red", and it was alleged that he fled his campsite in the woods shortly after DePalma went missing. While this lead initially looked promising, the Union County Prosecutor's Office ultimately decided that "Red" had nothing to do with Jeannette's death.[18]

Investigators continued to attempt to find leads, but due to a lack of tips from the public, along with inconsistent stories told to the police by her family, friends, and peers, the case eventually went cold.[19]

Around two weeks after the discovery of DePalma's remains, several newspapers, including the Star-Ledger and the New York Daily News, began reporting that she may have been the victim of an occult sacrifice[10][20] carried out either by Satanists or by a local coven of witches who operated inside nearby Watchung Reservation.[5]

This coverage was spurred by reports that the body had been found surrounded by strange objects, and by the theories of the DePalma family's Evangelical pastor, James Tate of the Assemblies of God Evangel Church.[9][10][20][12] Rumors about the case set off a panic in several Union County communities, which were still recovering from the shock of the John List murders, which had occurred only 10 months earlier.[11][2]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Weird NJ magazine began to report on the decades-old cold case after receiving several anonymous letters regarding Jeannette's death.[8]

Editor and co-founder Mark Moran began investigating the case and wrote about many purportedly suspicious details, including the allegation that the Springfield Police Department had lost or destroyed the case file.

The Springfield Police Department maintains that the file was lost due to flooding caused by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.[8] Others allege that a copy of it is still on file.[21]

Moran eventually teamed up with Weird NJ correspondent Jesse P. Pollack to write the book Death on the Devil's Teeth: The Strange Murder That Shocked Suburban New Jersey.[4][22] Throughout the course of their research, Pollack and Moran discovered several instances of a possible cover-up, connections to other unsolved murders, and previously unknown suspects.[4]

Despite rumors and innuendo offered by the Springfield Police Department regarding Jeannette possibly dying as the result of a drug overdose, no drug paraphernalia was found on, near, or around her body, and she was not known by friends or family to have used any recreational or prescription drugs other than occasionally smoking marijuana socially.[23] Jeannette's autopsy report makes no mention of the possibility of a drug overdose and medical examiner Bernard Ehrenberg went on record stating he suspected strangulation, as he could not rule it out during the autopsy of Jeannette's remains.[24]

• List of murdered American children
• List of solved missing persons cases
• List of unsolved deaths
• Ricky Kasso