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MURDER: Jeannette DePalma

A dog brought home a bone that led to the discovery of a murdered girl and an unsolved case riddled with false accusations.

 


On September 19th 1972 in Springfield, New Jersey a dog took itself out into the woods, only to return with a ‘large bone’. As most dogs do, the little friend was laid in the front yard of its apartment building, playing with the bone. The owner noticed her dog playing and went to check on them, making sure nothing was wrong. She screamed when she realised that what she thought was simply a bone was actually a human forearm.

She called the police instantly. When the attending officers arrived she led them around to the back door of her apartment. There she handed over a bluish bag with a lower left arm that the attending officer noted as having ‘off-whitish nail polish’. Search parties went out into the Houdille Quarry just behind the building, trying to find where the dog could have gotten a human limb.

That same day the search parties found the upper arm and shortly after they found a girl’s body. She was face down, fully clothed in a small clearing on top of a steep hill. The Chief Medical Examiner Bernard Ehrenberg was called out, pronouncing her as dead.

Ehrenberg’s report is quoted as saying that “She was found lying face down with a rock formation surrounding her body.” He couldn’t complete an autopsy due to the state of decomposition which meant that he also couldn’t find an official cause of death. All he could do was mark the death as suspicious. Examination of the skeleton, checking the girl’s clothes and multiple X-Rays showed that there was no evidence of bullet holes, stab wounds, fractures or traumatic injuries. There was no drug paraphernalia found on her or in the area but the girl had a high amount of lead. The coroner suspected that the girl might have been strangled to death.

All that came from the examination were dental records identifying the girl as Jeannette DePalma.

Six weeks prior, Jeannette’s mother reported her 16-year-old daughter missing after the teen went to get a train to her friend’s house but never showed up. There were no leads on the search and this continued into the murder case. The police had no idea what happened aside from rumours that sparked amongst the community.

The Associated Post reported that “authorities said Jeannette’s death may be linked to a ‘coven’ or witchcraft assembly thought to exist in the area.” This helped push the rumours and fear that there was something dark lurking in the town that had just killed a sixteen-year-old. It didn’t help the investigation in the slightest bit. It was also quoted in the same article that Springfield Police Chief George Parsell said “I heard that some people from the department supposedly brought a witch out there to help with the investigation but I know nothing about it.”

Along with the article, locals began to share stories of children holding seances, praying to Satan and sacrificing small animals in the park near Watchung Reservation. Locals also had been calling the spot Jeannette’s body was found Devil’s Teeth for decades.

Another rumour that followed a similar path of accusing devil worship and witchcraft was a personal theory from Reverend James Tate. He was the pastor of Jeannette’s church, he had told reporters that he believed Satanists had captured and killed Jeannette because of her faith. “She was so religious that she would often talk to friends and acquaintances about God,” This Was how the Reverend described Jeannette’s faith, he claimed that Jeannette had tried to lecture devil worshippers about Christ. Despite the Reverend constantly telling the reporters that it was his own personal belief, many others believed what he thought.

Despite all the theories and people looking at the case, Jeannette DePalma’s murder is still unsolved after 50 years, no closer to being solved.

 

(originally posted on medium.com/@natasha.leigh)

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Location: Springfield, NJ, USA

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