The Devil's Teeth /// Part 1 /// 179 | Forensic Files

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let's talk some true [Music] [Music] crime [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] this case begins with a teenager who goes missing several weeks later in September of
1972 a body is discovered at top a cliff high above an abandoned Quarry in Springfield New
Jersey later it was determined this was the body of the missing teen Janette dma along with the body it was said that
cult related items were recovered from the area rumors said that she had been resting on a makeshift altar in the
woods The Cult like items were rumored to have been occult symbols carved from branches and
logs the perpetrator or perpetrators of this murder are said to have left the teen's body posed with the crude
symbolic artifacts surrounding the body the only thing missing from the young girl was a gold cross that she
always wore around her neck these stories would certainly Point toward a possible ritualistic murder
committed by Satanist or a deadly coven of witches weeks after the body was found
local newspapers published articles that fueled speculation and scared the locals
with headlines like occult symbols reportedly surrounded the body and Witchcraft implicated in DePalma
murder these articles told us that living inside this quiet conservative Community was a group of bloodthirsty
satanists then the story vanished from the local newspaper papers the Police Stopped releasing
information some say the police quit working the case some say they didn't want to work the case janette's family
wanted and clearly deserved answers but would they get any did police have any suspects and if so why hold back so much
information information that could lead to a possible arrest and conviction was there a cover up for all
we know this could be like so many other murders that happened in communities back then where the cops figured out
pretty quickly who did it but in the absence of reliable forensics they simply could not build a solid case
against the offender the offender off the case went cold years later the story became local folklore and the rumors
have never quieted the murder of Janette dma is very bizarre and still unsolved this case is not known to most outside
the state of New Jersey could the unsolved abduction and murder of this teenage girl be the result of a police
cover up is is janette's case one of the first examples of satanic [Music] Panic or was Janette one of the first
victims of ritual occult murder in Suburban America this is the case of the devil's
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] tee September 19th 19 1972 Springfield
New Jersey at around 11:00 a.m. 44-year-old police officer Don shro he's responding to a strange police call he
is on his way to the brand new Gardens apartment complex on Wilson Road the strange call that came in the apartment
building superintendent had found what was reported to be a severed human arm this was found lying in the grass near
some bushes right by one of several entrances to the building building this was not officer DA's first day on the
job and he was trying to figure out what to expect to see when arriving on the scene probably see an arm Don and the
other officers had responded to several calls not only from this apartment complex but from the same superintendent
that had made this call see a group of teenage boys that lived in the apartments well these kids suck and they
decided for some reason to pick on the superintendent and always played pranks on this poor woman actually one repeat
prank that they seemed to enjoy was to take trash bags full of rubbish and cut the bags open and then they would dump
the trash all over the lawn and then the lady would have to clean up their mess real dick noses as he got closer to the
apartments officer Don thought well you know here we go again this time the boys
had stepped up their game and he was going to have to give them a Stern talking to because it appears this time
the boys to scare the poor lady to death they stepped up their game by severing an arm or leaving something that would
scare the woman into believing she saw a seed arm you know he might have to use the strong arm of the law to put some
fear in these boys maybe like a mannequin with uh some ketchup they need to stop picking on this woman well
anyway the the Springfield police they've got better things to do than to continually respond to calls at this
apartment building so officer Dawn he pulled up to the building and got out of his car he approached the building
looking for the superintendent but before he could locate her he spotted the item that had fueled the police call
there lying in the grass was a forearm officer Dawn could immediately see this was not the arm of a mannequin like he
had expected to see not a half arm he saw the fingernails he could tell that the arm had been out in the elements for
quite some time the flesh appeared to be almost leathery and kind of maroon in color
Don got out his camera and took several pictures of the find and then he called into the station telling them you better
get some detectives out here we have a human arm lying in the grass and it's no joke so I'm assuming this arm didn't get
there by these pranksters correct well that's the weird thing Captain because that is the first thing that jumps in my
mind how did this arm get here lying in the grass near this building right and I
don't know that they ever truly answered this if you look up like little short Snippets about this case they will tell
you that a dog had somehow found the arm and and brought it to this location leaving it there in the grass mhm I
don't know that they fully explained that uh the police anyway in their investigation yeah the issue was the
lady that made the initial call that her dog was very little like a small dog yeah but what they found out later was
that there was a Dalmation that was um owned by somebody on the property and that
the denomination would roam this area all the time so they kind of assumed that that's how the arm got there yeah
cuz they started knocking on doors of the tenants that lived in the building just asking questions what people had
been doing that morning and such and like you said that Dalmation was a large dog and the one lady says I let my dog
out this morning and he just runs wild and then I let him in whenever he's done whenever he comes back and so I think
they kind of just put two and two together and came to this conclusion that maybe the dog
had gone off into the woods or in some other location bringing it back to the apartment complex the other strange
thing that that occurs early on in this police call is once the detectives and some other officers get there it's not a
long time that they're there before one of the detectives spoke up and says hey I think this could be the arm of Janette
DePalma you know which seems like a very strange thing but we have to keep in mind we're talking about 1972 in
Springfield New Jersey and from my understanding it's not a huge town you know there's not a ton of people that
are living there and at the time Janette DePalma she was the only missing person
listed in Springfield right and I'm assuming that they could tell that it was a female hand well it did have the
uh the fingernail polish um but we both know that doesn't mean anything no uh but uh what does that mean we we both
know no we grew we grew up when the goth thing came was was going crazy yeah we had we might have had more guys with
finger nail polish than girls in the high school that's possible in the in that old classy high school well you
probably had more guys wearing nail polish and College Tech than the college prep program well it took some time
Captain but a search was organized they had to call in a favor with another Police Department the Springfield
Department was was very small and had limited resources back then they did not have a K9 unit or a search dog so they
brought in an officer with a blood hound and they had a team of about four or five officers some of them were actually
Off Duty Officers that had volunteered their time to help in the search the official search started around 300 p.m.
that same afternoon just after about 3:30 p.m. the search team entered a wooded area this is off of Mountain View
Road they spent some time kind of you know getting deep into these Woods mhm The Searchers passed over a hill crossed
a creek and then came to a quarry now this area this property actually belong to the howdale
construction materials company and according to the officers this area would not be accessible to any normal
means of traffic that's their word so for clarification on what that may mean is just this simple they would not
expect hikers to be trampling through this area mainly because of where it was located it was when they got near this
Quarry area that they found what they belied to be a small top portion of the arm that was earlier located at the
apartment complex and they're assuming that the dog again a dog went to the woods took the arm took it back to the
apartment complex and so that this piece would have fell off on its Journey Back
and remember officer Don that we spoke of earlier well he was one of the officers that had volunteered his time
that afternoon to join the search so he along with another officer started up what officer Don would later call a very
Steep Hill he says that it was steep enough that he had slipped several times on his way to the top mhm at the top of
the hill there was a flat area it was on this spot that the two men had located a
body the body was lying face down the flat area where the body was lying was about 12 ft around on the body a blue
there was a blue t-shirt and tan pants but no shoes or socks they did find a pair of flip-flops nearby now excuse me
for for saying this I give a little warning here it's a little gross but animals had ate most of the flesh off of
the feet and around the head of this body according to the officers that found the body the clothing was in so so
shaped but the body was very deteriorated mhm they couldn't tell if it was the body of a male or a female
and as they had anticipated the body was missing an arm the remaining arm was resting under the head and the head was
pretty much just a skull by this time with long dark matted hair even though they couldn't tell outright determine
the gender of the body they suspected it was a female body because of the long hair and they had found a pocketbook
nearby well yeah even though this is like the height of the hippie movement right or around well it's in the hippie
movement there was what the officers would say a bizarre arrangement of sticks and stones around the body some
said that the sticks had been arranged to appear like crosses that there were some Stones arranged around the head in
a semicircle and according to one of the officers it looked almost like a halo around the body's head one of the
officers told officer Dawn that in his opinion this looks to him to be the work of
Witchcraft when the detectives arrived the they kicked all of the Searchers and the officers off of the hilltop they had
to wait for the coroner to show up to officially declare the body as dead before they could remove the body now
the hill was so steep captain that they had to use a a fire truck uh to remove move this body and the way that this was
explained to me is that on one side you know you you pretty much have a steep Cliff or a steep hill mhm and then on
one side you have a cliff so just a complete drop off and what they did was they took the fire Tru and they backed
it up to the cliff portion and they took the ladder and they shot it up towards the top of the cliff yeah I mean it's
it's kind of like when you're moving a mattress right inste going through the house you go through like the bedroom
window right right that's a good explanation I guess the officers just determined that the hill was too steep
to to take it down the hill this way would be faster and probably preserve the body the best that they
could now once they get the body back to uh to check it out to try to find some evidence figure out who this person is
and the cause of death it's crazy Captain because they weren't able to determine a cause of death there was no
cause of death determined and while the coroner was going to continue to work on this aspect
of the case right the detectives they were charged with trying to figure out who this body belonged to the
identification of this body from the autopsy were they able to speculate anything I mean I know that they
couldn't determine you know for sure like this is how the person died but sometimes they
can say well it's possible that this person died this way okay so my understanding is that the the the body
had been deteriorated very badly mhm and that this did not allow them to come up
to come up with a 100% conclusion of how this person would have died now they say
that they believe that this person was strangled um and but they can't prove it they can't prove it and there was
actually no like ligature marks to to lead them to that conclusion what my guess is is that they have no they don't
have any obvious signs of of a bullet wound you know or any signs of blunt force trauma or something that would
have fractured the skull or fractured other bones uh and typically you would see that with bullet holes or you would
see that with stab wounds or being struck over the head there was nothing to indicate that anything like that had
happened to this person before he or she expired or if there was any indication of that it possibly could have been
postmortem as well correct now to kind of paint a picture of how badly decomposed this body was and and how
possibly long it had sat there in the woods M the clothing of the person and the the body of the person it had laid
there so long that they kind of started to become one and was very sunken into the ground that the body had laid on so
I mean when they're seeing this situation they're seeing this site it's obvious to them even from somebody with
an untrained eye that we're looking at a person that's been there in out in the elements for quite some time so as we
said the the detectives are charged with trying to make an identification of this body and the one
detective decides you know what he's he remembered what one of the other officers said Remember the officer said
hey this could be the arm of Janette DePalma well he remembered hearing that and he says you know what I'm going to
start there so yeah I mean obviously she's the only person that's missing in your town reported missing and then
furthermore they kind of believe that they're looking at the body of a a possible female victim right so this is
a good starting point so what they do is the following day the day after the body
is discovered they have a meeting with janette's dentist okay now the way that I understand this is that the dentist he
was new to the area and he was kind of the young dentist right and he was working for this older dentist that had
been in the area for many many years years skeptical and I guess what's skeptical well I'm anti-dentite
so next thing you know you'll be saying they should have their own schools yeah uh anyway so I guess he said that
he was janette's dentist because the way that this situation that they had set up
was this that the the older dentist he took all of the older patients and anybody that was younger and new well he
got the new patience so the dentist had to go over to the funeral home and do an
examination on the body's dental work and comparing it to records that he had brought with him regarding Janette
DePalma and of course made a positive identification that this was in fact the missing teen that they had been looking
for she' had been missing for almost 6 weeks you ever spend any time in a funeral home only when I'm attending a
funeral well I had a friend that lived in one okay and uh we had a sixth grade dance in the at the the funeral hole
Yeah it was you know romantic in a creepy way wow no it's not no it's not it was like my girl no I think that's
what you do when you want the children to remind their parents that hey this is what happens when you don't vote for the
school levy no it's just it was just a party it wasn't a school dance so we got to talk about Captain the devil's teeth
and uh for those of you out there listening you know the title of the show was the devil's Tee It was wasn't just a
clever name that the captain came up did you just say Devil's teeth I think I think I did Hey listen to our new
episode The Devil's teeth but the reason why we have this is this title is because Janet DePalma her body was found
at the top of the cliff the cliff that they found her body at is now known to the locals as the de Devil's teeth now
our story takes place in 1972 but how this spot got to be known as the devil's teeth well you have to go back a bit
according to locals back in the 1920s it was known as The Devil's skull this is because some kids found a large natural
depression in the blue stone that was up there so this is a like fairly large Rock Hollow and in the spring and summer
months it would fill up with water and the kids would sit inside of this kind of like a like a bathtub or a hot tub uh
hot tub yeah in the Autumn months and when it started to get cold out the place became you know dreary kind of
kind of like Ohio does when the Sun goes away in in November and you don't see it
again for a few months but it is said that you could often see buzzards circling above the spot because like
little rodents and stuff would would fall in there and drown in the water and the the birds would pick their bodies
out of there but during times where there would be enough time between rainfall The Rock Hollow would dry out
and it would start to take on the appearance of the inside of like an inverted half skull so the kid the kids
started calling it The Devil's skull so then years later when the construction materials company purchased the land and
started mining the area they would dump loads of Wati Rock along the edge of the
devil's skull so the rows of this waist Rock started looking like teeth like lining the jaw of the devil's skull so
that's how it took on the name of the devil's teeth and remain it's still called that to this
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[Music] today all right cheers me matey all cheers I was just admiring your little
uh fancy coaster thing you have over there on your desk during the beer break yeah it's cuz uh there's some beautiful
people that listen to the show and they like to send me some things well Captain
I want to talk about victimology here because we know that Janette DePalma is our victim and we know that she was
found September 19th 1972 yeah she was last seen on August 7th 1972 this is like 6 weeks before
they find her body apparently she was supposedly going to Gail Donahue's home this is a girl her same age good friend
of hers somebody that she had hung out with often uh apparently I guess Gail lived approximately 8 Miles Away now the
story goes like this because there's some conflicting stories amongst people close to Janette on what her plans were
for the last day that we know that she was possibly alive and the one story comes from Gail
Donahue herself she says that that morning one of the two had had phoned the other one either Janette had called
her she had called called Janette right the plan for the day was that Janette was supposed to come over to Gail's home
because there were two boys that they were interested in that they had made plans with and they were going to hang
out that that afternoon mhm apparently I guess that Janette says I can't make it you know I know we said
we were going to hang out but I can't make it my mom has some chores and things that I have to do and I I won't
be able to to get over there right Gail says look you know we've been there well
I don't know that all of us have been there but I can recall times where you're supposed to make plans and you
got two girls two guys making plans and if your buddy doesn't show up now you got a weird situation right because
you're thinking maybe the girls won't show up or maybe they only want to hang out cuz he's there whatever your day is
kind of ruined if somebody drops off especially at that age yeah it's an awkward time
so Gail kind of gives Janette the business like no we made these plans with these guys you should figure out a
way to get over here right make it happen Janette before she hangs out hangs up the phone she says you know
I'll get over there what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk to my mom I'll hitch hitchhike a ride to your place
okay which the hitchhiking was a lot more popular back then yes of course where the story start to vary a little
bit is we have janette's sister janette's sister said that on that Janette had asked her if she wanted to
go with her to Gail's home and this is this is where I should I should clarify this is where the story gets a little
strange she says that she wanted to go to Tommy's home okay Tommy is a boy that I guess Janette was interested in and
she told her sister that Tommy lived near Gail Gail would later say that that's not you know that's not the case
she was coming to my home yes we did know a boy named Tommy but he was the guy I was interested in right what I
think we have here Captain is we have an older sister who ultimately does not end
up going with Janette and I bet you there's I bet you both stories are probably true in some sense we probably
have an older sister that maybe really only knew part of the facts of why Janette was leaving or why she wanted to
go where she was going yeah but this happens all the times especially with teenagers you know you have a situation
where people's stories don't line up but also it's like you're trying to their perceptions are off of what the
truth is it's not that they're technically lying they just don't really remember the facts correctly yes and we
have so we have the sister that was asked to walk with Janette the sister ultimately turns her down she had
something else to do we do know that Janette reached out to another friend asking her if she would like to walk
with her to the to Gail's home yeah well wasn't there a report that the mom was going to drive her that's
correct typically her mother would drive her down to a train station and then she
would take the train to wherever she was going maybe it was a work later that day
or to a friend's house now remember we said that her friend Gail Donahue's home was approximately 8 miles away so in
this situation she would need to get three miles to the train station and then make it the rest of the way to her
friend's house it's it's the summertime it's August 7th she tells her mom hey it's nice out I would prefer to walk so
she's got three miles to travel on foot she's reached out to a few different people who can't go with her or don't
want to make the trip with her so she's on foot alone for these three miles and I don't know if it matters at all but I
also heard that it wasn't a nice pleasant conversation it was the mom said I'm going to drive you and she she
said uh I'm 16 now I'll just you know I'll hitchhike well it's interesting that you bring that up because of a
couple of points and one that I will wait to get to later but one point is this though it's pretty common when you
know when we're talking about victimology and what kind of person was Janette and what kind of family did she
come from right it's widely reported by people that knew her and knew her family
that there was a lot of kind of back and forth between between mom and daughter that that Janette was kind of a tough a
tough girl and it sounds like that the Palma family was a little tough all of them and maybe hard-headed would be a
word that we could use um well I mean I think it's safe to say I mean I don't want to assume too much but I think when
a when a younger boy is becoming a man the 16 to 18 range he has some issues with the father mostly and when when a
when a a teenage girl is becoming a woman she starts having issues with her mother well if in fact they did argue
about whether she would walk or ride to the train station mhm that would not be their only argument that I have heard
reported of that that day of the day that she went missing apparently her cousin had run away from home several
times and I don't get the sense that she was running away from a home where she had abusive parents or she was being
mistreated it was more of she's a teenager and she was kind of wild and running away might be going and staying
with friends for a couple of days without permission from the parents yeah well on this day her parents had
informed her that her cousin had been gone for like a week or two like like a a longer time than than expected and
previous from previous times again this is a different time so wasn't very it pretty common that at 18 you moved out
back in the 70s and so you'd have a lot of situations where somebody would you know I'm I'm going to live on my own at
at 16 or 17 that wasn't super uncommon and at some point during the course of that
morning janette's parents told her that her cousin had been missing for a while and Janette got upset with them and kind
of gave them the business because she's like well why did you wait so long to tell me yeah so they they could have had
more than one argument that day regardless she goes off on foot by herself she's got to make the three mile
hike to the train station now we do know that she was seen walking several people
had seen her walking in the direction of the train station that yeah but that walk is going to take her about 45
minutes yeah and she's last seen not terribly far from her home where she's Crossing an intersection this is widely
considered the last sighting of Janette dma on the day that she went missing now
let's talk about the dma family I've been told that this is an upper middle class area the neighborhood that she was
lived in and the neighborhood that she was last seen in regarding her family a lot of the people have referred to the
family as quote unquote weird and that would make you think that there would be something very strange
with this family I don't know that I found a lot strange with with what they they accounts of why this family was
weird what do I mean by weird so this was a small community right mhm and these the diplomas were not very social
they rarely went out they didn't go out a lot the adults didn't the mother and father M and when they did go out they
were not social to the other people in the community this regarding you know when you take into account the time
period and the small community that they lived in this was considered to be strange mhm there was the other
consideration that there were Mafia rumors that maybe the father was in the mafia this was an Italian family a large
Italian family I believe they had seven or eight children yeah and they seem to have some money and so I think some
people in the neighborhood and in the town thought that they were involved in the mafia well they had a little bit of
money cuz they weren't going out all the time there you go so and and look there's a difference between you know
maybe they were quiet some people assume all this person's quiet so they're rude
mhm and so you know I'd like to know if there was a you know or were they outwardly just rude to people there were
a few police officers now retired obviously that state that they had responded to the home several times on
police calls for what well it I guess they don't really know the police don't really know because every time they
would arrive they would get the same story that there was a problem now there is no problem we're all fine here mhm
they believe that there was probably some yelling and fighting between the parents and at times maybe one of the
parents would call or one of the children would call the police and then whatever issue had warranted the call
was resolved by the time the police would arrive but we do have several police officers stating that they
believe and recall that happening several times now regarding our victim Janette DePalma what kind of kid was she
what kind of girl was she that is it's that's the debate yes it's all over the shop you've you've read these things too
it's like depending on who you talk to you get one completely different version of somebody else you know somebody
else's account and if you take all the different versions of who she was we could literally talk about that for
maybe four or five hours it's that debatable all right well let's start no let's not because I found that
portion of when I was looking into this case I found that portion to be quite boring and I felt that it was quite
really cuz I I actually thought it was interesting well the thing for me was I didn't think it helped me understand the
case any better maybe that's why I thought it was boring but I found that it was interesting that you know one
person would be like oh she was a real wild girl you know she was always she was always you know hanging out with the
greasers and doing drugs and and she was a fast girl she spent a lot of time with
a lot of different boys yeah there was rumors um a lot of cops were saying that you could find her at like Lovers Lane
and stuff like that she would always be in somebody's car and then you have other people that other girls or boys
her age that would say the complete opposite they would like well she might have smoked a cigarette every now and
then maybe even some weed once in a while but I wouldn't consider her to be wild and I didn't know her to do
anything more than first base you know maybe she liked to kiss some boys but nothing you know that was out of the
ordinary for her time you know for her age right she's 16 years old that's what everybody's doing what most of the kids
are doing at that age and then you have other people that are saying that she was very religious and that she had a
boy or two that she was interested in and when she was interested in a boy she didn't look at other boys she didn't
chase other boys or talk to them that she was pretty conservative so it's really all over the shop at the end of
the day and it makes it hard to kind of nail down what type of person she is well and there's again there's then
there becomes rumors of that she's heavily involved in church and there's a lot of stuff from her family coming out
and saying she was very involved in church and then other people saying that she was possibly involved in witchcraft
yeah and one thing I found captain that when uh years later when people would go
back and Tred to investigate this case is I found that what a lot of people were
reporting regarding her character janette's character and her actions it seemed to me they were reporting things
that they had heard or things that they had heard other people say or my parents
told me this or my sister told me that here's what I wonder you know we mentioned during the trailer that this
case has almost become folklore at some point and I think that very quickly in this case when you have a 16-year-old
girl that goes missing and she's missing for 6 weeks and then later found dead in
the woods mhm you know you know sometimes and and I don't care for this one bit but sometimes parents and priest
and police officers and teachers and principls aunts and uncles anybody in the the form of authority figure to
teenagers they kind of use this as a teaching moment where they're like and they they misconstrue the truth they
they stretch the truth quite a bit sometimes when they choose to take this on as a teaching moment and they'll
throw things in like she was a wild girl you know she was always in the back seats of uh cars with with boys hanging
out in lover Lanes this is what happens to you when you give hand jobs yeah and they don't really outwardly say that but
they imply like this happened because she was this way or she was she was way into drugs and look where it got
yeah reer Madness man yeah and where really I mean yeah may maybe you can use that as a teaching moment I don't think
you can when when you don't have a cause of death and you have a person who is a
victim at this point we don't have anything to point us in the direction to lead us to believe that that she had
anything to do with her demise well it's a lot of rumor and a lot of hearsay yeah
and one thing that does not seem to be rumor or hearsay remember we have her telling her friend that she would just
hitchhike a ride over to her house yeah well it seems to be that that was a general consensus amongst her friends
was that that Janette was not opposed to hitching a ride mhm there were several of these friends though however that
said she would not get into a car unless she would know the driver and apparently I get but that
sounds silly it's like it's one or the other right you're just going to hitchhike and it's you only get in the
car when you're hitchhiking if you know the person I get what you're saying I wonder if you know if she would
recognize a girl and guys her age are a little bit older well they would have to
be a little little bit older because apparently back then you had to be 17 and a half in New Jersey to get a
license at that time right so when she's 16 she's trying to get around on her own
my speculation is what they mean by that is that she would recognize a friend's car from high school and then stick the
old thumb out or wave him down you know hey Tommy hey Julie whatever I'm heading
over here you live near them would you mind giving me a ride kind of thing yeah but this kind of stuff in cases drives
me nuts because maybe that's not the type of person she was just getting in a car with a stranger but all it takes is
one time mhm yeah maybe she got desperate right and didn't want to make I mean 8 miles is a is a stretch right
so after walking for 45 minutes maybe went uh I don't really know this guy but he seems safe mhm or he's he's looks
like somebody I might go to high school with or he looks like he's only 18 years
old well here's one rumor that I do want to talk about though cuz this one seems
to stand out amongst the others for me Captain and this is something that didn't really I think this was a rumor
that was swirling about amongst the people that knew Janette and amongst the people at her high school but it wasn't
something that was kind of widely known until a couple years after her death and
this was a rumor of a party the night that Janette had disappeared and this party was taking place at her friend's
house Donna blattis now her friend Donna blattis and her brothers apparently were
throwing a party that evening the rumor is that Janette showed up to this party and at some point you know there were
drugs and drinking and things like that going on at this party at some point that she had overdosed on an unnamed
drug and one of the blattis brothers or all of them kind of panicked and people that were at that party took her body
off into the woods off of Mount View Road and dumped her there MH I guess this this seems to be the belief that is
also held by some of the members of the dma family and some people dispute this because they say well the drugs that
would be the unnamed drugs right would be like LSD and that you can't OD from LSD okay
and I'm not an LSD expert so I I don't know if that's possible or not I thought I was working with an LSD expert uh no
but I would I would also assume you know cuz one of the other rumors is that maybe that she left this party and she
went wandering and she just collapsed or whatever in this in the woods right is that possible if high on LSD well you
have the situation where there is no visible signs of cause of death uh for this individual so that that would lead
some you know lend some Credence to what they're saying here but so the the people of the dma family that seem to
believe this is we have Cindy her sister we've mentioned her sister before but not by name the youngest one and Carl
and according to Cindy her mother believed this too and the reason why they believe this rumor that they heard
was they recall not having seen Donna blattis and her brothers at the funeral you know this was a this was a wake and
a funeral that was attended by hundreds of people uh people that that Janette knew and the DePalma family knew and
they don't recall seeing them at the funeral when you have that many people you might have missed somebody you might
have missed a face in the crowd yeah it's also possible that they didn't go for whatever reason I don't know mhm I
don't know how much it points towards guilt it might seem strange though I can I can get on board with that that it
might seem strange but we have a friend of of janette's and she was somebody that was
very close to Donna blatus MH and she disputes this she says that you know this rumor might have some it might have
some truth to it but according to this friend and her name is Denise Parker she gives a slight different story she says
that there was no party at Donna's house that night that's just a bad rumor she states that there were always kids there
were always kids hanging out at Donna's house 247 it was a hang out right you know uh but had there been a party she
would have been aware of it and she also stated that that was not a party house it was just a place where you would you
would see a couple kids hanging out from time to time right but that again it's not a party house it's just kids hanging
out but is it possible that why these kids were hanging out parents leave for a little bit and they decide to do some
experimenting with some drugs and some things happen well so but Denise would go on to further say that she did hear a
rumor that Janette was at Donna's house that night she's the same woman saying that there's there was no party that
night she's saying however that Janette had stopped by there on her trip walking
that she had stopped by Don and was looking for a ride to get to her friend's house right and she when she
gets there she finds out that Donna was actually grounded and could not drive her over to Gail's home mhm and from
there the rumor she heard was Janette had just had to leave on foot because her friend was unable to drive her there
yeah Didn't I also heard that maybe she asked the mother like the girl was grounded but then she was like well let
me ask your mother oh okay like she was she was really into uh finding a ride but either way I think that backs up the
story that she was at least there and maybe you know again quote unquote there wasn't a party and if that vers yeah
that version that you had heard there would have been no no party I would assume now what do the investigators
think when retired investigators and police were were presented with these rumors regarding the party there's a man
by the name of Ed kitch now Ed was the juvenile officer back then and he was a juvenile officer for over 20 years in
the area can't believe they let kids do that let them take the job uh Ed believes that the blatus theory is the
one that holds the most truth the blest knight in the Pips out of all the theories that he's heard over the years
and rumors he believes this one holds the most truth he he would go on to say that he's 90% sure that something
happened to Janette in the blet home that night and that Mark blattis this is one of the uh Brothers uh was rumored to
have been involved and he he believes that that's where the truth in this case lies all right so in your personal
opinion do you think a group of teenagers could hold on to a story like this I mean I've seen I Know What You
Did Last Summer yeah and then you have to wonder not only are they holding on to a lie you're talking about keeping it
quiet and holding on to a lie for four decades over four decades mhm but if it's family
members then it'd be easier to do I tend to when when when we look at a lot of cases and the first thing that I look at
when I'm when I'm looking at a Cas is was this committed by an individual or committed by multiple people a group of
people that's interesting I start with Wikipedia and the thing here is with especially with these older cases that's
usually the assumption that I make that it's probably an individual rather than a group of people because it is often
hard to keep a group quiet there's usually one person that will come out at some point and say hey this is what
happened or I know something um you know we have drunken confessions that we've heard of on the show and reported about
we've had deathbed confessions that we've reported about uh so often I find that this is not the case that it that
is would be very tough for a group of people to keep this quiet now but keep keep this in mind we're talking about
did a group of people actually keep this quiet because there's rumors out there that this is what in fact happened right
so where it's it's now boils down to how can you trace these rumors back what is
the root of these rumors and do they stem from somebody that was at that house that night that night that saw
Janet Janet so what you're saying is is it speculation and that's how we got to this point and we know that she was at
this house and we know that kids hung out at this house so is that where it's coming from and it's just P pure
speculation or did somebody say something and because of that the rumor mill started up and I don't want to
upset anybody because you know when I make this statement I thought about this last night when I was thinking about
this case and I was like do I say this because I'm afraid that people are going to be like well then it everything you
just said is hogwash no but I think this should be taken into I have to say it captain cuz everything I think you have
to take it with a grain of salt because this case almost reminds me of the serial case of Adnan SED and and hmon
Lee we're talking about a girl that disappeared she's not found until weeks later and then I think we
have we have teenagers that are being questioned they're like when did you see her last did you see her on this night
and I think they start wondering well yeah I saw her yeah I saw her on uh what was that a Tuesday no it was a Mond
oh okay well maybe it was a Monday yeah I saw her maybe you didn't you get to a point where you start to wonder the I'm
not I don't want to call these people Liars if somebody believes something they're not Liars they're just
misremembering misremembering they they don't have the date it was it should have been a normal day it should have
been an ordinary day there was no reason to remember if that was the last time you would see this person or not yeah so
I see the similarities I mean we have similar ages we have somebody going missing for a period of time and then
their body was found but a difference here is hmon Lee was um reported missing MH where Janette was reported as a
runaway yeah so I said we would get to this later and this is where we need to get to that right so her parents
reported her missing the same night uh that we had already discussed her parents are salvator and Florence dup
Palma now keep in mind Janette was scheduled to work that evening or at least she told her parents that she had
to work that evening so she was going to go to work after going to her friend's house she never returns home that night
her mother starts making calls to janette's friends and to their parents as well nobody seems to know anything
she didn't arrive at her friend's home not only did they not know anything in fact no one had anything to report to
them you know having heard from her or plans changing anything like like that there was nothing to report now when
they called the police to report their daughter missing the police gave her the old same old troubling story that we've
heard a hundred times when we talk about these older cases you know we've seen this a lot they they get the old she
needs to be gone for 24 hours before she can be reported missing according to the
police it was the depalma's the the family themselves that reported Janette as a runaway right and
that might have been they could have been assuming because of her cousin because of the cousin and remember you
and I had talked that there was probably at least two arguments that took place that day between her and one of her
parents before leaving the house the thing here though Captain where this gets real screwy is you know
back then police would not really this isn't something that you investigated when somebody's reported missing it's
investigated when somebody's report reported as a runaway you might look around for the person you put out a you
know you you you alert the officers that this person is uh has left their home right and that the parents are looking
for this home and if somebody matching the description go up and talk to them but they don't really do any work when
somebody's reported as a runaway that because they're under the belief that this person left of their own will that
they wanted to leave the home and in most these cases when that does happen the teenager returns after a couple of
days the thing here Captain I wonder about you know when when a girl is reported let's say she was reported
missing let's say she was reported as a runaway let's let's let's take that aside but she's reported as not being
where she's supposed to be okay and then 6 weeks later she's found dead out in the middle of the woods somewhere MH and
you come back as an investigation and you say well we can't come up with a cause of death but we're going to rule
it a suspicious death or a homicide because she was found somewhere that she should not have been that we don't
expect her to have gone on her own so therefore we're going to we're going to investigate it as a homicide so now your
department has declared this a homicide the problem you have here is if when you
took the missing person's report you decided or officers amongst your group decided she's not missing she's a
runaway and then you find her dead out in the middle of the woods well then there's a problem with the Department
there's a problem with somebody in the department one of the detectives or one of the cops because the public wants to
know well why did you call her a runaway it's very likely she did not run away if
she was found murdered somewhere right so here's my big question my big question is that later
the police stating they the family reported her as a runaway this wasn't our problem this was not our doing
nothing that we did wrong was it to cover their ass right to cover their butts the problem I have with the family
let's say the family did report her as a runaway MH I understand that yes there was an argument or two and I understand
that maybe because her cousin had taken off you thought maybe she was doing the same thing MH but there's a couple
problems with these stories one is if the cousin had been gone long enough that the family not only the immediate
family but the extended family were growing concerned because she was gone a lot longer than typically she would be
gone mhm to the point where you tell your daughter that starts an argument with you that morning because she's mad
you waited so long to tell her wouldn't you have enough concern of the cousin of
your niece that your daughter all of a sudden missing would wouldn't she fall into
that same concerned department for you like naturally for me it would the second part that I have an issue with
is if your daughter ran away she didn't take anything with her M and you had 24 hours to figure that out I would be a
little if if my daughter or son which I don't have they don't exist but if if one of them existed and left you know
said say they took off and they were gone okay and the police tell me I can't report this for 24 hours I'm going to do
a little investigating on my own and one thing I'm going to first look at is did
they take anything with them you know it a kid a 16-year-old kid that packs up a
backpack full of items is a lot different than somebody that just leaves walking on foot with nothing mhm did you
ever try to run away when you're a kid not like a real runaway you know like the silly like maybe rode my bike too
far and stayed gone a little you know like hours longer than I was supposed to but not overnight I don't think I ever
made it yeah but that's not running away you just stayed out later but no no no no but I think I I think my intent at
one point was like like like that's it I'm out of here and then it's like 3 hours later you get hungry and it gets
dark and you're like okay well I'm going back I was in kindergarten and I had this duffel bag and I remember thinking
I'm going to run away and uh so I I put the duffel bag and there's no like strap
right mhm so I put the the handles around my neck right and I have this du bag filled you weren't going to make it
very no so I got to the like the end of the court and I couldn't breathe see this is a teaching moment
this is what you get for running away this this is what you get a strong teaching moment here my my mom looked at
me and said this is what you get for giving hand jobs all right well Captain I think what
we've brought up here is that there's a lot of questions about her friends and certainly questions about her own
lifestyle and character but where I think that we need to hone in on and talk about when we start off the next
episode there's some questions about this family and about the parents as well what what truly happened to Janette
DePalma and we never even got to the aspect of possible Satanism or witchcraft being involved in this murder
and that is a huge Topic in this [Music] case thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend thanks for sharing on
social media until tomorrow be good be kind and don't [Music] litter Angie's List is now Angie and
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The Devil's Teeth ////// Part 1 of 4

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Episode 179- This case begins with a teenager who goes missing. Several weeks later in September of 1972 a body is discovered atop a cliff, above an abandoned quarry in Springfield, New Jersey. Later it was determined this was the body of the missing teen, Jeannette DePalma. Along with the body it is said that cult related items were recovered from the area. Her body was said to have been resting on a makeshift altar in the woods. The murder of Jeannette DePalma is very bizarre and is still unsolved. This case is not known to most outside of the state of New Jersey. We gather in the garage to try to shed some light on this cold case.Beer of the Week - Secret Stairs by Trillium Brewing CompanyGarage Grade - 4 and a half bottle caps out of 5True Crime Garage would like to thank the following sponsors!

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Brief Summary

Janette DePalma's 1972 murder remains unsolved, with theories of occult involvement and police mishandling of the case.

Key points

The Mysterious Missing Teen. A teenager goes missing, leading to a shocking discovery weeks later.
Occult Symbols and Rituals. Cult-related items found near the body raise chilling questions about the murder.
The Discovery of a Severed Arm. A police officer responds to a strange call about a severed human arm.
Identification of the Body. A dentist confirms the identity of the body as Janette DePalma, missing for weeks.
The Devil's Teeth. The story of Janet DePalma's body found at a cliff known as the Devil's Teeth.
Janette's Last Day. Conflicting stories emerge about Janette's plans on the day she went missing.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case begins with a teenager who goes missing.

4:26WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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