The Devil's Teeth /// Part 4 /// 182 | Forensic Files

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[Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] we've done three episodes on this case
and today makes four and sometimes captain that just works out for me it works out well for me well for my
ostrich brain that I'm walking around with right mhm so sometimes in most of the case this is the case this is the
scenario that we cover a new case each week so we have but five maybe seven days to research it all work through it
record it it's like a damn tornado mhm well these four-part cases are a little different we get just about two weeks to
kind of tear through them and maybe see what's going on a little clearer so when
we are provided with that luxury I like to kind of take a look at it and form an
opinion after I've digested as much information as I can uh rather so sometimes for me it's like comparing uh
following a trail of breadcrumbs rather than reading a Choose Your Own Adventure
book okay so here and and I like to do this when I think it applies and what I'm looking for is this I'm looking for
something that seems to be the truth in regarding my opinion of what I think could have happened to Janette DePalma
so going back to our our victim here and as we discussed our victim what kind of
person is she was she a wild child or was she a good girl we heard everything all over the shop there right the
witnesses as we said all over the shop when it came to her character in her personality yes a lot of speculation
then when we get to where she was where she was last seen walking and and then some dispute about whether she was went
to a house or not M so I want to get into some things that I found a little strange and and when it boils down to
maybe what Janette was up to on that day on that on that day that she went missing so so what can we what can we
learn by her behavior from what Witnesses has told us from from what people have told us she was planning to
do that day the first thing we hear is that she was going to go to a friend's house but the way that it really boils
down Captain is that it sounds to me like she was trying to get out of going to the friend's house she woke up that
day she called her friend she was supposed to be there in the afternoon and she said you know what she told her
friend I can't go to your home my mother will not let me I have some cleaning and
some chores that I'm supposed to do so therefore I will not make it later her friend says well no we've
set up these plans with these boys and I only set up these plans because you told
me you were going to be here so you have to figure this out you have to be here she says okay I'll hitchhike a ride I'll
hitch a ride and make it to your house I'm doing a little assuming here Captain but I'm assuming she was trying to ditch
her friend because then she tells her mother that she is going to said friend's house right mother grants her
permission all of a sudden and the mother she even offers her to give her a ride to that friend's
house yeah and the Janette says no no it's it's a nice day I'm going to walk and I'm going to go to the train station
then we see Janette asking her sister if she would like to walk with her stating
to her sister that she was going off to see a boy and her sister recalls even the name Tommy but knows nothing else of
this boy or this person named Tommy the sister says no and has plans of her own and won't be walking with Janette that
day from there Janette phones another friend looking for and this part is not clear but either looking for a ride from
her friend or for her friend to accompany her on foot regardless she didn't seem to be looking
to go alone to me wherever she was heading that day and the thing that I strongly question here is janette's
intent what was she was she really planning to go to her friend's house she failed at the attempt to cancel those
plans tells her sister that she's going somewhere else and then turns down a very convenient ride from her mother if
you're in a hurry to get to your friend's house that day you take the ride from your mother right if you you
might be going somewhere other than where you told your mother you don't take the ride you were going you turned
down the ride I think we might be looking at a strong possibility that she either had
other plans that day that we are unaware of or she wanted to go visit somebody else other than that friend
maybe even a boy right if she did have plans to go out I I really wish someone could come forward or someone could
piece together where and with whom those plans were to be yeah but you can speculate a little bit I mean based off
what the sister said mhm she's going to go see this boy I would really like to know why that person never came forward
to tell us that they had plans with Janette that day but yet she never arrived mhm because then you got you got
to put a big circle around that person so I strongly think that one of two scenarios played out something like this
she went somewhere and met someone and they spent some time together that day and she went off walking to God
knows whose house but while walking she accepted a ride now here's my thought on this
Captain whether she went searching for a ride or whether she accepted a ride in my opinion this would be from someone
she knew or from someone that she may have wanted to know and I throw that in there uh for for a couple of reasons
okay what one thing that we heard about Janette when we talked about her personality and her victimology let's
say was there was a big question about hitchhiking there was half the half the people said she would never hitchhike we
hear her tell her friend she was going to Hitch aide that day then we have the other people saying yeah it was pretty
common you know we did it she did it everybody did it what I did hear time and time again the one thing that didn't
seem to be as much confusion as whether she would hitch a ride or not most of the people that were saying that if she
were to Hitch hike Janette was not stupid that she was not going to take a ride from someone she didn't know okay
but I threw in the possibility of someone she maybe wanted to know MH and what I mean by that is could an older
boy have slowed down and offered the girl a ride and what I mean by this I don't mean like a 30-year-old old man
comes along in his you know in his dad wagon and he's like hey you want to you want to ride you know Janette 16 years
old mhm she might have accepted a ride from we know you had to be 17 and a half in those days to have your license what
if she got in the car with somebody that was 18 or 19 20 21 even someone that looked to be in her age group someone
that looked the role of somebody that might run in one of her circles or her friend circles the S there's a very
suspicious story here to me and before I get into it I do want to do a a quick mention of something that I was thinking
about on the way over here captain and I wanted to get your opinion on this and this will play a role in in the later
part of my opinion of what might have happened to Janette DePalma one thing we didn't talk about
yesterday it didn't hit me until this morning but when we talked about red the houseless man that lived in the woods MH
one thing that that we didn't discuss was remember when they found janette's body in sept on September 19th 1972 they
were looking through the woods they were combing that area they arrive at the cliff known as Devil's teeth and they
find her body up there the strange thing to me is like I kind of almost picture this as like I'm watching like Law and
Order or Criminal Minds or something like that you know where they find a body they're like oh we got this body
and then you hear them start talk it could be a female she's been here a while and If This Were a TV show then
off in the distance somewhere you would hear another officer going Captain yes somebody's living over here
we got somebody living in the area right I'm I'm wondering why you know there was
so much suspicion about this red man about the the houseless guy why so much suspicion about a guy that they didn't
seem to they didn't seem to come across his dwelling when they were out looking for her body right like wouldn't that be
like the biggest of red flags to you if you happen to find a body in that area maybe that's why it wasn't he wasn't
looked into that much maybe that's why yeah maybe that's why they spoke with him briefly and then cleared him and let
him go but anyway that there's there's a weird story within this big story that I
find very strange and that's the story of the 21-year-old dude that we talked about yesterday that goes by the name of
Terry rickle Terry rickle was the guy that alerted police in October about the man red that's living in the woods near
where the body was found right what I find suspicious about his story is is is it possible that he's he's giving the
police some kind of false lead is is he going to the police department this would be about the same time that the
stories from the newspaper regarding the murder and death of Janette DePalma start disappearing from the news
newspaper mhm and we do know that on on some occasions somebody that either has information or somebody that's guilty of
a horrible act will sometimes interject themselves into the investigation why CU they want to know
what's going on with the investigation what better way than to go down to the police department and give them some
potentially false lead you could send them off your Trail and figure out what they're doing possibly at the same time
I find his story a little suspicious and there's there's a portion of his story that we left out yesterday and it's this
he seemed to one know that red lived in that area two he seemed to be able to point
out to the police that he believed that that red had left that area sometime shortly after janette's body would have
been placed there his his reasoning for knowing about red and for knowing about you know
knowledge about the area and maybe even Red's timeline is this he states that some of his friends would on occasion
spy on this red character and the reason why they would spy on him is because sometimes remember he was getting paid
in cash and a lot of times he would come back to his little campsite let's call it and he would bury the cash or he
would hide his money in different places and supposedly these you know I don't have the ages or the name names of these
guys that he tells this story about to the police I'm assuming they're roughly his age so let's say men that they would
be over the age of 18 that these guys are watching this red guy hide his money and then when he's off when he goes off
to work or when he's not in the area sometimes he would go grocery shopping they would come up and steal his money
possibly a reason why he left the area yeah very good point if somebody keeps showing up while you're gone or in the
middle of the night and stealing your money you might leave the area just for that purpose the thing I'm getting at is
I don't know how much suspicion or how much shade to throw on this Terry rickle maybe there's none that needs to be
thrown on him at all I'm just getting at that I find his story a little suspicious and I'm also wondering if the
police upon hearing his story and hearing the detectives hearing his story now we know we they followed the red
angle and they started looking into that and they started looking for this man known only by the name of red
I'm wondering if how much they checked into this Terry rickle guy or his friends and
furthermore if Terry rickle knows so much about the area about that specific area where her body was found and her
his friends are on occasions watching the area how come they didn't see anything suspicious how come they didn't
have anything more suspicious to report about this I I find the the whole story either made up maybe it's just made up
maybe may he had maybe he had some reason to not like this red guy or maybe he was just scared of this guy that
lived in the woods and he kind of goes oh I read in the paper they found her body there I think that's where that guy
lives maybe it's just something maybe it's something as Loose as that or yeah or a lot of people can't understand
other people's lifestyle so they treat them like they're less than human mhm when it's just a different choice of
Lifestyle yeah or or maybe it's something more Sinister to inject yourself into the investigation
try to figure out what direction the investigation is taking and maybe even provide them with some kind of false
lead well and there's some speculation that she got in a car with somebody that maybe she knew right or or was an
quaintance of and so is there any evidence that she knew this uh Terry rickle well there there was speculation
that she would only get into a car of somebody she knew and and I actually believe that I believe that she got into
a car whether she was offered a ride or was asking for a ride and I do believe it was probably somebody she knew um now
there is no proof there's no evidence to suggest that she knew Terry rickle or did not know him we we we don't know
this um and the whole you just find his you know his story pretty fishy well I just really yeah I find his story
questionable um to the point where I just wanted to offer that up for food for thought you know as food for thought
I don't necess was he involved or was his friends involved it's possible but it it's probably not super likely when
you look at the whole spectrum of things right now the reason why I think that she
knew she would only get in the car with somebody she knew or got into the car of
somebody she knew is this because of where her body was found she's found on top of this cliff and we have
investigators we have detectives and police officers that found her that day that were part of the search that said
that they had slipped several times when they tried to make it up to that Cliff that they had fallen that some of them
couldn't even make it to the top of that Cliff right and then when they removed her body from there the fire trck had to
come in and and park itself at the base of the of the cliff and shoot the ladder
up to to use the ladder and form this this weird almost kind of conveyor belt of getting her out of there m they had
to put in a lot lots of man hours and time getting her out of there what you're getting at is that it would be
hard for somebody to carry her up there it's hard for somebody to kill her than carrier up there I almost think that she
went up there with somebody either somebody she knew or somebody she trusted got out of hand she followed
somebody up there and for whatever reason I think that that person probably Strang strangled her and left her there
and I think the reason a big portion of the reason why this is not has not been solved is there's actually I I believe
many reasons why this has not been solved and the first one of those is I would state that they didn't investigate
her disappearance remember they it was reported as a run away and we don't know if it was the parents that reported it
that way or the police right because they've the parents changed their story on that as well and the police say that
it was the parents that called it in as a runaway however we see another case yes it's in another County but it's at
the same time period of a family calling in their daughter missing and the the police are the ones that said no she's a
runaway right this could have happened in janette's case and the problem with that is and we got into this it's a lot
Captain you and I agreed there's some similarities to this and to the the serial case that was covered in their
first season where you're you're asking Adon s's case yeah thank you you're asking teenagers to tell you their
whereabouts and what they were doing and who they were with 6 weeks ago they weren't really investigating Janette dma
case until after her body turned up 6 weeks and one day after she was missing yeah if they would have treated it like
a disappearance or an endangered disappeared case rather than a runaway they would have been speaking to her
friends the day after or two days after and they might be able to tell you where
they were what they were doing who they were with do you believe this uh crime is uh satanic or ult likee in in any
nature no I actually think that it's it probably just goes with the times um that it's you know the early 70s the
thing is with this whole satanic Panic one thing that people fail to recognize is a lot of this was brought about by
Charles Manson and his his crew yeah because when you hear this this horrible story of these horrible people that went
in to a home and it it's technically a home invasion they go into this home and they terrorize and kill these people out
in California painting Blood on the walls that was the biggest news of of it's some of the biggest news of last
century yeah and to hear that and that spreads across it goes it happened in California and it spreads across the
Bible Belt and the News there and all the way to the east coast and then you have parents and police everywhere where
they start to think if it happened out there this is the new wave of crime this is the new wave of criminal and all
these teenagers with their long hair and they're all hippies and they're smoking
drugs this is what we're going to see in the future and I think what a lot of times when you had either teenage
victims or teenage perpetrators of crimes of murders and such that all of a sudden Satan got involved all of a
sudden witchcraft got involved and it it happened for a lot in many cases in the
70s and many cases in the 80s and even up until the '90s it's it's just something I I just don't
see that being a piece of this case and I think a large part of that is we don't
know what happened to her and she's found at a location called The Devil's [Music]
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[Music] GameChanger all right we're back cheers mates and we're very happy happy to be
with author Jesse Pollock he was one half of the author Duo that wrote the book death on the devil's teeth the
strange murder that shocked Suburban New Jersey so Jesse since the book has been
released for a couple years where are you guys at currently on this investigation well the interesting thing
with uh Mark and I is you know with the benefit of there being a magazine the letters have kind of never stopped
coming in uh the first letter they received about the case was in '97 or 98 and it's just been a stream of them
every year since then so even with the book coming out in 2015 and a lot of things being answered um with all of the
additional questions that the book has opened up we still have been getting all these letters um regarding suspects um
the occult connection possible related cases and you know sometimes they turn out to be nothing
but other times we found some very very interesting things talk about the letters Jesse what were some of the more
interesting items that came out that were presented to you through these letters one of the most interesting
things that we've heard from a reader so far um involves the supposed occult objects found around her body now like
you guys discussed in episodes one and two it's not really clear what was found around her but the general consensus is
there were sticks and Stone they may have been arranged they might not have been they may have just been a cross and
some Stones above her head they may have been a trapezoidal perimeter of logs which appeared that description appeared
in the newspapers so assuming that one that newspaper description was true the trapezoidal coffin shaped perimeter you
know we just thought okay it's supposed to look like a coffin and then we got an
email from a guy about a year after the book came out and he was saying oh I think you guys should know this the
trapezoid is the most satanic symbol in the Church of Satan and I was like I you
know I researched Lan Satanism and even Hollywood Satanism you know Satanism light whatever you want to call it all
kinds of Satanism while writing death on the devil's teeth with Mark and I never
saw the trapezoid come up but then I did some digging based on what this guy said
and sure enough they were interviewed that LE gave in the 80s and the 90s where he does say that you know the most
occult object you know shape whatever is the trapezoid you know if you look at the back of the dollar bill what do you
see a pyramid with the top cut off that's a trapezoid and basically if you go through the literature that L put out
it boils down to the shape of a trapazoid is used to open up a portal between the living and the dead which
you know if you believe these Sensational articles and headlines about janette's murder being a satanic
sacrifice it does make sense that she would be laid out in a alleged portal between the living and the dead so that
was one that kind of made the hairs on the back of my NE stand up because the whole time I was writing the book with
Mark it was oh it's just supposed to look like a coffin you know it it you know that's you know the the big thing
the big spooky thing oh it's coffin iconography but then to get an email from someone and have it pan out that
there is literature to back it up that no this shape is important in Lan Satanism and it's liter it's supposed to
literally open up a portal between the realm of the living and the dead I mean it's it's really chilling to think of
there's a lot of fishy rumors about janette's Case Files going missing can you talk a little bit about that yeah
that that was the biggest thing um in the whole lore of this case for years years it was the big shocking reveal you
know anytime mark would dig into the case back in the early 2000s before he and I teamed up he would always hit this
brick wall of oh no you know the Springfield police say the case File was destroyed when Hurricane Floyd rolled
through in 1999 and flooded a a great percentage of Union County so you know we figured okay well I guess the story
kind of ends there with the files you know it's it's not uncommon to hear something stupid like that files are
kept in a basement somewhere in in a area that's prone to flooding it's unfortunate um there were a lot of
accusations and letters that the magazine got that it was a police cover up but these things do happen so
whatever we sold you da and then halfway through writing the book somewhere around 2013
2014 we spoke with a retired guy from the Springfield Police Department who um later worked in the detective
Bureau and he told us straight up oh well when I got to the detective Bureau in the early to mid late uh early to mid
80s I asked for all of the cold cases so I could brush up and two were missing the uh Manoff murder another unsolved
murder in Springfield that was in I think 76 or 77 and the depa file he goes that file was missing as early as
1984 so no Hurricane Floyd did not destroy it so then we had this this kernel of Hope like okay maybe it's
misplaced or maybe there's a whole another story here that there was some sort of a cover up but either way you
know on the record you know anytime we would send a Freedom of Information Act request or an open public records act
request the the bottom line from Springfield was no it was destroyed in Floyd and even if it wasn't we wouldn't
let you see it it's an open case the big development that came this past year you know two years after the
book was released was I subscribed to a lot of newspaper archives online you know newspapers.com
newspaperarchive.com ancestry you know whatever and I get these email alerts sometimes saying hey you know um a whole
bunch of Articles have been added to the digital database about John list um come
check them out so I logged in and sure enough there were like 50 new John list articles saved them just for the you
know the sake of them being interesting and then I thought well hey when I checked this database a couple years ago
there was virtually nothing on Janette there was a little bit on Joan Kramer the other girl that was murdered the
same week the only a couple Towns over but virtually nothing on Janette so let me search her again and sure enough
there were a half dozen new artic articles that were added and there was stuff about red the guy in the woods we
found the correct spelling of his last name it's Kira not here so now we have that alley to go
down and it mentioned this uh this wanted poster for him that was drawn up and it said uh something like 7,000 of
them were distributed around Union County and that was a big big thing because okay if 7,000 of these were
distributed around Union County that means it's a public document it was already released to the public by the
police department which means the prosecutor's office or the Springfield Police Department or any other
investigative agency that handled the case could not hide behind oh no we're not releasing it to the public because
it's an open case they had already released it 40s something years ago so I filed a brand new request and within 3
weeks they found the original wanted flyer and mailed me a copy so it definitively proved that while yes maybe
the case File that Springfield had was destroyed sometime in the 80s or the 90s depending on who you want to believe a
copy still exists in the Union County prosecutor's office and we've seen some interesting twist and turns since then
but either way the bottom line is the files exist somewhere and now it's just a matter of they won't let the public or
or journalists or anyone else for that matter see them but there's also rumor that the Joan Kramer case files were
missing as well that was another strange development I sent the uh the open public records act request for them
probably in 2013 um and it's a different County that handled it um because she was F while
she was found in Union which is Union County jurisdiction um she disappeared from Essex County so they treated as a
kidnapping first because she was picked up while hitchhiking so Essex County prosecutor's office handles that case
when I sent them the open public records act request they kept sending me every two weeks these letters saying hey hold
on we're still trying to find the file you got to understand it's 40s something years ago we have a lot of different
storage facilities um hang in there though we're going to find it for you and I got three or four of those and
then finally probably like 5 months after I first you know sent the request in they came back and said listen we're
so sorry we checked every storage facility we have diligently we checked our microfilm archives we checked
everywhere we we don't know where the file is we're presuming it's lost or destroyed you know best of luck to you
so as far as original documentation or paperwork on the Kramer case there's nothing um all we had to go on while
chronicling it for the book was the interviews that we conducted with the people from the prosecutor's office from
back then um we interviewed her brother and sister um people that knew the prime
suspect in that case and the newspaper articles that was it so even if um say tomorrow someone walked into the uh the
police station in South Orange and said I killed Joan Kramer here's why here's how and here's something that proves
that I did it Beyond a reasonable doubt they would have a hell of a time Prosecuting it if at all because her her
files are missing from the prosecutor's office that's that's the investigating body that would uh that would handle it
should a arrest be made so I mean I guess that case is dead in the water over there as far as they're concerned
and do you have any updates on the Joan Kramer case as far as what you're working on well well the interesting
thing about that was you know when we first talked to the siblings they had mentioned oh well you know there was
there was this guy that was arrested for it a few years later did you guys know about that and we said no because we
were you know we were not going digital with this until later we were oldfashioned with getting the
information for this case you know I spent many hours long with Mark in various Public Library basements going
through microfilm reels and the uh the Kramer case much like the dma case just kind of Fizzles out at the end of 1972
on these reels so you know we figured okay well I guess they never found anything else but her family you know
Joan Kramer's family told us no there was a guy arrested for it three years later this guy named Otto Nelson he was
an accountant living in Maplewood uh which is the next town over from South Orange he used to live in South Orange
as as well and um they they eventually found an eyewitness that put him at the scene when Kramer uh got into a car
hitchhiking and they tried him for it and I said well what came of it and they said well the the prosecution didn't do
a very good job of of presenting the case and he went free the jury you know acquitted him and I said well whatever
happened to this guy and she said well a couple years later he held some doctor's
hostages at a VA hos hospital with a rifle and he was uh you know he was condemned to an asylum and that's where
he died he died in a mental institution so you know we started looking into this
guy you know the the Spectre of Otto Nelson and you know as far as we could find we could not find anything that put
him in Springfield the day that Janette dep Palma went missing you know only a week before Joan Kramer but we could not
find anything that didn't put him there because he worked for himself you know he was a certified public accountant he
ran his business out of his apartment so he was he could come and go as he pleased there were no there were no
employment records or anything like that to show that he could not have done it but
the interesting thing was um some when he went to trial a lot of his um his previous hospitalizations for his mental
illnesses came out in these articles like dates tangible dates like you know he was he was in this Hospital from then
till then and then again from then until then yada yada yada and when we put them
on the timeline we realized every time this guy was let out of a mental institution girls would turn up dead in
New Jersey strangled left face down in the woods and then the killings would stop as soon as he got committed again
so so he was a very very interesting suspect that we worked with for for years and we considered to be the number
one suspect for a time and then after the book came out I got a phone call from a
prosecutor who uh used to work in Essex County and he told me he goes hey I just
wanted to call you because I was picking up some summer reading for a little trip
I was going on and I'm in Barnes & Noble and I see your book and I go oh well that looks interesting and I'm flipping
through it I'm like oh wait I worked this case the the Kramer case and he goes Yeah you mentioned nilson Nelson is
a very interesting suspect but I don't think he killed Kramer and I'm like okay so there was another suspect and he goes
oh yeah there were a couple other and so he tells me all about this guy who had been arrested for picking up
girls uh hitchhiking and um you know screwing with their cars kind of like uh the
Zodiac did in the Kathleen John's case and picking them up and raping them one he was uh acquitted for at trial another
one he was convicted so we had this other suspect that we were looking at and then sure
enough when this this new newspaper article dump came on newspapers.com all these articles that were not available
to us when we were writing the book there's the guy and all of this stuff mentioned about him being a uh a suspect
in the Kramer case so now in the wake of the book uh initially being published Mark and I now have another suspect that
we're currently looking into to see if we can account for his whereabouts when Janette was killed and when these other
girls like the ones up in North Bergen if we can account for his whereabouts to see if he's a viable suspect in those
murders as well so I mean it's this definitely is not a situation where okay the book's out you know that's our take
on it we're done the case has never stopped moving and it's never stopped moving in incredibly interesting
directions that can be backed up with the testimony of retired detectives who worked the case or newspaper archives
that we did not have access to or Case Files that have suddenly been released to us it's it's been incredibly
interesting so at the end of the day do you believe janette's murder was satanic
in nature or cult murder and you know I've been wrestling with that question for five years now it it just honestly
it Teeter totters back and forth when we were you know hellbent on this being Nelson when all of the the cards seemed
to line up that he had not only killed John uh that he had not only killed Joan Kramer but he had also killed Janette
dep Palma we were like okay this is satanic Panic this is the New York daily news in the post trying to sell
Sensational headline based on some things that her Pastor Jim Tate had said in interviews you know that was kind of
it for a little while we're like okay it was it was it was an Undiscovered serial
killer and some you know goofy Sensational headlines but then we heard from one of janette's friends oh no
there was a guy that used to pick her up when she would go hitchhiking this guy Mike and um I knew him he was like a
year older than me and we went to the same high school and there was a little bit of romantic interest there and I had
him over my house one time for a date and he leaned in to kiss me and saw my crucifix and said no sorry I can't kiss
you while you're wearing that I'm a warlock and he went on about how he had all of these occult
beliefs and she was like I know for a fact that Janette had gotten into his car a few times times while
hitchhiking so I went back to Cindy janette's sister and I said hey did a guy used to you know uh you know an
older guy in high school guy with a a muscle car used to pick you and your sister up while you would hitchhike and
she goes yeah this guy named Mike so I'm like oh my God you know you know so this all lined up there you know
like okay well let me let me see where this guy lived and sure enough he lived two blocks only two blocks away from the
corner where janeta Palma was last seen alive the corner of Summit Road in High Point so I could place him at the last
spot she was ever seen alive you know she went to the blattis house she asked for a ride Donna's mother said no and so
was it conceivable then that she could have kept walking another two blocks and you know either saw Mike or knocked on
his door and said hey you know I really need a ride somewhere and then something
happened that resulted in her death absolutely there was there was that that we were going on for a while and then we
got the email about the trapezoid and then on top of that another strange thing happened um right
after the book was released uh Mark and I we went on a book tour uh in New Jersey and all of these Weir New Jersy
readers just kept coming to us and going when are you going to give us some more
True Crime I read the book in one sitting and you know there's so many other interesting cases have you heard
of this case in Franklin have you heard of this case in Trenton all this other stuff and so I said to mark I said you
know we've got like 40 issues to go through to to to peruse through where we've covered true crime here and there
why don't we put together all of the best cases in one special issue and he goes yeah yeah do it up so so he gave me
all of the uh the issues that I didn't have some of which were out of print and for two months I literally read every
issue of we're New Jersey cover to cover multiple times putting this thing together and in one of the issues I
found a photograph I it sent a chill up my spine because I'm looking at this picture and
the caption said you know stuff left by devil worshippers in this reservation in
North Jersey in the 1990s and was a trapezoidal perimeter of broken branches and logs and an
arrangement of stones in the middle and it looked exactly like the newspaper account of what Janette was found in so
you know yes nilson is still a suspect and it is always the possibility that this was a serial killer or you know
perhaps something H an accident happened at a party and some kids left her in the
woods never said anything about it um that's a theme that's explored in in my second book about the Ricky casso case
that's coming up um in the fall but there is also something now where we cannot disregard the satanic angle of
this because we have a suspect that knew her picked her up when she was hitchhiking dabbled in the occult and
lived two blocks away from where she was last seen the day she died we have um testimony from people familiar with
occultism that the trapezoid is a significant figure in L and Satanism and now we have photographic evidence from
the 1990s before we ever started looking at the dma case of a similar Arrangement
that was allegedly found around her body being found in another reservation up in
North Jersey so I mean truth is Stranger Than Fiction right I mean you can't discount it Jesse
I just wanted to take this time to thank you and your co-author Mark Moran for the wonderful book the death on the
devil's teeth all of your hard work in this investigation this is certainly um very well done well put together yeah
it's great to shine light on a Case well hey sure and you know thank you guys too
because I mean this is a little book it came out on a a little Indie press uh Arcadia history press and you know now
the word is getting out there to you know this this great loyal following you have so hopefully we'll get some more
tips coming in and you know it will really shine a light on a case that was largely forgotten and some people say
intentionally so so if you want to if if any of you listening want to follow where we're at with the case where we're
going with it um at we're New Jersey on multiple platforms uh we're New Jersey is on Facebook Instagram Twitter and if
you want to follow me I'm at jpic author j p o l l a c k author and I'm on Twitter and Instagram and uh I I'm
posting updates as they come in and if you want to pick up a copy of the book it's on Amazon Barnes & Noble it's on
the weird New Jersey website weird new jersey.com but yeah wherever books are sold it's death on the devil's teeth
well thank you again for spending some time with us in the garage yeah thank you so much Jesse oh no and thank you so
much for having me on and and picking this case to talk about it really means a [Music]
lot I want to thank everybody out there everybody in the True Crime garage Army for helping spread the word about the
show and more importantly spreading the word about each of these cases that we cover each week sharing them on social
media you know the more eyes and ears that these cases reach the better chance the better hope that we have of someday
providing a lead or solving one of these cases yeah and we've been contacted by a
lot of law enforcement and people that are working other cases that said hey because you covered this and because of
your audience and because of your amazing listeners we've actually got new leads to work on and you know what's
funny Captain is one of the things that we covered during this series The John Liss case yeah it was solved through
crowd sourcing yeah it was it was considered one of the worst crimes of of that decade and solved after 17 A2 years
through crowdsourcing so it is possible and we thank everybody for helping out the garage we thank you for listening
subscribing and telling a friend all right so it's time for me to tell them the big news um I I actually I don't
think we're allowed to talk about that yet okay well well sorry about that well thanks a lot Captain all right well
thanks for listening and we'll see you next week until next week be good be kind and don't
[Music] litter at Crystal Farms farm and family are at the heart of everything we do it's why
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The Devil's Teeth ////// Part 4 of 4

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Episode 182- 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 - War Elephant by Rushing Duck Brewing Garage Grade - 3 and 3/4 bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses Janette DePalma's mysterious death, investigation flaws, and new suspect theories with author Jesse Pollock.

Key points

Family Farms at the Heart. Crystal Farms sources dairy from family farms across the Midwest, supporting family dinners everywhere.
Quality Sleep with Ashley. Ashley offers top mattress brands at winning prices, helping children in need with every purchase.
True Crime Garage Introduction. Hosts Nick and Captain introduce the show and share a drink while engaging with listeners.
Janette DePalma Case Discussion. The hosts delve into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Janette's disappearance and death.
The Satanic Panic Origins. The fear of crime in the 70s was fueled by sensational stories like Manson's.
Occult Objects Found?. Letters reveal supposed occult objects found around Janette's body, raising chilling questions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

There's nothing like a little homicide story to get you through the day.

Listener's comment

2:59WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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