{"id":2189,"date":"2023-01-03T12:09:52","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T12:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/belief.gift2heart.com\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2026-04-13T11:32:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:32:24","slug":"situation-jeannette-depalma-there-are-some-who-believe-that-she-was-murdered-by-satanists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godshand.link\/en_gb\/2023\/01\/03\/situation-jeannette-depalma-there-are-some-who-believe-that-she-was-murdered-by-satanists\/","title":{"rendered":"Situation Jeannette DePalma: \u201cThere are some who believe that she was murdered by Satanists\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jeannette DePalma (August 3, 1956 \u2013 August 7, 1972) was an American teenager who is believed to have been murdered sometime on or around August 7, 1972 in Springfield Township, Union County, New Jersey, United States.<\/p>\n

The case, currently unsolved, has become a matter of significant controversy due in part to coverage in Weird NJ magazine and in the 2015 book Death on the Devil’s Teeth.<\/p>\n

To this day, her death remains a mystery. The New Jersey coroner\u2019s office still has not classified it as a homicide, and there are some who believe that she was murdered by Satanists.<\/p>\n

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Jeannette DePalma was born on Aug. 3, 1956, and lived an upper-middle-class life in the New Jersey suburb of Springfield Township. The DePalmas, raised Jeannette and her siblings in a devout Christian household.<\/p>\n

They lived in a beautiful house on Clearview Road, where the Manhattan skyline was visible on a clear day, but far enough from the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple to make the crime rate nearly non-existent.<\/p>\n

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Four days before she disappeared, Jeannette DePalma celebrated her 16th birthday. The celebration was largely unremarkable, as the teenager was closely associated with her faith. As such, \u201cpartying\u201d was off the table.<\/p>\n

On the afternoon of Monday, August 7, 1972, Jeannette DePalma left her home on Clearview Road in Springfield Township, Union County, New Jersey, telling her mother that she was going to take a train to a friend’s house. She never made it there, never called her mother to let her know she\u2019d be running late, and never made it home. So, her parents filed a missing person report with the Springfield Police Department the following day.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 19, 1972, a dog returned from a frolic in a wooded area with an object in its mouth, and started \u201cplaying with it\u201d on the lawn of a nearby apartment building in Springfield, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Moments later, the pet\u2019s owner went to inspect what appeared to be a \u201clarge bone\u201d and screamed when she realized it was \u201ca human arm,\u201d according to police reports obtained by The Daily Beast. The Springfield Police Department was called to the scene, and attending officers later recounted what they saw upon arriving at the woman\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe took me to the rear door of her apartment and in a bluish bag she handed me the arm of a female, the lower left arm. On the fingernails was a whitish nail polish.\u201d Officer J. Schwerdt said in the report.<\/p>\n

Search parties scoured the Houdaille Quarry behind the residential building. And then, in a part of the Houdaille quarry known as The Devil\u2019s Teeth, a body was found face down and \u2014 allegedly \u2014 surrounded by wooden crosses and logs positioned in a coffin pattern. Other eyewitness accounts suggested that there was a pentagram and other \u201coccult objects\u201d in the makeshift coffin.<\/p>\n

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The body was fully clothed \u2014 and so badly decomposed that an initial cause of death could not be ascertained.<\/p>\n

\u201cAround the body were logs across the head down the right side and a small branch under both feet,\u201d Schwerdt stated in the report.<\/p>\n

Chief Medical Examiner Bernard Ehrenberg was also called to the scene where he pronounced the girl, who was unidentified at the time, dead.<\/p>\n

Dental records later confirmed that the body belonged to 16-year-old local high school student, Jeannette DePalma, who was reported missing by her parents on Aug 7, 1972 \u2013 four days after her 16th birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was found\u2026 lying face down with a rock formation surrounding her body,\u201d Ehrenberg wrote in his medical examiner\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

He determined that an autopsy could not be performed because of the \u201cmarked state\u201d of decomposition. X-rays of her skull were taken, though, and there was no evidence of fractures, bullet holes or traumatic injuries. For this same reason, a cause of death could not be determined so was listed as \u201csuspicious\u201d rather than as a homicide.<\/p>\n

Samples of Jeannette’s clothing were packed up and sent to the federal government for further analysis.<\/p>\n

According to the FBI crime lab report on Jan 3, 1973, officials tested Jeannette’s clothing, including her blouse, slacks and underwear, as well as the soil from the scene, and compared them with hairs collected from her dresser drawer and on her body.<\/p>\n

The FBI’s microscopic and chemical analysis found that were no “apparent foreign hairs” found among Jeannette’s clothing.<\/p>\n

The lab workers didn’t find drugs or poison in any of the samples.<\/p>\n

There were, however, stains found in her underwear, bra, blouse and slacks that “were too decomposed for conclusive blood and semen examinations,” according to the crime lab report.<\/p>\n

The photos also call into question one officer\u2019s theory that Depalma\u2019s body was found at a teen party spot, Pollack said. In addition to being extremely hard to get to, the area appears to be dense brush with no signs people had been there, such as a firepit.<\/p>\n

The officer had theorized that Jeannette had overdosed on drugs with friends at the spot and been left for dead, Pollack said. Documents released Monday show that in 2004, an investigator for the prosecutor\u2019s office posited in a memo that \u201cit would appear that the most logical cause of death is drug overdose,\u201d though he listed no evidence that suggested it.<\/p>\n

While that may have been their most recent theory, police at the time did not have Depalma\u2019s remains tested for drugs, the documents reveal.<\/p>\n

Then medical examiner Dr. Bernard Ehrenberg sent a scalp sample to a forensic laboratory, initially asking on the request form for tests for alcohol, heavy metals, barbiturates and narcotics. But he or someone else crossed out the latter two drug tests on the form and they were apparently never performed.<\/p>\n

The specimen was \u201cnot suitable\u201d for alcohol testing but tests did find an elevated level of lead, reports show. A doctor told police it was not near lethal levels and could have come from dirt contamination of the body, according to the documents.<\/p>\n

DePalma\u2019s family has rejected the overdose theory, maintaining that she was a good girl who didn\u2019t use hard drugs and was very involved in her church.<\/p>\n

The police narratives and evidence inventory also support the idea that someone was with Jeanette on the top of the Devil\u2019s Teeth, or possibly carried her there. They show that her personal items, including makeup, an inhaler and the vial, were found about 8 1\/2 feet away from her body. Her purse and a cross necklace she wore were never found, despite a search of the woods, according to the police records.<\/p>\n

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Police sources leaked to the press that they had found signs they thought might be related to the occult, including crosses made of sticks and branches arranged in a coffin-like outline around her body. The coroner\u2019s report mentions a \u201crock formation surrounding the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Depalma\u2019s death was about eight years before the period starting in the 1980s known as the Satanic Panic \u2014 when now-debunked stories of ritual child abuse dominated the media and some in law enforcement were looking for signs of the occult everywhere.<\/p>\n

In an article published on Sept. 30, 1972 in the Home News Tribune, the Associated Press wrote local authorities were “investigating the possibility that black witchcraft and Satan worship were involved in the death” of Jeannette. The report was attributed to an article in the Daily Journal of Elizabeth that was published a day earlier.<\/p>\n

The article also quoted Jeannette’s parents, as “someone who tried to lead others to Jesus” and said that she was involved in community work to aid drug addicts and planned on attending a Bible college.<\/p>\n

According to the newspaper’s report, “a number of sacrifices involving dead animals” were reported around the Watchung Reservation, which was less than 2 miles away from where Jeannette was found. In the park around the same time, Union County Park Police had found “burning candles, a bowl of blood and feathers and pigeons with their necks snapped.”<\/p>\n

On Oct. 3, 1972, the Courier News ran an Associated Press article reporting that Union County law enforcement officials may have brought a witch to the site of Jeannette’s death.<\/p>\n

“I never did hear if the witch found anything,” the family’s pastor, Rev. James Tate of the Assemblies of God Evangel, was quoted, “but I know she was there at the scene.”<\/p>\n

According to newspaper accounts and interviews, there were self-professed witches and warlocks in New Jersey at the time. An Associated Press article published on Halloween in 1972 interviewed a woman named Lilith Sinclair who founded her own “grotto,” or group of Satanists, as an off-shoot of the San Francisco based Church of Satan.<\/p>\n

The New York Daily News was no better with their coverage, either. On Oct. 4, 1972, the newspaper interviewed the Rev. James Tate, who insisted that the \u201cDevil\u2019s Disciples\u201d killed poor Jeannette when she tried to spread the Good Word about Jesus Christ. \u201cShe was so religious that she would often talk to friends and acquaintances about God,\u201d he said, adding that when the heathens were lectured about the power of Christ, \u201ctheir fanaticism arose and they killed her.\u201d<\/p>\n

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New York Daily News for Wednesday, October 4, 1972.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By all accounts, Sinclair’s grotto was based in the small Middlesex County borough of Spotswood and had more than 30 members. The witch who was reportedly brought to the site of Jeannette’s body was never named.<\/p>\n

Donald Schwerdt, though, was one of the Springfield police officers on the scene when Jeannette was found.<\/p>\n

Salzano was a close friend of DePalma\u2019s nephew John Blancey\u2014who lived with his aunt at the time of her death. He said the pair took it upon themselves to try and solve the case when it appeared police had reached a dead end. Blancey died about four years ago, which made Salzano even more determined to uncover the truth about what really happened to DePalma, despite of having never met her.<\/p>\n

Salzano said he has spoken to many of DePalma\u2019s friends, family members and acquaintances, as part of his independent investigation into her death. And, according to him, there\u2019s one common thread: \u201cThey\u2019re all scared to death,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Of what, he says he doesn\u2019t know, but Salzano insists there\u2019s a \u201cgigantic coverup\u201d and that almost everyone he has spoken to with knowledge about the case or DePalma shares his belief that \u201ca satanic cult targeted Jeannette and killed her.\u201d He said DePalma was a \u201cdevout Christian\u201d who \u201cwould preach to the other people about leaving satanism and witchcraft behind.\u201d He believes this made her a target and even has an unverified theory about the timing of DePalma\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

What Really Happened To Jeannette DePalma?<\/p>\n

The Satanic ritual murder theory is, of course, the most popular one, but others abound about what really happened to Jeanette DePalma. One theory was that Jeannette \u2014 who was a recovering addict \u2014 accidentally overdosed while hanging out with her friends, who subsequently dumped her body in the quarry in a panic. Another theory holds that Jeannette was the victim of a crime of opportunity and that she may have been killed by the same man who killed Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly, both of whom were found in heavily wooded areas like Jeannette DePalma.<\/p>\n

Interest in the case died down until the late 1990s, when the Weird NJ magazine (which is, today, a website) began reporting on the case after receiving several letters that allegedly gave exclusive details to the writers. The editor, Mark Moran, subsequently teamed up with writer Jesse Pollack to write what is considered the definitive book on the subject, Death on the Devil\u2019s Teeth.<\/p>\n

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In the book, Moran and Pollack reveal that their research led to several previously unknown suspects, evidence of a cover-up, and even connections to other previously unsolved murders.<\/p>\n

After publishing an article, Moran received a flurry of anonymous letters offering chilling information about Jeannette\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

One said: \u201cI was a young teenager when the discovery of Jeannette DePalma happened and lived in the next town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout two years prior, there was much talk in my school about a cult in the surrounding area. They were known as The Witches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey must have let it be known in the area that they planned to kill a child on or about Halloween, either by kidnapping and sacrificing them or by poison. I remember being anxious about this because I went trick-or-treating in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another letter, from a relative of a local policeman, read: \u201cWhen the dog brought the arm home and the search for the body started, they found arrows carved in the trees that would lead you to the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll around her body were dead animals tied to trees with string and some in jars. Shortly thereafter there were reports of animals being mutilated and hung in the same fashion in the Watchung Reservation, which is also very close to the scene of the crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Watchung Reservation or the \u2018Res\u2019 has been reported to be the center of devil worship activity for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the evidence about the Jeannette DePalma case, however, was allegedly destroyed in Hurricane Floyd. That didn\u2019t stop Moran and Pollack, and they continued to research the case. After Ed Salzano \u2014 who runs the \u201cJustice for Jeannette DePalma\u201d Facebook page \u2014 unsuccessfully sued the county to obtain DNA evidence in February 2021, Moran and Pollack finally obtained the case files from the Union County Prosecutor\u2019s Office under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.<\/p>\n

Still, her cause of death remains unknown, and her death has not officially been declared a homicide. It seems the mystery of Jeannette\u2019s murder will never be solved.<\/p>\n

Watch Situation Jeannette DePalma: \u201cThere are some who believe that she was murdered by Satanists\u201d now!<\/p>\n