Death on the Devil’s Teeth

by Pollack, Jesse P.

  Gail Donohue, Jeannette’s closest friend, casts doubt on Kisch’s recollections of encountering Jeannette at Briant Park. “I don’t think that was Jeannette at all,” she says. “I mean, she and I both had crushes on these two Italian guys in Berkeley Heights, but I wasn’t even allowed to date until I was sixteen. We would all meet up during the day in the summertime, and again, I knew she liked this one guy. They would make out in his car or whatever, but I think that was in Berkeley Heights, not Briant Park. I think that cop is off in thinking that was Jeannette…”

  Cindy DePalma is far more direct in her assessment of Kisch’s memory. “This cop seems to be feeding people a lot of bullshit,” she says.

  Kisch’s recollection is also somewhat contradicted by a statement that then detective sergeant Sam Calabrese gave to the Elizabeth Daily Journal. The Wednesday, September 20, 1972 edition featured an article entitled “Find Body Atop Cliff,” in which Calabrese claimed that Jeannette “had no record of trouble with the authorities” and described her as “an attractive girl, about five feet, four inches in height.”

  When we asked Ed Kisch to explain this apparent discrepancy between his own personal recollections regarding Jeannette’s alleged disreputable activities and Calabrese’s statements to the media, Kisch replied, “Look, she may not have had any formal complaints signed against her, but she was far from a good kid. Del Tompkins had been up to that house several times in reference to her. I don’t believe that there had been serious juvenile matters, but I do believe there was a reference card on her in Del’s office. Del knew all the kids in town. If you wanted to ask about a kid, there wasn’t anything that he couldn’t tell you.”

  Don Schwerdt, however, does not recall Jeannette ever having any interaction with the Springfield Police Department. “As far as I know, nobody had any recollection of Jeannette being involved with any police activity, or being picked up or questioned for anything,” he says. When asked if he was aware that Jeannette had been referred to as “Party Girl” by other members of the police force, Schwerdt bewilderedly says, “That’s the first I’ve heard of that!”

  When asked if Jeannette had any kind of arrest record for delinquency or narcotics possession, Ed Kisch replied, “There is a possibility there, but even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. I would not reveal that information to you because you’re not entitled to it. To be honest with you, when I took over the Juvenile Bureau, I never specifically looked at her card index file. Del did have one, but it took me a specific period of time to get everything straightened out and put in order. He did a good job as a juvenile officer. I did look at some of the cases that he worked on. Records were the only thing that kept you and the juvenile officer in power. Del was born and raised in the town, and so was I, so there wasn’t anything with any of the kids or any of the people that I didn’t know. I knew a lot of people in that town. So I will tell you, as a patrol officer, I could find her in the backseat of cars and that they had been partying.”

  Melissa Benner, a longtime friend of Jeannette’s, acknowledges that some of the rumors regarding her friend were not without merit. “All teens did things like hitchhike and smoke pot back then,” she says, implying that Jeannette was no exception. “She and I met in the late 1960s at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Mountainside. We played kickball, snuck cigarettes and visited each other’s homes. She was a good person. Just a normal teenager.”

  Jeannette’s cousin Lisa Treich Greulich recalls spending a large amount of time with the “normal teenager” in the final years leading up to her death. “We were hippie Jesus freaks who smoked weed,” she laughs. “We used to smoke and listen to rock music. Janis Joplin was her favorite. She really loved Janis.” While acknowledging her cousin’s recreational drug use, Lisa is also quick to point out that much of the rumors regarding Jeannette have been exaggerated over the years. “Jeannette did smoke pot, but it was only occasionally, and it was only if someone else had some and offered it to her. She certainly didn’t go around looking to buy it or anything. Jeannette didn’t even drink!”

  When asked if Jeannette engaged in any kind of hard drug use—the kind that could have killed her with an overdose—Gail Donohue laughs. “I can’t imagine that at all,” she says. “My father was an executive, but he came from a very poor background. His father died after falling off of a construction building in Atlanta while my grandmother was pregnant with him during the Great Depression. My father and his cousins were all brought up together. So my father became a self-made man, and he became very appreciative of his compliments. We always had fine china. He always had a very impressive liquor cabinet. He always had every cognac—everything a man could want. One time, Jeannette and I snuck a sip of schnapps and maybe a little whiskey from my father’s liquor cabinet. She then suggested that we jump up and down to ‘mix it up.’ She said, ‘Maybe we’ll get drunk quicker.’ So, if you’re asking whether or not Jeannette had knowledge of hardcore drug use, my answer is no. Hell no.”

  Public controversy regarding Jeannette DePalma’s supposed drug use erupted when Florence DePalma was quoted in the Elizabeth Daily Journal as saying her daughter had used “nothing serious like heroin” but had been under the influence of “pills” and “maybe marijuana.” The Daily Journal further quoted Mrs. DePalma as saying, “Once Jeannette received Jesus, she stopped using drugs.” This matter was further complicated when the very next issue of the Elizabeth Daily Journal hit newsstands featuring a follow-up article in which Florence DePalma denied ever saying that Jeannette had used drugs. Florence was quoted in this new article as saying, “Jeannette was not a drug user, and by her witness of Jesus and with Jesus’ help had turned children from drugs.” The source of this apparent confusion was never made clear by either party.

  Today, Lisa Treich Greulich remembers many nights spent with her rebellious cousins, in which the three would hitch rides from strangers. “Jeannette, Cindy and I used to run away from home and hitchhike to Elizabeth so that we could see these three boys: Joe, John and ‘Nubs.’ Nubs’s real name was Wayne, but we called him ‘Nubs’ because he was missing his thumbs. Cindy went out with Nubs, I went out with Joe and Jeannette went out with John.” Lisa does not recall the last names of these three young men.

  “I can remember one night in particular where Jeannette and I ran away,” Lisa says. “She and I ended up getting into a fight. Like a real fight; punches thrown and everything. Jeannette was tough. We beat each other up real good.” Lisa recalls Florence DePalma’s shock and dismay upon picking up the two cousins. “She was convinced that we had been raped. She kept yelling, ‘Did you get raped?! Tell me!’ and we just laughed it off. There was no telling her; she was absolutely convinced of it.”

  While Lisa does acknowledge the rebellious and particularly dangerous aspect of her and her cousin’s behavior, she is quick to point out that just as much time was spent volunteering for their church. “Jeannette and I did Christian outreach work for the Evangel Church in Elizabeth,” she says proudly. “We used to spend hours walking all around Elizabeth, handing out fliers and preaching the word of the Lord. Jeannette loved doing God’s work. We were just these little hippies trying to teach people about Jesus,” she fondly recalls with a smile.

  “She never mentioned to me that she was religious or devoted to a Christian lifestyle,” Grace Petrilli DiMuro, a high school friend of Jeannette’s, recalls. “Although, if being a good Christian meant being a good friend, looking out for you, helping you if she could, that’s what I saw.” Grace and Jeannette had met sometime in 1970, when the two were freshmen at Jonathan Dayton Regional High School in Springfield. Jeannette had transferred from Union Catholic Regional High School in Scotch Plains to Jonathan Dayton Regional High School in Springfield at some point during this time. While the definitive reason remains unknown, several theories abound.

  “The impression that we had was that Jeannette’s mother was convinced of her daughter’s religious nature and had removed her from Union Cathol
ic because the ‘kids in public school needed her example more,’” Margaret Bandrowski recalls.

  Cindy DePalma has a different opinion on the matter: “I don’t remember exactly when or why Jeannette transferred from Union Catholic to Jonathan Dayton, but it could have been the traveling distance, or maybe she just wanted to go to Dayton.”

  “The thing about Jeannette was this: when you first saw her, you assumed this preconceived notion of her being this tough, fast, wild girl,” Grace Petrilli DiMuro continues. “But when you would start talking to her, she was so sweet, honest and funny. Some of the other girls in our grade weren’t so friendly to her because of that. These girls wouldn’t make any effort to be friendly with her. If Jeannette tried to be friendly with them, they would ignore her.”

  A factor in Jeannette’s social isolation might have been her perceived attitude. Grace remembers Jeannette rarely smiling, often walking the halls with an intense, contemplative look on her face. “That was her expression all the time. She only smiled if she said or heard something funny, but it was never really a full smile. Even her sister Cindy never had like a pleasant look on her face.”

  Jeannette DePalma’s 1971 Jonathan Dayton High School portrait. Courtesy of the DePalma family.

  One of two Jonathan Dayton sophomores who were interviewed for the October 4, 1972 edition of the Elizabeth Daily Journal had similar recollections. “She never talked much,” the student was quoted as saying. “You had to lead the conversation.” The student also recalled that he and Jeannette talked only about their respective classes during their study hall conversations; he explicitly recalled the topic of religion never being brought up. Jeannette’s unique choice of attire also stood out in this pupil’s memory. The classmate told the Elizabeth Daily Journal that the “most remarkable” thing about Jeannette was a black corduroy jacket that she often wore—one that featured a bright display of bursting rainbows on the back. Jeannette’s study hall companion mentioned having never seen a jacket like the one she wore until another student began wearing one the following school year.

  A fellow pupil at Jonathan Dayton also recalls Jeannette’s supposed unusual demeanor. “If she was walking down the hallway, she looked almost surly,” recalls the former classmate, who has asked not to be named. “She came off as unapproachable. I don’t think her home or family life was that great. It just didn’t look like she came from a good home. You know when you see a happy family and the kids look like they must come from a good home? I just didn’t get that from her. It seemed like she came and went and really didn’t have to answer to anyone about where she was going. I guess this is why I almost felt like ‘why am I surprised?’ when I heard what had happened to her…”

  Springfield’s Jonathan Dayton High School in 2013. Jeannette DePalma was preparing for her junior year at Dayton when her life was tragically cut short. Photo by Jesse P. Pollack.

  Grace Petrilli DiMuro understands the impressions that her classmates had of Jeannette yet insists that she was, at heart, a kind and sensitive person. “She was very sweet, but she didn’t take anyone’s crap. She didn’t necessarily start trouble, but she wouldn’t back down if someone started with her. Still, with all of that in mind, when Jeannette showed you her vulnerable side, you were seeing the real Jeannette.”

  Jeannette’s vulnerable nature, along with her inherent insecurity, often manifested itself through her habit of constantly brushing her hair. Melissa Benner remembers Jeannette “never being without a hairbrush.” The young, attractive teenager was often seen compulsively brushing her long brunette locks several times a day. “Straight hair was the style back then,” Melissa recalls. “Jeannette’s hair was curly, so she was always trying to flatten out the curls.”

  When asked if she recalls Jeannette’s constant habit of trying to straighten her hair, Grace Petrilli DiMuro laughs. “Yes! She was doing that all the time!” she says with a smile. “If she wasn’t brushing it, she was trying to smooth it out with her hands, or she was pulling the two sides from the back to the front and pulling on them like they were braids. Her hair was frizzy and wavy, but it wasn’t particularly thick or anything. That’s the kind of stuff that she would ask me about because I had long, straight hair back then. I remember I told her to use the ‘two cans trick’ and wrap the rest of her hair around her head to get it straight. She thought that was hilarious! She would often come to me for advice.”

  Gail Donohue, too, remembers Jeannette’s desire for straighter hair. “Straight hair was the thing in those days,” she recalls. “We had the curliest hair in the world. We used to blow dry our hair and put it up with a big orange juice can. All society looked at, at that point, was straight hair. Now, you can do anything you want. Of course, New Jersey is humid, and our straightened hair would last maybe fifteen minutes to a half hour.”

  Despite Grace Petrilli DiMuro’s memories of Jeannette’s sweet and vulnerable side, she does acknowledge that some of the “preconceived notions” of Jeannette’s “wild” nature were, indeed, accurate. “She was a little on the wild side. Because of this, we only hung out in school and not after. She had told me a few things about boys and drugs, but I was a little more reserved.”

  At school, the two girls often sat together in study hall, engrossed in conversation. “Jeannette didn’t talk about goals or life plans, just short-term stuff like where she was going that weekend,” Grace laughs.

  “She probably would have wanted to be a rock star,” says Gail Donohue.

  “We were both Italian, so we talked about our families a lot,” Grace continues. “We’d talk about music, too. She loved Janis Joplin.” Grace remembers one particular afternoon in study hall when Jeannette was uncharacteristically upset. When Grace asked her what was wrong, Jeannette told her that she had just been told that a favorite actor of hers, Pete Duel, had recently killed himself. Duel had achieved popular recognition by portraying the outlaw character of Hannibal Heyes on the hit ABC television series Alias Smith and Jones. On New Year’s Eve 1971, the actor famously committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a revolver at his Hollywood Hills home.

  In modern society, the idea of a teenager being labeled “wild” and shunned for listening to rock music and recreational marijuana use seems almost alien. Perhaps even laughable. The recollections of Grace Petrilli DiMuro and Lisa Treich Greulich seem to portray Jeannette DePalma as an average rebellious teenager—certainly by today’s standards. Other members of her inner circle, however, have more ominous memories.

  “Jeannette’s mother told me that her daughter was reading a book on Satanism,” says Pastor James Tate of Cranford New Jersey’s Calvary Tabernacle Church. Tate first became acquainted with the DePalma family at the Assemblies of God Evangel Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the early 1970s. “The DePalmas came to our church during the season that we in spiritual circles like to call ‘the Jesus movement,’” Pastor Tate recalls.

  Beginning in the late 1960s, the Jesus movement originated as an offshoot of the anti-establishment counterculture that had taken the West Coast of the United States by storm and had been steadily spreading across the country as the war in Vietnam raged on. The Jesus movement soon found a home in disenchanted hippies who were looking for further spiritual enlightenment. Teenagers and young adults who had once pledged allegiance to Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were now seeking a simpler and more satisfying existence, similar to the lives of the early Christians. The movement eventually gained prominence and notoriety as a result of nationwide media attention. Followers of the Jesus movement were labeled as “Jesus people” by those who were sympathetic to their cause. Their detractors, however, reveled in branding these young disciples as “Jesus freaks.” In what was perhaps a prime example of the Christian ethos of “turning the other cheek,” these followers happily embraced the “Jesus freak” nomenclature as a symbol of positive self-identification.

  One particular family in Springfield Top had become enamored of this new boom in spiritual cul
ture and offered to bring their young neighbor Cindy DePalma along to the Assemblies of God Evangel Church for a Sunday service. Florence and Salvatore DePalma’s youngest child quickly became captivated by this new congregation. Before long, the rest of the once-devout Roman Catholic family began attending services in Elizabeth several times a week. The DePalmas soon declared themselves to be born-again Evangelical Christians. In a conservative community largely composed of Italian American Roman Catholics, this new revelation brought further negative attention to Jeannette’s family.

  “The DePalma family were definitely in the frontlines of the born-again Christianity movement,” Gail Donohue says. “But I think the skepticism regarding that family was more of a social skepticism in the sense that, if you and your wife might say, ‘Hey let’s call so-and-so and so-and-so and have everybody bring hors d’oeuvres and we’ll all just have a cocktail party before dinner’—that relationship did not exist between the DePalma family and their neighbors. I hate to sound like a snob, but I guess the people of that neighborhood might have felt that the DePalmas were not the right people for that neighborhood. I don’t mean that in a mean way, I just mean that honestly. It was a kind of socioeconomic snobbery.”

  Mary Starr,* a former neighbor of the DePalmas, can recall another unsettling reason for the aversion that the neighborhood felt toward Jeannette’s family. “You need to understand that Jeannette’s father was very much involved with the Mafia,” Starr says. “He was a local capo. It was an open secret. We knew who was in the Cosa Nostra, but we never talked about it. To be honest with you, Mountainside was a fairly heavy Mafia town. I did speculate and wonder if what happened to her was some sort of Mafia-related retaliation. We were very cautious. We had the DePalmas living nearby and another family in Mountainside that was very involved with the Mafia. This other family was either involved with ‘Gyp’ DeCarlo and the Genovese family or the Gambino family. We heard all kinds of rumors about bodies on hooks and things like that, so we were very careful. They were not the nicest people in the world. They were mean, from my perspective, at least. They were bullies. They were very cruel to my siblings and myself, so we really had very little to do with them.”