Death on the Devil’s Teeth

by Pollack, Jesse P.

  The recollections of Elizabeth Mullins,* an acquaintance of Jeannette’s, seem to lend a certain amount of credence to some of Lisa Treich Greulich’s claims regarding her cousin’s efforts to change her own life for the better. “I know people say that she had turned to God and steered clear of drugs,” Mullins says. However, she is also quick to add, “But not everyone believed that. I don’t know whether she was still doing drugs or not, but we believed that she was still hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

  Another opposing view of Pastor James Tate’s recent memories of Jeannette DePalma come from a surprising source: Pastor Tate himself.

  Comments that the clergyman made to several media publications in the weeks following the discovery of Jeannette’s body do not reflect the recollections that he has shared with us. An article that appeared in the October 4, 1972 edition of the New York Daily News entitled “Priest’s Theory: Devil’s Disciples Killed Girl,” featured an interview with the then Reverend Tate, who described Jeannette as an “extremely religious and a very devout parishioner.” Tate claimed that the teenager was “so religious that she would often talk to friends and acquaintances about God” and might have been “picked up by someone, or by a group,” on the day that she died.

  The then reverend went on to suggest that this “someone” or “group” worshipped the devil and that Jeannette might have tried to “lecture them about Jesus; the Person these people detest.” While admitting that it was just a “personal theory,” Tate postulated that “their fanaticism arose, and they killed her. Her super religious attitude was scorned by this type of people. Witchcraft has become very popular recently because organized religion cannot hold its people. Young people, especially, have fallen away from the church. Jeannette may have been a symbol of Christ to these devil worshippers and that’s why they killed her.” Tate made similar statements that were published in an October 2, 1972 Elizabeth Daily Journal article entitled “DePalmas Say Slayers Possessed by Demons.” “Jeannette was unashamed of her love for Jesus Christ,” he told the newspaper. “[She] was born again when she realized she was a sinner. She allowed Jesus to come into her mind and body. She loved Christ and preached his word. Perhaps she was drugged or persuaded to participate in a witchcraft rite.”

  When we asked Pastor Tate if he still believed that Jeannette had been “persuaded” to willfully participate in some sort of sacrifice, he replied, “You know, it seems almost impossible to think that someone would willingly do that. Our Lord died for us, but Jeannette was involved in something that was so marginal, you know? The whole witchcraft/Satanist thing. The occult was, and still is, so marginal.” However, in an article entitled “Witchcraft Implicated in DePalma Murder,” which appeared in the October 3, 1972 edition of the Newark Star-Ledger newspaper, the then Reverend Tate was quoted as saying, “I’m sure Jeanette [sic] herself was not involved in anything like that, but I know that many of the other young people in this area are involved. These kids tell us that when they are on drugs, they are in the control of Satan. They do things they don’t want to do, and say things they don’t want to say, because of the power of evil.”

  Pastor Tate offered no explanation for the notable inconsistencies in his recollections of Jeannette’s character during his interview with us.

  “I am surprised to hear that my dad thought Jeannette was involved in the occult,” says Pastor Wayne Tate, son of Pastor James Tate. “I have no knowledge of my dad knowing anything about Jeannette having occult books in her room. I do believe that there was occult activity in the mountains there, as was rumored and widely suspected, but I have never thought that Jeannette was involved in it. She came to youth group. She gave her life to Christ. She was new to the faith and perhaps had some dealings with ‘the dark side’ earlier in her journey. I know she seemed to have a wild side to her, but she was making progress in her walk with the Lord. I know she said a prayer and asked Jesus into her life, but I am not sure if she ever completely surrendered to him.” Pastor Wayne also has fond memories of dating Jeannette as a teenager. “We dated for several months. I cared deeply for her. She was an awesome young lady. She broke up with me because we could not see each other enough. I was in Elizabeth, and she lived in Springfield. I could not drive yet, as I was too young. I was sad about us breaking up and was holding out hope that she would return and maybe we could get the relationship going again, but it was not to be. She was missing for six weeks, and then her remains were discovered…”

  The recollections of a former member of the Assemblies of God Evangel Church could very possibly shed light on the differences between what the then Reverend Tate told newspaper journalists in 1972 and his current, more candid recollections. The parishioner, who spoke with us under the condition of complete anonymity, recalls Florence DePalma as being “one who would have ideas of grandeur about her children.” The parishioner maintains that Mrs. DePalma “really meant well” but stressed the fact that Jeannette’s mother was “not always connected with reality” and that one “really couldn’t rely on the factuality of what she said.”

  “Her mother was trying to paint a beautiful picture,” the parishioner recalls. “I guess that’s understandable, but that certainly doesn’t help to keep the facts straight.”

  One is left to wonder if the then reverend’s comments to the media about Jeannette being an “extremely religious and very devout” young woman were part of a conscious effort on his behalf to not interfere with a grieving mother’s “beautiful picture.”

  The issue of whether Jeannette DePalma was a pious and devoted Christian or a drug-addled “wild child” may never be conclusively settled. The answer likely lies somewhere in the middle. Whatever the case may be, most who were close to Jeannette during the final days and weeks of her life all seem to agree that she was trying to turn over a new leaf and lead a much more positive and fulfilling life.

  Sadly, this would all come to an end on the afternoon of Monday, August 7, 1972.

  4

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF

  JEANNETTE DEPALMA

  The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.

  —Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Like many other facets of Jeannette DePalma’s life, the details of her final day on earth are nebulous, with several differing accounts of what exactly happened or might have happened. According to Jeannette’s cousin Lisa Treich Greulich, the morning of August 7, 1972, began in a fairly tranquil way but soon turned difficult. “I was told that Jeannette came downstairs from her room for breakfast that morning, and this was when my aunt and uncle finally decided to tell her that I had been missing for some time,” Lisa says. “I had run away from home about a month earlier, and since I had done this a few times before, I guess my family was expecting me to come back. After a few weeks had gone by, I think everyone started to get a little worried.”

  For whatever reason, Florence and Salvatore DePalma had chosen this moment to tell their daughter that her cousin had been missing for nearly a month. The couple had not planned for Jeannette’s reaction. “She was pissed,” Lisa says. “She was very angry that her parents had waited so long to tell her. She left the table and stormed off back to her room.”

  “Jeannette called me around eleven o’clock that morning,” Gail Donohue recalls. “I asked her what she was doing, and she said, ‘My mom is making me scrub the bathrooms today. I don’t think I can come over.’ This got me really mad because we had made plans to hang out with these two boys who[m] we had met at Echo Lake Park the day before, and now it seemed like Jeannette was trying to get out of it. I told her to get her ass over here because the guys were on their way. Now, I’m not a bully, but I bugged her to come over because she put me in this position. She told me, ‘Alright, I’ll hitchhike over,’ and that was the last time I heard from her…”

  As she hung up the phone, Gail Donohue never once thought that her best friend might be in any kind of danger hitchhiki
ng to her house. “That’s when times were a lot easier,” Gail says. “Before Jeannette’s death, we hitchhiked all over the darn place. That’s how we got around. You know, you didn’t get your driver’s license until you were seventeen and a half in New Jersey, and that was just our way of life. We used to hitchhike to Elizabeth, for God’s sake. From middle class to upper middle class, that’s certainly how we got around.”

  What happened after Gail and Jeannette ended their phone call is a notable source of uncertainty and contention.

  According to Cindy DePalma, Jeannette approached her, asking if she would accompany her to Gail’s house in Berkeley Heights, roughly eight miles away. “Jeannette was seeing a guy named Tommy, who[m] I had never met,” Cindy says. “She wanted to meet up with him at Gail’s house before work.” Cindy claims she declined Jeannette’s offer of accompanying her to Gail Donohue’s house because of her own romantic troubles. “I didn’t go because I was fighting with my boyfriend, and I wanted to stay by the phone,” she recalls. “Talk about feeling guilty all my life…”

  Gail Donohue, however, denies the accuracy of Cindy DePalma’s memory. “I don’t remember any ‘Tommy,’” she says. “The only Tommy that Jeannette knew was actually my boyfriend. He was from Mountainside. Jeannette hung out with, what we called at that time, the ‘Greaser Group.’ You know, the Italians. This became a problem because my parents, coming from an Irish background, and my father coming from Brooklyn, wouldn’t let me hang around with people who were dating Italians in high school. Also, Jeannette never said she was bringing Cindy over. Cindy was younger than us; we wouldn’t have hung out with her. Cindy DePalma has never been to my house in her whole life.”

  When we asked for specifics regarding “Tommy,” Cindy DePalma could not recall a last name, general description or any other details about Jeannette’s alleged boyfriend, maintaining that she had never met him in person. Her only additional memory of “Tommy” was that her sister’s alleged boyfriend “may have lived in Berkeley Heights near Gail.”

  During his 2004 interview with Weird NJ magazine, Jeannette’s nephew John Bancey recalls his mother, Jeannette’s older sister Darlene, once discussing a boy whom Jeannette might have been dating around the time of her disappearance. “My mother mentioned that [Jeannette] had possibly a new boyfriend,” Bancey told Weird NJ. “He had blue eyes. I don’t know how true that is, it’s been a long time. But that’s what my mother said.”

  “I also had heard that she was going to see her boyfriend on the day that she disappeared,” Grace Petrilli DiMuro recalls. “But, I hadn’t seen her all summer, so I couldn’t say who the boyfriend was.”

  Another matter of controversy is the source of Jeannette’s employment. In the weeks after her death and the subsequent discovery of her remains, it was widely reported in the media that Jeannette was due to work an evening shift at a part-time job on the day that she vanished. According to Cindy DePalma, Jeannette worked at Brooks Department Store, later known as Sealfons, in Summit, approximately three miles away from her home. Melissa Benner, Jeannette’s longtime friend, also remembers this being the case. In addition, Weird NJ magazine received an anonymous letter from a reader in 2004 that seemed to validate both Cindy’s and Melissa’s recollections. The letter read, in part: “Apparently my mom knew Jeannette, because Jeannette worked at a clothing store in Summit named Sealfons. They were about the same age, which should have been around 13 or 14.”

  Gail Donohue, however, denies Cindy DePalma’s, Melissa Benner’s and the anonymous reader’s recollections. “No way,” she insists. “Absolutely not. There’s no way. We were only fifteen at the time and did not have working papers. Jeannette and I both worked for a telephone soliciting company. It was up the stairs right across from Summit Train Station. That’s where they had their office. I believe it was called ‘Handicapped Workers of America’ or something to that extent. These people at the telephone soliciting company didn’t care that we were underage and didn’t have working papers. I later found out that the handicapped people who we were raising money for only saw maybe 4 percent of the funds. I remember, I didn’t know anything about the Sabbath, and I called a Jewish person’s house and caught holy hell because they’re not supposed to even touch electricity. They thought it was an emergency. All we did with our money, because we made so little, was buy all of the candy downstairs, and then we would go back upstairs to make some more calls.”

  Bert Model, the former owner of Brooks Department Store, later Sealfons, steadfastly denies Jeannette ever being employed in his store. “This woman never worked at my store,” Model says. “If any of my employees were ever kidnapped or murdered, I, for sure, would have known about it and remembered.”

  Whatever the case may be—Brooks Department Store or the telemarketing company—Jeannette allegedly told her parents that she had a shift scheduled for that evening. At some point before she left her home, Jeannette allegedly called a friend to see if she would accompany her to Gail’s.

  A friend of Jeannette’s who requested to be referred to only as “Rosanne” recalls a sister of hers receiving a phone call from Jeannette on the day that she vanished. “My sister was asked by Jeannette to go to Summit the day she disappeared,” she says. “My mother told my sister that she could not go, and she listened, thank God. My sister was very upset and scared when the news broke about Jeannette, which was later that evening when her mother, Florence, called my mother asking if my sister was home or knew where Jeannette would be.”

  After Rosanne’s sister declined her invitation, Jeannette grabbed her purse—a gift from her older sister Carole—and told her mother that she was going to walk three miles to the train station in Summit. From there, she said, she would take a train into Berkeley Heights to see Gail. John Bancey recalled the following during his 2004 interview with Weird NJ magazine:

  My two aunts were together, my aunt Cindy and my aunt Jeannette. [Cindy] said Jeannette was getting ready for work but she was going to stop by her friend’s house at the time. She worked somewhere in Summit. My grandmother offered her a ride to work and she said, “No mom, I’m ok, I’m 16.” She was going to go up to her friend’s house and she was going to get a ride to work. My Grandmother said, “You’re too young,” and she said, “No, I’m 16 now, leave me alone Mom,” and that’s the last time they saw her.

  After this brief exchange, Florence DePalma reluctantly allowed her daughter to walk to Summit Station, completely unaware that Jeannette was actually intending to hitchhike straight to Gail Donohue’s house.

  Exiting her front door, Jeannette walked down her driveway and turned left onto Clearview Road. What occurred after this moment would be enshrouded in mystery for decades to come.

  “Jeannette stopped by the Bladis home uninvited midday,” says John Rosenski, widower of Donna Bladis, a friend of Jeannette’s. If this were true, Jeannette would most likely have turned right off Clearview Road and onto Chimney Ridge Drive. From there, she would have turned right onto Ledgewood Road, left onto Sunny Slope Drive, right onto Sunny View Road and then right onto Summit Road, a large road cutting straight through Springfield and adjoining Mountainside. From there, Jeannette would have made another right onto High Point Drive, where the Bladis home sat on the corner. “Donna was grounded by her parents and was not supposed to have friends over,” Rosenski recalls. “Jeannette was not all she seemed to be. Donna’s mother, for some reason, did not want her around Donna.”

  The site of the Bladis home as it appeared in 2014. Jeannette’s unexpected visit to this house on the day of her disappearance caused significant controversy among her friends and family for decades. Photo by Jesse P. Pollack.

  Cindy DePalma, however, vehemently disagrees with Rosenski’s statement. “That is a lie,” she insists. “Donna’s parents liked Jeannette. She was a good kid.”

  Rosenski’s recollections are, however, bolstered by Gail Donohue. “Mrs. Bladis did not like either one of us,” she says, referring to herself and J
eannette. “She did not like us one bit. The last time that I can remember being at the Bladis house, there was a party, and Mrs. Bladis kicked Jeannette and myself out. I think we might have brought boys and hid them in the bushes. We didn’t go far without boys in those days, but it was a very innocent thing.”

  “Jeannette was having a fight with her boyfriend and was looking for a ride somewhere,” Rosenski continues, recounting the recollections of his late wife. “Jeannette asked Donna’s mother to drive her somewhere. Donna’s mother refused, and Jeannette left, walking down High Point Drive toward Springfield. This is all I know.”

  Cindy DePalma again finds fault in John Rosenski’s account of Donna Bladis’s recollections.

  “Jeannette and Tommy were not fighting that day. I was the one fighting with my boyfriend,” she says, reiterating her original statement.

  Years later, Jeannette’s alleged unannounced visit to the Bladises’ Mountainside home would become a gold mine of gossip and nefarious allegations. According to Ed Kisch, sometime in the late 1970s, a rumor began to circulate within the Springfield Police Department about a party that was allegedly thrown by Donna Bladis and her brothers, Mark and Richard, on the night of Jeannette DePalma’s disappearance. In the narrative of this rumor, Jeannette DePalma supposedly overdosed on an unknown or unnamed drug and died at this party. Certain attendees then supposedly panicked and decided to dump her body in the woods off Mountview Road.

  “My mother always believed that the Bladises were involved,” Cindy DePalma says. “She became suspicious of them when they didn’t show up to Jeannette’s funeral. My mom just had this feeling until the day she passed.”