ON August 7, 1972, 16-year-old high school
student Jeannette DePalma told her mum she
was going out to visit a friend.
When she didn’t return that evening, her
worried mother called the police, who discovered
she never made it to her friend’s house.
Six weeks later, a dog walking in woods near
Jeannette’s home in Springfield, New Jersey,
ran back to its owner with a badly decomposed
arm.
The grisly find led to police discovering
the teenager’s body nearby – and sparked
a mystery embroiled in rumors of witchcraft
and Satanic rituals, which remains unsolved
to this day.
Jeanette’s body was found on a ridge known
as The Devil’s Teeth and local witnesses
said it was surrounded by a series of strange,
occult objects with the remains of dead animals
hanging from nearby trees.
Although wildly different accounts exist of
the murdær scene, the most consistent detail
was that the body was inside a coffin-shaped
structure made from fallen branches and logs,
with several makeshift crosses around it.
Rumors of black magic and Satanic cults were
rife and some locals blamed a coven of teenage
witches who had vowed to abduct and kill a
child.
The post-mortem failed to quash the rumors,
as the exact cause of death could not be determined
and a likely cause was listed as strangulation.
A toxicology report found no trace of drugs
but a high level of lead, which was also unexplained.
Two weeks after the body was found, local
papers published articles “confirming”
Jeanette’s death was down to witchcraft,
citing local evangelist and family friend
Rev. James Tate.
As the teen coven began to become the accepted
story in the local community, police arrested
a homeless man who had been staying in the
area, but he was soon released and cleared
as a suspect.
With no more leads, the police closed the
case until the late 1990s, when Mark Moran,
from the magazine Weird NJ, decided to take
a look.
He found the police had lost or destroyed
most of the files and that locals he approached
seemed too frightened to talk about the case.
After publishing an article, Mark received
a flurry of anonymous letters, offering chilling
information about Jeannette’s murdær.
One wrote: “I was a young teenager when
the discovery of Jeannette DePalma happened
and lived in the next town.
“About two years prior, there was much talk
in my school about a cult in the surrounding
area.
They were known as The Witches.
“They 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.”
Another letter, from the relative of a local
policeman, read: “When 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.
“All 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.
“The Watchung Reservation or the “Res”
has been reported to be the center of devil
worship activity for years."
Some believe that Jeannette's death was the
work of a serial killer, who struck again
in 1974 in Montvale, NJ, where the bodies
of two young girls were found in the woods.
They had been beaten, sexually assaulted and
strangled.
Their killer was never found but many have
dismissed this theory as there was no suggestion
of a sexual assault on Jeannette.
With most of the police files gone, it seems
the mystery of Jeannette's murdær will never
be solved.
