Did Witchcraft Play a Role in a 16-Year-Old's 1972 Killing?

For much of the 1980s, the American populace seemed almost morbidly obsessed with devil worship and all things occult. Rumors abounded for years that networks of Satanists were carrying out ritualistic sacrifices inside daycares, and parents blamed their children’s suicidal actions on heavy metal lyricism. Meanwhile, role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons were deemed recruitment tools for the Church of Satan, which was founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible.

The so-called “Satanic panic” that would eventually take hold of America’s collective psyche during the ‘80s wouldn’t release its grip until well into the 1990s.

But in the early 1970s, between the theatrical releases of the Satanic-themed Oscar-winning films Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 and The Exorcist in 1973, the state of New Jersey experienced its own “Satanic panic,” thanks to a pair of gruesome murders that unfolded within miles of each other.

In November 1971, accountant John Emil List meticulously massacred his wife, Helen, their three kids, John Jr., Frederick and Patricia, and his elderly mother, Alma, in the town of Westfield, N.J., “to save their souls from the devil.” Less than one year later, a dog would strut into nearby Springfield on September 19, 1972, carrying the arm of missing teen Jeannette Christine DePalma in its mouth.

DePalma’s parents reported her missing six weeks earlier on August 7—four days after the teen’s 16th birthday—after she left for a friend’s house. Authorities later located the rest of her remains atop a massive crystal surge pile within an area of the decommissioned Houdaille Quarry known as “The Devil’s Teeth.”

A fire engine ladder truck had to be brought in for investigators to recover all of DePalma’s body. Severe decomposition made it impossible for medical examiners to perform an autopsy. An official cause of death has never been determined.

Authorities also noted the contents of her purse were found dumped out next to DePalma’s remains. Detectives were reported to have consulted a witch as part of their investigation, and, according to the 2015 book Death on the Devil’s Teeth: The Strange Murder That Shocked Suburban New Jersey, interrogated an ex-boyfriend, the quarry’s watchman, a drunken accountant and an unhoused drifter who’d been living in the woods near the quarry while caddying at a nearby golf course.

After officials suspected the girl had been strangled to death, the investigation began to go cold. To this day, no one has been arrested for DePalma’s death.

“It’s a sordid tale,” New Jerseyan Ed Salzano, who was close to DePalma’s late nephew, John, and manages a Facebook page dedicated to her case, says. “Some will make her out to seem like she wasn’t a good person, or that she was drug-addicted hippie who overdosed out in the woods. That is not what happened. Jeannette was a saint—a religious evangelist who was targeted.”

Salzano tells A&E Crime + Investigation he believes Satanism or the occult played a part in DePalma’s death: “People will say that her murder didn’t have anything to do with witchcraft or Satanism when it has everything to do with witchcraft and Satanism.”

Soon after DePalma was found dead, her pastor, Rev. James Tate, theorized to local reporters that DePalma had approached a group of Satan worshippers, tried lecturing them “about Christ” and that “their fanaticism arose and they killed her.”

Crosses had been found by the girl’s head and tree branches were placed around her body, forming a shape resembling a coffin. This led to sensational headlines like “Girl Sacrificed in Witch Rite?” and “‘Witchcraft’ Implicated in DePalma Murder,” which only fueled further speculation Satan’s followers killed the Springfield teen.

“Everyone was—and still are—afraid to talk about it, even 20 years after the fact,” Weird NJ’s Mark Moran, who co-authored Death on the Devil’s Teeth, told A&E Crime + Investigation. “Everyone knew bits and pieces of what happened, but the locals were very reluctant to talk about it at the time. Everyone had different reasons for not wanting to talk, because they thought a biker gang did it or Satanists or a cop. People were afraid of retribution.”

Some even suggested her death was a paranormal occurrence. “She was on top of a huge pile of rocks, where you would just keep sliding back down if you tried to climb it,” Salzano explains, adding he’s inspected the quarry site himself. “She was wearing flip-flops, so how did she get up there?”

Her nephew claimed Jeannette was detrimentally nice and always stood up for friends, despite her diminutive size. The “prissy mallrat” made it her mission to help local kids she saw selling drugs “find the Lord,” Salzano adds.

“Lots of young teenage men were after her, too,” Salzano, who was 10 when DePalma was murdered, says. “Aggressive young men.”

In 2018, Salzano filed a lawsuit seeking a court order that would direct the Union County Prosecutor’s Office to retest DePalma’s clothing for any DNA the killer may have left behind. However, the following year, Superior Court Judge Karen Cassidy dismissed Salzano’s lawsuit, noting he is not related to DePalma and therefore has no standing to bring forward the request.

Moran says that many of DePalma’s relatives have died in recent years, much like the detectives who had handled her case and the various men who’d been questioned as potential suspects.

“There’s no closure, because nobody really knows for sure who killed her,” Moran says. “It’s anybody’s guess. Was it the mentally unstable accountant who got violent when he drank [and was suspected in three other murders]? Was it the homeless man in the woods? The son of the police chief? I feel like this will always be an unsolved case.”