Piecing Together the Evidence
After discovering the bodies, investigators began looking for any clues that might indicate who had committed such a ruthless crime. The evidence quickly pointed toward Heffernan, Enders’ youngest daughter and a real estate agent based in Pennsylvania.
They found surveillance footage of Heffernan’s RV driving toward Enders’ home in the early morning hours of September 29, 2021, as well as doorbell footage showing the same RV approaching the home. Cell phone data showed Heffernan’s phone had traveled along the same route.
Police also found footage of a person who they claim was Heffernan climbing over a fence on Enders’ property, as well as bloody footprints inside the home that they identified as hers. When they searched the inside of her RV, they found dried blood on the carpet. Ammunition in Heffernan's RV and home was a match for ammunition found at the crime scene; additional guns and bullets were found in her house.
Ocean County prosecutors charged Heffernan with two counts of murder, as well as several counts of possessing a weapon for an unlawful purpose. At a brief court appearance in Pennsylvania before being extradited to New Jersey, Heffernan maintained her innocence.
Meanwhile, the residents of Long Beach Island were left to grapple with the loss of two community members. A former home builder, Enders was “always willing to give a helping hand,” Denis Mitchell, a homicide detective with the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, tells A&E. He often invited his neighbors over for meals and was known to let kids catch crabs off his dock.
Pitoy had been an Alzheimer’s specialist at a nursing home, as well as an active and beloved member of the Surf City Volunteer Fire Company. “Our hearts are broken as we remember the light, love and laughter that Frenchie brought to us,” the group wrote in an October 2021 Facebook post.
Overall, the gruesome killings were a shock, since Long Beach Island is a small, quiet, safe, beach community, Michael Weatherstone, executive assistant prosecutor for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
“There are not a lot of violent crimes there,” Weatherstone adds. “In the 25 years I’ve been here, there was one murder when I first started and then there was this one—and both were family-related.”
Why Did Sherry Lee Heffernan Kill Her Father and His Girlfriend?
A neighbor told police Enders had recently updated his will to exclude both of his daughters. Enders had also decided to sell his $1.9 million, six-bedroom home in Surf City, which upset Heffernan.
“[Heffernan] had a real estate license in New Jersey and Maryland,” the neighbor, John Gofus, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “When [Enders] decided he was going to sell it, [Heffernan] wanted the house outright. [Enders] said, ‘No, I’m selling it.’ [Heffernan] said, ‘Well, I will sell it for you.’ [Enders] said, ‘I’m giving it to an active Realtor.’”
Heffernan’s son, meanwhile, told police that both he and his mother saw Pitoy as a gold digger, and that she was pressuring him to sell the house.
At Heffernan’s trial in February 2024, prosecutors leaned into this narrative, arguing that Heffernan had been motivated by greed. Heffernan, they claimed, did not know she had been cut out of her father’s will and assumed she would be the sole recipient of all of his assets when he died.
“She had 1.9 million-plus reasons why she wanted Jack and Frenchy dead,'' Weatherstone told the jury, according to the Asbury Park Press. “...She wanted that house. She wanted that money.”
When police searched Heffernan's home after the slayings, they found an earlier version of her father’s will—the one in which he still left everything to Heffernan—on the dining room table. Cell phone data also showed Heffernan had been looking at the listing for her father’s home the night before she committed the crimes, Weatherstone tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
“It’s impossible to say what’s in somebody’s mind unless they tell us—and she didn’t tell us,” Weatherstone says. “But based on the evidence we had, we believe she did this because she wanted that house. That was a house she thought she should have, and she was very upset with her father that he was selling it.”
Defense attorney Steven Altman, however, argued that Heffernan was innocent. He told the jury that prosecutors could not prove Heffernan was the one driving the RV, nor the person climbing the fence, according to the Asbury Park Press.
Altman also pointed out that police had never tested a bloody glove found at the scene for DNA, suggesting the real killer was still on the loose. And, he said, investigators had failed to search Heffernan's other vehicles or properties for the gun that was used to kill Enders and Pitoy, which was never found.
Heffernan’s DNA, he said, was found on the doorknobs inside her father’s home, not because she was the murderer, but because she had visited the house several days earlier to take pictures. He also told the jury that it made no sense for her to have parked a vehicle as conspicuous as a white Winnebago in front of the home while she was inside committing murder.
Crime of ‘Extreme Depravity’
At the end of the four-week trial on March 1, 2024, jurors found Heffernan guilty of all charges.
“It’s pure relief, and we can move on now,” Andrew Vero, Enders’ grandson, said after the verdict was read, according to the Asbury Park Press.
On May 10, 2024, Superior Court Judge Kimarie Rahill ordered Heffernan to serve 63 years and nine months in prison for each murder, without the possibility of parole, effectively handing down two life sentences. Rahill noted Heffernan had committed the murders with “extreme depravity,” according to the Asbury Park Press.
At sentencing, Heffernan continued to maintain her innocence, breaking down in sobs as she described her grief over Enders’ and Pitoy’s deaths. “I really wish I was the one who was killed, that I was the one who died,” she said, according to the Asbury Park Press. “This is horrible pain … It's horrible to lose people you love and then be blamed for it.”
Today, Heffernan is incarcerated at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Union Township, N.J, where she will likely remain for the rest of her life.
