Criminology - The Boca Raton Mall Murders

Episode Date: November 9, 2019

In 2007, the affluent area of Boca Raton, Florida, experienced a number of attacks and murders that occurred at the local mall. The crimes shared eerie similarities. The perpetrator or perpetrators targeted women who drove dark expensive SUVs. The victims were bound and made to wear goggles or sunglasses that were blacked out so that they could not see. In some cases, the victims were made to drive to ATMs to withdraw money. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss these baffling Boca Raton mall attacks and murders. These remain unsolved to this day, but a surviving victim has been able to provide a composite sketch. Are all of these crimes related or is it possible that a copycat killer emulated previous crimes? The details are so specific and similar that it's hard to believe they are unrelated and not carried out by the same killer or killers. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Busy work simply doesn't work. That's why Commonwealth Charter Academy offers career readiness programs that help students jumpstart their futures. CCA, how schools should work. Visit cca educate.me. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 86 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, how are you? I'm doing good. How about you? I'm doing excellent. And I am excited to record another episode. I always get jazz during the recording process. That's the kind of the fun part for you and I.

Yeah, we really touch on some different kinds of cases that it's always fun to dive into them and see if we can figure out what's going on with them. Got a lot of great feedback from our Halloween episode, the two acts murders. those are pretty well-known unsolved cases, especially when you're talking about big-time family massacre axe murders. And the somewhat paranormal activity that goes along with each of them, they're both very interesting cases, but both very well-known. I think they were the perfect cases to do for our Halloween episode. They had just the right mix of mystery, but some of the bizarre ghost-like stuff, too. going on. So interesting cases. So before we get into this case, we had some new Patreon

supporters. So let's give our shoutouts. We had Elizabeth Walsh, George Blaskowski, Amy Greger, Dremah Hazelwood, Douglas Loughride, and Lisa. So as always, we appreciate that new support very much. As we go forward, it always helps to have that support coming in. So if you'd like to help support criminology through Patreon, you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And don't forget about Stitcher Premium. All of our episodes that are older than six months are out there on Stitcher Premium. Stitcher Premium is awesome. The amount of content on there will blow you away. They also have a free 30-day trial that a lot of people use to catch up on our older episodes, especially the Golden State Killer, Ted Bundy, and Zodiac.

Those seasons are out there right now. All right, Morph, I think we need to dive into the Boca Raton Mall murders. It was in 2007 that the senseless murders of a mother and her young daughter shocked the residents of Boca Raton, Florida. Nancy Bokicchio and her seven-year-old daughter, Joey Bokicchio-Houser, were. abducted from the town center mall and found shot to death in Nancy's black SUV hours later in the mall's parking lot. The circumstances of their murders led police to believe that other similar cases may have been connected, but the killer or killers that struck at the Boca Raton Mall remain at large to this day. Journalist and author Kevin Deutsch has

extensively investigated the Boca Raton Mall murders, and he joined us to help tell this story, and you'll hear from him throughout the episode. The area of Boca Raton, Florida, where this case takes place, isn't the kind of area you'd expect such a crime spree. Located in Palm Beach County on the southeastern edge of Florida, this is a beautiful upscale neighborhood filled with golf courses and scenic parks and beaches. The crime rate in Boca Raton is low. So for someone like Nancy, Boquikio, a transplant to the area from New York. She didn't think twice about going out and about with her young daughter, Joey. Nancy Boquikio was born on August 21st, 1960 in the Bronx, New York.

She was raised there. She married Philip Hauser. And they lived in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn. They also lived in Long Island. At the age of 39, Nancy gave birth to her first and only child, Joey Boquikio Houser, on December 17, 1999. Nancy's marriage to Philip Houser lasted only a few years, and the couple divorced in September of 2006. Nancy and Joey lived in a home on Buttonwood Lake Drive in Boca Raton, which is simply referred to by many as Boca. Nancy was described by friends as being tough with a kind heart and a good spirit. In 2007, Nancy ran her own business as a stock analyst and worked hard to put Joey through St. Jude Catholic School in Boka. Joey was Nancy's life, and Nancy was completely devoted to her daughter.

The two were inseparable. Joey wasn't like the average seven-year-old. She was mature for her age and preferred clams, oysters, and muscles over chicken nuggets, hamburgers, and french fries. She was also sweet, happy, and mild-mannered. she loved karaoke and had a good sense of humor. During the Christmas season of 2007, Nancy was planning Joey's upcoming eighth birthday party. This was set to occur on December 15th at their favorite restaurant, Cafe DeAngelo. An investor in the cafe, a man by the name of Timothy McCurdy, who was also Nancy's friend,

was going to dress up as Santa Claus and surprise Joey with gifts. but Joey never got the chance to celebrate her eighth birthday. On Wednesday, December 12, 2007, Nancy picked Joey up early from school for a doctor's appointment. Then the two decided to do some Christmas shopping at Bocas Town Center Mall, an upscale mall with stores such as Sacks Fifth Avenue, Cardier, and Louis Vuitton, to name a few. They entered the mall around 2 p.m. through mall entrance number four between Neiman, Marcus, and Sears. mom and daughter are seen on the Sony store surveillance video in the mall and later exiting the mall from entrance number four at 3.11 p.m.

They were headed towards Nancy's black SUV, a 2007 Chrysler Aspen. What happened after that is unknown because there were no security cameras in the parking lot at that time. Nancy and Joey Bokicchio were a young mother and her seven-year-old daughter. Nancy was born in the Bronx. She was rid of the Bronx. She moved to South Florida to make a better life, an easier life for her and her little girl. And Nancy was, by all accounts, a really tough, street smart, intelligent, really kind, local girl from the Bronx. And she was really gifted in working in stocks and finance.

And really anything she applied herself to is she excelled in. She works with all these financial firms. And she was doing that in Florida as well with Joey, who really excelled in school, was a seven-year-old, she was extremely bright. They used to call her the mayor of Boca, because she was so, she had just radiated personality and charm, and she had this tremendous charisma.

Even for a seven-year-old, they called her the mayor of Boca, and they even said she had a New York attitude. And so her favorite place to go was to the mall. And this is a very upscale shopping center where really Boca's rich and elite shop for all the upscale designers. And Nancy and Joey went there, for Christmas shopping because the next day, Nancy was going to give, she wanted to find a gift

for her friend's daughter. And Joey was also going to be performing in a school play the next night as a reindeer. And that little, the gift was going to begin out to play where this woman was going to be as well. And so they went to the mall. They did some shopping and they were seen on surveillance video. And they had, you know, when they walked in those doors, they were on their way to amazing things in their life. They had a beautiful house in Boca. Joey had an incredibly bright future ahead of her. She could have pretty much been anything. She was a brilliant little girl. And Nancy really had her stuff together. I mean, she was making money. She was successful. She was happy, by all accounts. And everything was really beautiful for them, from family to financial life.

And when they came out of that mall, we know at some point they were, they disappeared. They were abducted by one or more ritualistic killers. Nancy was later found and ritualistically bound with zip ties at her ankles and wrist, and she had blacked-out motorcycle goggles over her eyes. And both little girl and her mother had been shot in their heads and found inside their SUV just outside the mall, which sat there for hours before a security guard noticed it. And it was a really tragic end to two remarkable lives that had come from New York to Florida and really succeeded in making a wonderful lives for a mother and daughter.

In that clip you just heard, Kevin lays out a bit of what happened to Nancy and Joey, but unfortunately, due to lack of eyewitnesses, due to the lack of surveillance, just exactly what happened after they got out of the mall isn't known. What is known is that at 3.14 p.m., Nancy attempted to call 911, but the call was disconnected before a dispatcher answered. When the dispatcher tried calling back, there was no answer. Around this same time, a friend of Nancy's named David Stewart, who had no idea what was happening at this time, called Nancy's cell phone. According to David, a man answered Nancy's phone speaking Spanish. When he heard David's voice, the man hung up. Video footage from a bank next to the mall showed Nancy making an ATM withdrawal.

of $500. And you know those ATM videos, kind of a fish eye type lens. The video only picked up Nancy. So we don't know exactly who, if anybody else was in the car, Joey, another strange man. We don't know. About nine hours later, just after midnight on December 13th, a mall security officer was patrolling in the parking lot when he noticed a black SUV. parked with its engine still running.

He looked inside and saw two people, a woman and a young girl that he thought may be sleeping, but he felt something was off and called police. Police never revealed the name of the security guard, and today Kevin Deutsch is seeking the identity of that guard so he can talk with him as he may have additional information. Boca police arrived at the mall and approached the vehicle. When they took a closer look,

they discovered that the people inside weren't asleep. They were dead. both victims have been shot to death. The bodies were identified as Nancy and Joey Bokicchio. According to the Boko Police, the suspect or suspects used a variety of material to bind and control Joey and Nancy. This included duct tape, plastic ties, handcuffs, and goggles. Their hands, feet, and neck were bound to restrict their movement inside the vehicle when they were discovered. The bindings on Nancy's wristbands.

were broken. Both Nancy and Joey were wearing yellow swimming or diving goggles. The inside of the goggles lenses were lined with some sort of sponge like padding, essentially to black them out, to make it so that the victims were unable to see. Police released an image of the goggles and they sought the public's help in identifying these type of goggles. They also asked if anyone possibly knew someone who owned a pair like them. Detectives don't know if Nancy and Joey were shot in the mall parking lot or somewhere else. They also have no idea when Nancy's SUV was returned to the parking lot. But they believe it was there for a number of hours before the security guard found it.

This was during the Christmas season. So there were thousands of visitors shopping at town center mall on a daily basis. but no one reported seeing anything. Boca Police thought that an abduction and killing in March 2007 and a kidnapping robbery a few months later in August were likely connected to the Bokicchio murders. All three of these cases shared some strong similarities. On March 23rd, 2007,

52-year-old Randy Gorenberg went shopping at the town center mall, the same mall as Nancy and Joey Bokicchio to buy a John Legend CD. she was seen on surveillance video leaving them all at 1.15 p.m. She stopped briefly to check voicemail on her cell phone before heading to her black Mercedes SUV. Randy Gorenberg was the first known victim of the Boko Mall killer or killers. She was last seen shopping at the mall on March 23rd, 2007.

She had watched the Today Show that morning at her upscale home in Boko Ritone from what we know from police as well as from documents and her surviving relatives, she had heard John Legend performing that morning on television, and she liked his album so much that she went to the mall later that morning and into the early afternoon to buy his new CD. So she went to the mall. She bought his CD at the FYE store,

which was a CD music store and video store at the mall at the time. And she also went shopping at the Old Navy. And she's seen on surveillance video doing all this, and she spends, you know, some time in the mall, then she exits. And she's last seen exiting through a camera that is stationed at one of the mall exits. And because there are no other additional cameras in the mall parking lot, that's the last trace we have of her until less than an hour later when witnesses at a nearby park in Delray Beach, which is just outside Boka, see a luxury, her luxury, SUV peeling out of this park and they hear a gunshot and they see Randy being dumped out of the car with a gunshot wound, a fatal gunshot wound and her killer escapes in her car. He ditches it at a Home Depot and he, to this day, has not been located.

Randy was a mother of two, a wife of Mr. Stewart-Gornberg. It was a very successful chiropractor in the Boca Raton area at the time. and had a, by all accounts, a sort of fairytale life. She was born in Brooklyn, grew up in New York City, moved to Florida, had this wonderful affluent life. 39 minutes later, after Randy exited the mall, someone placed a 911 call saying that they heard two gunshots and witnessed a woman fall out of a black SUV in Governor Lawton Child's Memorial Park in Delors.

Ray Beach. This is about five and a half miles north of the Boka Town Center Mall. The witness told the dispatcher that the woman was dead. That woman turned out to be Randy Gorenberg. Her SUV was found minutes later, abandoned behind a Home Depot near the park. Her purse and cell phone were missing, as was her black and white Puma shoes. Those items have never been found. The security cameras at the Home Depot, captured someone driving the SUV in the parking lot, followed by a white Chrysler 300. No one saw the killer, and he was not captured on the Home Depot cameras. Police believe Randy was abducted in the mall parking lot and that she attempted to escape by jumping from the moving vehicle, which is why she was shot to death. But what happened between the mall and

the park is unknown. Randy's murder devastated her family. And like Nancy, Boquikio, she was originally from New York. Randy was born in Brooklyn and married Stuart Gorenberg in 1979. The couple had two children together in the 80s, Daniel and Surrey. Stewart was a chiropractor and relocated his practice to the Oceanside community of Boka. He had a successful practice and the family lived in a $2 million home in the upscale community of Bonnella Acres. Randy was a devoted mother who also spent time volunteering. hearing in Boca. After her father passed away, Randy's mother, Idy Elias, remarried and moved to Florida to be closer to her daughter. And the two did become very close. If they weren't together,

they were chatting on the phone. The last time that Idy spoke with Randy was on the evening of March 22nd, 2007, the night before Randy's murder. Two hours after the murder, Detective spotted Randy's son, Daniel Gornberg, who at the time was 25 years old, they said that he was behaving strangely. They observed Daniel driving his Volkswagen car at a high rate of speed into the Gornberg's garage. He opened the trunk, took out a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels. He was also seen pacing in the family driveway while talking on his cell phone and smoking a cigarette. Daniel's odd behavior seemed suspicious to detectives who had not yet told him about his mother's death. When detectives did speak with Daniel and told him about his mom's murder, they asked him about his whereabouts at the time of Randy's murder.

Daniel said that he was working, but when police tried verifying it with his employer, the investigators were told that Daniel had not been working at that time. Detectives asked Daniel to turn in the clothes he was wearing that day so they could examine them. But he gave them the wrong set of clothes, which made him look even more suspicious to police. And apparently police weren't just watching Randy's son. They were also suspicious of her husband, Stuart, after they told him of his wife's murder. A captain from the Palm Beach County Homicide Unit told NBC's dateline in 2009, quote, It was just not your typical response that you would see from family members when their spouses are kids have been killed or murdered.

Just days after the murder, Daniel and Stewart both lawyered up and both men stopped talking directly to police. Their legal representation insisted that neither man had anything to do with Randy's murder. Randy's mother, Idy, and her daughter, Sari called a news conference asking for the public's health. What a lot of people found strange was the fact that neither Stewart. or Daniel attended the press. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work

and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water.

Listen now, wherever you get your podcast. This conference. So detectives continued to look into both father and son, and this included looking into Stewart's finances, the Gorenberg's home life and Daniel's emotional history. But they found nothing. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well, research true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontes. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. A few months later in August 2007, Daniel was arrested for trying to illegally buy prescription drugs. He was sentenced to three years of drug offender probation and was required to enroll in a residential drug treatment

program in Ocala. According to his lawyer, Daniel suffered from a drug addiction that worsened after his mother's murder. One source said the charges were dropped as part of an agreement with prosecutors and the court system. In 2008, Stuart Gornberg was arrested. The Florida Department of Financial Services accused Stewart's practice of billing private insurance twice for patients who weren't seen on the days they were billed for. Those charges were later dropped, despite all of their suspicious behavior, both Daniel and Stewart were never officially suspects in Randy's death. A lot of really salacious things started to come out about her family life

after she was killed, tragically, when reporters and police started digging into her life. Suspicion was cast on her husband, who police said had been frequenting prostitutes before and after her murder. Suspicion was also cast on her son, who was arrested for, trying to fulfill a fraudulent drug prescription, allegedly, a charge that was later tossed out. Her husband was also charged with insurance fraud, another charge that was later tossed out. It seemed this was happening as part of a law enforcement campaign to put pressure on them, because from all accounts in the court records, they honed in on both of them and thought they

might have had something to do with the crime. But as they've said, they have never, they don't have evidence physically linking her husband to the crime and they don't have physical evidence excluding him from the crime, as they said. So he has not been ruled out to this day, nor have anybody else who they've looked at. And they've tested many, many DNA samples taken from people who knew the family, who had connections to the Gorenberg's. And to this day, they have not gotten a DNA hit, even with all the advances in DNA technology. A few months after Randy Gorenberg's murder, a similar crime took place. On August 7th, so this was just a few months after Randy Gorenberg's death, a young mother

and her two-year-old son were exiting the mall after an afternoon of shopping, same as M.O. as the Gornburg case, getting in their SUV. And the young mother, when she closes, she puts her baby in the back seat and puts some bags in the back of the SUV and everything's fine. Then when she actually gets into the car and starts it, she sees in her in the back seat that the killer sitting there with his gun next to her, uh, her little boy. And he had, uh, obviously moved quite stealthily. He makes her drive around, uh, withdraw some money from an ATM. He later ritualistically binds her with the goggles, zip ties. He's got his holster. He's got his gloves. He's very calm, according to our testimony. On Tuesday, August 7th, 2007, a woman known only as

Jane Doe, who was 30 years old at the time and her two-year-old, son were shopping at the town center mall. They parked near Nordstrom on the southeast side of the mall. After they finished their shopping, they walked to their vehicle, a black Lincoln navigator. Jane strapped her son into his car seat. And then she went to the back of the vehicle to put the stroller in. She then started walking to the front. She heard her son, whimper, mama, mama and knew something was wrong because he sounded alarmed, he sounded scared. When she looked into the vehicle, a man with a gun was sitting next to her son and told her twice to get into the vehicle.

The man wore wraparound sunglasses and a large floppy hat. He then ordered her to drive to the nearest drive-thru ATM and take out $200. He then did the exact same thing at two other banks. When she attempted to draw $800 at another ATM, it declined, saying she had reached her maximum daily amount. Fearing the man would now kill her, the woman pleaded for her life. The man told her, just do what I say, and I'll take you back to the mall. He then told her to pull into the midday traffic. The woman's son had fallen asleep in his car seat due to the moving vehicle.

The vehicle's windows were tinted, so no one could see what was happening to Jane Doe and her son. Jane continued begging him not to kill her or her son. And the man said to her, I'm not going to. I don't need any more problems than I already have or any more trouble than I'm already in. The man pulled into a hotel parking lot and told this woman to swap seats with him so that he could get into the driver's seat. Jane jumped into the back seat with her son. He pulled out a pair of cheap handcuffs and handcuffed the woman's hands behind her. her back. He then zip tied her ankles together and zip tied her neck to the seat's headrest.

The man took out a pair of darkened sunglasses with what this woman thought was duct tape over the inside of the lenses. He put them over her eyes. So essentially, she was blindfolded. She could see just a tiny bit. The zip tie around her neck was very tight. And she was practically choking. She was crying hysterically. So the man loosened the zip tie, and he asked her, is that better? And she said it was. The attacker then started driving into traffic, but stopped again. He reached into a plastic bag, pulled out a knife, and cut the zip tie off James' neck. Then he started driving again. He mistakenly drove onto the Florida Turnpike, which made him angry. Jane had the impression that the man was not familiar with the area's roads.

The man did a U-turn, and as he did, Jane's son's bottle fell and landed under the driver's seat. The boy started crying, so the man reached down and grabbed the bottle from under the car seat and gave it to the little boy, and he stopped crying. All of this transpired over a couple of hours. When the SUV came to a stop, they were back at the town center mall. The SUV was still running. The man zip tied Jane's neck to the headrest again, and told her that he would let her call someone. She was to tell this person that her truck had broken down and that she needed this person to come get her.

Jane called her son's father and told him exactly what the man had told her to say. When she hung up the phone, the man told her, when the police come, I want you to tell them that I'm short, fat, and black. He then took the sunglasses off the woman and. and replaced them with a pair of goggles that were completely blacked out. So this time she couldn't see anything. The man told her that if he saw his face or picture or even a description on the news, he'd come after her. Jane heard the SUV door slam shut and the man was gone.

So obviously, Morp, this whole event is very scary for this woman. But I want to touch on this very last part. This unknown man who, through a variety of ways, could have learned her identity. That probably would not have been very hard. Tells her, if I hear anything or see anything about me on television, I'm going to come after you. How scary would that be? On top of this horrific event you've already gone through.

Yeah, I'd be afraid. And I can't blame her at all for. being listed as Jane Doe and all these articles. Yeah, I think that's the big reason, right, for the Jane Doe. Now, initially, I thought Jane Doe was strange. Normally, you hear the term Jane Doe referring to a body of a woman that is unknown. In this case, the media chose to call her Jane Doe. We know there's lasting effects for victims who survive these type of encounters.

I think adding to what a victim would experience is the fact that you have to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life, not knowing whether or not this individual knows who you are, knows where you live, is going to come back to get you at some point. That is a very scary thought. And a little bit later in the episode, Kevin is going to share with us a little bit about that fear that some of these victims and their families experienced following these attacks. Jane decided that she wasn't going to wait for her son's father to get to the mall, so she took action and freed herself.

She hopped into the driver's seat and drove to the mall's valet parking stand and told the valet to call the police because she had just been kidnapped. Jane believes that she was not killed because she did everything the man wanted her to do. She didn't resist or fight back in any way, because she was protecting her son. Boca police arrived and took her and her son to the police station. Jane gave her story to police and was shocked when they didn't believe her, and they accused her of lying.

They thought the story sounded far-fetched and didn't think she could have freed herself from the handcuffs the way she did. Another reason they didn't believe her was because the sun-passed electronic device on her windshield didn't record her entering the Florida Turnpike, which is a toll route. So, Morph, as you're talking about the police not believing this woman, it made me think of the Netflix show unbelievable. Have you seen that?

Yeah, that was amazing and infuriating at the same time. Yeah, I thought it was very well done. I especially like the two female leads, the detectives. I thought they were great characters. They were strong. But you're right. That show was infuriating. I sat there, ticked off the entire time, because just very much like in this case, the police did not believe the woman who said she was raped. Man, that show, as good as it was, it really ticked me off. Yeah, if you go through something like this, this horrible experience and you go to the people that are supposed to help you and protect you and you get a response like, we don't believe you. I can't even imagine how hard that is for a victim to experience. it's essentially being victimized twice, right?

You were victimized by your attacker, your rapist, whatever you went through. And then you're a victim again because you go to the proper channels and they don't believe you. Terrible feeling, I must imagine. And in Jane Doe's case, police went so far as to ask her to take a polygraph test. And she did so willingly. I interviewed this woman at the time. In 2008, I sat down with her, along my colleague, Mr. Laforja, and she was essentially emotionally broken.

She says by what happened to her. She says she basically thinks about the abduction every night. She believes that he meant to kill her and wanted to kill her, and somehow he took pity on her. She was a former model and a Hooters waitress and a very charismatic and beautiful woman who had this little boy with her, a mother. trying to protect her son. And I think she thinks that she connected with him somehow. And he didn't kill her. And he didn't kill the little boy. And he ended up dropping them off back at the

mall, still bound and zip tied in their car where a parking, finally the young mother broke free. Police eventually arrived. And they initially disbelieved her story. They had her take a polygraph. They set her toll records from her sunbass didn't sink up on the Florida highway system. eventually it turned out that that was a subpass malfunction and she wasn't lying. She was completely telling the truth. They didn't fully come around to believing her until December 2007 when the Bokikikos were found murdered and some of those same ritualistic items from the zip types of the goggles were found at the scene. At the time, detectives realized, okay, this woman was completely telling us the truth and now we got to catch this guy.

Boca police classified Jane Doe's horrific counter as, quote, an alleged abduction, and no one in Boka heard anything about it. So fast forward to November 2007, a detective from Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office called Jane asking for her help. He wanted to see if Randy Gorenberg's abduction and murder was related in some way to Jane's kidnapping. Both women had been at the town center mall before their abduction, and both women drove large black SUVs. The detectives brought Jane into the station and they had her work with a

sketch artist to create a composite sketch of her abductor, but the artist didn't get it completely right. And Jane felt that when it was finished, it was not quite accurate. So even though there were similarities between the Gornberg case and Jane Doe's case, there were some notable differences as well. Randy was not restrained the way that Jane Doe was, nor was she made to withdraw money from an ATM machine. The reason for the latter could be because Randy did not carry an ATM car. After Nancy and Joey were murdered, police knew that whoever abducted and murdered them was the same person who abducted Jane Doe and her son, and possibly was responsible for Randy Gorenberg's murder as well. the August and December cases were identical, with the exception that Jane and her son survived.

Police believe Nancy fought back, and that's why she and Joey were killed. After the murders, the Boca Raton Police Department and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office formed the task force. They had nine detectives assigned to the case. They believed that the killer chose them all as the abduction point because he was familiar with it. Some questions they asked themselves were, did he work at the mall? and did he know that there were no security cameras in the parking lot? They also wondered if he chose his victims at random. And in all these cases that are possibly connected,

the victims drove large, dark-colored SUVs, so might they have been targeted based on their vehicles? There have been some egos issues in this investigation. The three agencies involved, the FBI, Boko-Ratone, Police Department, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office initially formed a joint task force to investigate this case together. And that task force very quickly fell apart.

And we don't know what was behind closed doors, but we know that they sort of stopped working together after a brief time. Investigators have been very close with about the interaction between the agencies, about how they are currently or working or not working together. I do know that all have clarified their jurisdiction. And so whenever, as a reporter, I've tried to sort of bring to talk to them about similarities between the cases. They've sort of very been in their lane, you know, sort of stay in your lane.

We have this case. They have that case. And that's sort of surprising considering the commonalities and the fact that behind closed doors and depositions detectives have spoken about the commonalities and never ruled out the possibility that the Gorhamberg and bokechiquo murders are linked. And we know that the bokechial murders are linked forensically to the August 7th murders and possibly to the Miser Park robbery as well. So ego, we don't know how much of a role it played. We do know that there are a lot of big personality on this case.

There have been a lot of turnover in terms of the detectives investigating. The lead detectives have pretty much remained the same. The Colkade picked it up from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office after the initial investigative school. Watt took it on. And in Hocca Raton, the same detective and his team have been working this case for 12 years. And in her deposition, Nancy Bokicchio's sister said that she talks with that detective every few months. And he always tells her. One of the biggest decisions for a new parent is who you trust with your child's health care. We chose Salas Health. They're the only place in L.A. that pairs an incredible concierge pediatrician

with 24-7 urgent and emergency care for your child, all with the same trust. medical team. No waiting, no guessing. Just calm, exceptional care from people who truly know your child. 24-7 virtual care and house calls available. Learn more at solacehealth.com and mention code Pediatrics 10 for 10% off your child's first year. There's nothing new. Nothing new. As far as we know, there is still nothing new 12 years later. Police received hundreds of leads, followed up on all of them. About a week after Nancy and Joey's murder, detectives received a report that Nancy's credit cards and cell phone had been found in an African American neighborhood in Miami by two homeless men. Miami is about 50 miles south of Boca. One of the men's name was David Goodman, and he had Nancy

Boquikio's credit cards. He was arrested by Miami authorities on a warrant for a stolen car, and and then later questioned in the Boka murders. The other man was Charles Jackson. He was located by Boka police and questioned in Miami. He told detectives that he found Nancy's cell phone in the area of 1,500 Northeast 1st Avenue in Miami. Goodman cooperated with police and also provided information for investigative follow-up. Boca detectives searched and canvass the area. identified by Charles Jackson and talked to several people in that area.

They also passed out flyers, reviewed local surveillance videos, and followed up on more leads, but they hit a dead end. Goodman and Jackson were ruled out as suspects in the murders, and many other avenues police explored wound up going nowhere. Well, we know there have been literally thousands of tips and leads, according to police, from those agencies. They opened up a special tip line when the case was really hot right at the beginning, when they were trying to generate the most public interest and involvement, they were getting constant calls.

And they ran down hundreds of potentially valid leads. And just in that early period, it led them to arrest a handful of homeless men who would actually found, two homeless men who would actually found one of the victim's phones, and one of the murder victims phones in Miami-Dade County, which is about 45 minutes to an hour south, depending on traffic of the mall. It led them to out-of-state where some of Nancy Bokicchio's credit cards were, and Randy Borghruz, Nancy Bokicchio's credit cards were being used. It led them down numerous peaks and valleys, but none of them resulted in an arrest. Interestingly, the reward for the Bokicchio, killer killers, was the largest ever offered in Florida history at the time.

I believe it still is the largest reward on offer from the state, from the county crime stoppers. And so they've run down, they've had thousands of lead calls in, and we know, because they publicly stated that they've run down at least hundreds of them. And they've pursued leads at pawn shops, where they believe Randy Gornberg's son, who they said had a drug problem at the time, was. is pawning high-end jewelry right around the time, possibly on his mother's murder. They were never able to get that footage from the pawn shop where they believe he may have visited because it was wiped after a few hours.

They've gone to rehab facilities. They've sought subpoenas. They've gotten prosecutors from California involved trying to get a hold of someone and get DNA from someone who they were told by friends. of Gornburg's son, that some sort of knowledge or involvement. And so there were all these leads that became dead ends. And really, the paper trail cuts off pretty early in this investigation because police, for the last 10 years, have used a piece of Florida public records law that allows them

to cite an ongoing investigation as reason to not release any records about those investigations. And so they are still using that, 12 years later, they're still using that piece of the public records law and an otherwise very broad public records law to sort of keep the press from knowing what other leads they pursued more recently. But the ones we've covered today are the ones that are the ones that we know about publicly as of right now. Police were desperate for a break. They hope to generate more tips and leads, so they worked hard to promote the case on local and national television. America's Most Wanted covered the murders three times between December 2007 and February

2008. For one episode, the show commissioned forensic artist John McMahon to enhance the original sketch provided by Jane Doe. Jane Doe worked with McMahon on the new sketch. And Jane felt that this new sketch, represented the abductor much better than the first one. So police released the new sketch to the media, but it didn't lead to an arrest. Detectives continued their efforts and started looking into other cases that might be related to the murders and Jane Doe's abduction.

One in particular stuck out to them. It happened in August 2007. Shortly after midnight, a woman told police that a man pulled a gun on her when she unlocked her vehicle on the second floor of a parking. parking garage at Meisner Park, another upscale Boko Mall. The man told her to get in her vehicle, but she flat out refused and threw 200 hours at him and told him to go away. Police officers tried to get the woman to talk with him and to file a report, but she refused. It wasn't until after the Bokicchio murders that she finally agreed. The South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper received a copy of the police report, but the woman's age, the make of her vehicle, and the methods used by the

robber and other details were redacted. A detailed summary of the robbery was not released. Police found another case of interest. On March 23, 2006, exactly one year before Randy Gorenberg's murder, 52-year-old Cynthia Moffat was robbed and shot to death outside her place of employment, the Forest Oaks Golf Club, in Lake Worth, Florida. This is about 22 miles north of the Boka Town center mall. The crime occurred between 5 and 6 p.m. The killer left the pro shop with wrapped coins and several rolls of coins were found on the ground near the victim's body. Cynthia lived in Boka Raton and was the same age as Randy Gornberg. But after a prolonged look into this case, police said that Cynthia's case was not related to the other Boka cases. After the Boka murders failed to be

solved, the public criticized local law enforcement when they found out that the Boko police kept quiet on Jane Doe's abduction and robbery. There were also allegations that the various agencies handling the cases didn't work well together, and perhaps weren't used to these kind of violent crimes. In 2011, four years after Randy Gornberg's murder, police had to break in the case after they received a tip that a Miami-Dade gang member may have killed her. Michael Barrera was part of the Salvadorian gang MS-13. A jailhouse informant overheard members taking responsibility for the Gornburg killing and pointed the finger at Barrera as the hitman.

At the time, Barrera was a fugitive and wanted for armed bank robbery and attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. Barrera drove a white Chrysler 300 sedan. Police said that this was the exact same model. As the car seen following Randy's SUV at Home Depot, all of this new information had police thinking that the gang killed Randy, although they had no idea why she would have been targeted. But police couldn't find any evidence linking Barrera to the murder. And it's unclear if he was ever captured by police or remains a fugitive today. After Dancy and Joey were killed, several things happened outside the murder investigation.

20 friends and family still celebrated Joey's eighth birthday on December 15, 2007, and Timothy McCurdy dressed up as Santa Claus in Joey's honor. Joey's school carried on with the annual holiday concert without her. About 400 students in their families paused for a moment of silence for Joey and Nancy. Joey's second grade class planted a tree in her memory on the grounds of the Catholic school. As they did so, the children sang Joey's favorite song, This Little Light of Mine. there has never been an arrest in any of these Boka murder cases that we've talked about. The killer or killers have evaded police for what, morph going on 12, 13 years now. As a crime reporter, you would think that the role of Kevin Deutsch would be to report the

details of the cases he covers and then move on to the next case. but that moving on has been very difficult for him to do when it comes to the Boko Mall murders. And years later, Kevin still finds himself digging into the case, searching for answers. People connected to this case, including Kevin himself, have found themselves dreaming about this case, perhaps even having nightmares about it. That's probably a better way to describe it. I'm also working on a book about the case and hope, my ultimate hope, is, to help bring closure to the Bokicchios and the Gorhambergs and to the victims who survived

and were traumatized. These are cases where the victims' families talk about being tortured by nightmares in which the killer essentially appears in their dreams. I, too, personally, as a reporter, have been haunted by it and just feel that there's someone out there who knows who this man or men are, who is responsible for some or all of these crimes, and until that person or persons are brought to justice, I don't think the people who have been impacted this case can be easy. You heard Kevin mention that he's in the process of writing a book about the Bocamo murders.

It's a slow process, and he's waiting for the next bits of information to come in to include in the book. In the meantime, it's hard to not think these cases are related, based on the commonalities. Kevin reviewed all of those clues that seemed to link the cases. At the time, myself and Michael Forger, my reporting partner at the post at the time, we had to really dig and just, you know, do everything we could to get to extract this information. And only now, 12 years later, is some of this information coming out and some of the new documents that I was able to obtain from court files and public records requests. So what we now know is that the killer of the roikikikos, we believe, because we believe that the police believe that that man or man is the same person responsible for at least two of, of the other, at least one of the other attacks and possibly two other attacks. It's convoluted. There are multiple victims, but we have linked at least two of these crimes

to each other, and it's possible that all of the murders and robbers are linked. But the two that have definitively been linked, the killer used attack in both cases, in the Bokicchio case, as well as another case, used zip ties to bound at least some of the victims and used these blacked out goggles to blind them. One surviving victim said, in another incident at the mall, said that he placed these goggles over her eyes, bound her at the wrist and ankles, just as he did Nancy Bokicchio as she was found. He also, what we now know as well from these recent public records that we obtained

and are published on Bronx Justice News, he wore a gunholster. He wore a gunholster as well as driving gloves. He wore black sunglasses, police believe, based on all the court records and all the testimony in various lawsuits related to the case involving them all as well as testimony of detectives that this man was very relaxed, calm, had planned this out quite well. And so while they were elements of sort of him acting on the fly, it seems there were also indications that he was extremely well prepared. He bought something that police came to call his kidnap kit, which included handcuffs, zip ties, the goggles, other binding materials. And so he came fully prepared

and he moved without attracting any attention in a mall parking lot that is populated by thousands of drivers, luxury cars, very wealthy people, a parking lot that at the time of these abductions and murders had no surveillance cameras in the parking lot. And that those were only installed later, so it was kind of remarkable that for all the money and prestige in Boca Raton, there was very little protection for the people who shopped there. And ultimately, that played a huge role because the Boquique, killer as well as the killers of Randy Gornberg and the abductors of three other, two other victims as well as a robbery victim, have never been found to this day. Maybe it's just coincidental, but you also had multiple victims driving very similar vehicles

and some of them having ties to New York. These are just some of the things about this case that tend to jump out. Nancy drove a black SUV. Randy Corbynberg who had been killed on March 23rd after being abducted from the mall, from just outside the mall, just a couple months before the August abductions of two of a mother and son, and shortly before the December murders of the Boquikios, all in that 12-month span in 2007, or nine-month span in 2007. They all drove upscale as dark SUVs. The Boquikios were in their black upscale, high-end, black SUV. Randy Gorinberg drove a new Mercedes-Benz late model SUV that she and her husband, Stewart, had just purchased. And the young mother and her two-year-old son also drove a high-end SUV. All were parked in various locations in the mall parking lot on the town center property,

all parking locations where there were no security cameras. And so it seems that the killer may have had some awareness of that security situation. Either that, he got very lucky. And we might be talking about one killer, we might be talking about multiple killers and robbers, because, as I said, these cases haven't been solved, and they have not neither been definitively linked nor ruled out as being connected to the same person or persons. There was also an August 10th robbery at nearby Meisner Park, which also involved a high-end, dark luxury SUV, which may or may not be linked to the other cases. And so these cases are shrouded in mystery, but they all involve high-end SUVs. these, they all involve women shopping either alone or with young children. And so these are commonalities that detectives have been unable to ignore, but also have been

unable to tie into a theory that lead them to the killer or killers. My personal theory is that there is too many commonalities to ignore between the Gorenberg murders, the Bokicorneberg murder, the Bokicchio murders, the August 7th ritualistic carjacking and kidnapping and the Meisner Park robbery, which occurred just three days after the August 7th, mother-son kidnapping. So you have these cases involving five victims, actually six, if you include the Meisner Park case. You have six victims, four of which we know were attacked by the same man, we believe. You have the other Meisner Park case, which sounds an awful lot like his, his MO. My feeling is the commonalities are too powerful to ignore. There's all. There's

also not enough forensic evidence for us to definitively say it the same person. It's so my my feeling is that these that whether or not it's the same man was, are men responsible, I do believe that the killer or killers knew about the others work that they were building on the earlier the Gornburg killing. Whoever carried out the August Dukhions and the December murders would have known about the March 23rd murder, Randy Gornberg and what happened to her outside the mall and how she was abducted. So I believe that they're either linked and the same people carried it out,

one or one or more men, or the person or persons who carried out the later attacks knew of the first attack and we're sort of building a copycat, if you will, a version of that crime and using ritualistic tools to build on the earlier killers work or it could be the same killer-killers. I should also note that there was a sketch, which is to this day the only key sketch, in this case of a man wearing a sort of beach hat, a floppy beach hat, dark sunglasses with a

ponytail. And this is based on the August 7th Survivor's sketch, the man who ritualistically kidnapped her and her son with the goggles, zip ties, and plastic handcuffs as well, wearing holster and dark driving gloves and glasses. She gave a she sat down with a sketch artist, and that sketch remains the most crucial piece, I think, for the public to look at in this case. It's the best idea we have of what these killer or killers might look like. Because of the absence of footage, we have nothing to surveillance footage from the mall. We have nothing to compare that with. But it is the image that law enforcement continues to circulate and one of our best chances

at solving this case. The reward for the arrest and conviction of the killer is up to 400,000. thousand dollars at this point. You have to remember the area of the country that we're talking about Boca Raton, Florida, there is plenty of money. It's a very wealthy community. And these are extremely horrific crimes. You know the residents of Boca Raton want to see these crimes solve. They don't want the perpetrators out roaming their streets. Anyone with information about the Boko Raton Mall murders is encouraged to call the Boker Raton Police at 561-338-138-144. Or you can call crime stoppers at 1-800-8-477.

Special thanks goes out to Kevin Deutsch for joining us in this episode. You can find his books on Amazon and also visit his Facebook page, The Boka Mall Murders investigation. Thanks also goes out to Debbie Blanche. book at true crime diva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. For you Patreon members, we will put up the entire Kevin Deutsch interview on our Patreon feed sometime in the near future. So make sure you look out for that. As always, if you like to show and you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five star rating. You can type in a

review if you want. All that goes a long way and continue to tell your true crime, friends about the show. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So that's it. More for the case of the Boca Raton Mall murders.

It's an interesting case when you factor in the murders of the bokechia. and then all these other cases that have such strong similarities, the SUVs, some were made to go to ATMs. It's hard to think that at least some of these are not related. What do you think? Yeah, I agree. And then you have all the weird things that he made them do, zip tying their next to the seat, putting on these weird goggles.

It just seems interesting in some of his, his, or their M.O. If it happens to be two different people, that they'd be so similar. But just really bizarre clues in these cases. Well, and I'm glad you brought up the goggles because I forgot to mention that. To me, that is so specific, right? Fashioning goggles for your victims to essentially act as a blindfold. That's a very, very specific clue in this case. And I think it's also why police put out description.

pictures, whatever they put out of similar goggles asking the public for help. That's got to be one of the key things that kind of makes this case or these cases stand out. But that's it. That's it for another episode of criminology. But Morp and I will be back with you next Saturday night with an all new episode. So until then, this is Mike Ferguson. And Morph. And we'll talk to you.

then. Take care, everyone.