CRIME HUNTER: Serial killer Richard Biegenwald returns from depths of hell
· Toronto Sun
Cops tagged her with the moniker “Montauk Mary,” which is a decidedly better handle than Jane Doe.
The older woman’s body was discovered by a United States Air Force member on his lunch break in a wooded area near Montauk, NY, at the extreme eastern end of Long Island. That was March 22, 1978.
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She was lying face up, staring into oblivion and carrying no identification.
Shot four times with a .22
Cops revealed their victim had died just hours before she was discovered She had been shot four times – three shots to the legs and a clincher to the chest. The bullets were rare short rounds and came from a .22 calibre handgun.
For homicides detectives, clearing Montauk Mary’s murder would take a staggering 48 years. There was a paucity of clues: She was wearing an untagged plaid tweed coat, a multicoloured dress and orange slippers.
And because of her age, she was not a typical homicide victim.
Several witnesses believed they had recognized her as a regular at a local restaurant and had seen her driving a 1960s-era yellow convertible.
The cops never forgot “Montauk Mary” – and this past week they announced she has finally been identified. She was a 73-year-old from New Jersey named Sofia Margherita Marrone, born in 1905.
Detectives were also certain they knew who murdered Marrone – and why.
Marrone was last seen six days before her death, on March 16, 1978, as she left Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point, New Jersey, Suffolk County DA Raymond Tierney said.
Biegenwald ‘linked to nine murders’
Cops believe her killer was Richard Biegenwald, a serial killer called the “Jersey Shore Thrill Killer.” He would not be around to answer questions because he pegged out in a Garden State prison in 2008.
But the gun and the bullets used to kill Marrone matched those used in a slew of other murders.
Between 1958 and 1982, Biegenwald murdered at least eight other men and women and detectives suspect there were more.
“Mr. Biegenwald caught our attention because he was linked to nine murders, six of which he was convicted of in New Jersey,” Tierney said, adding the killer “was known to pick up his female victims while they were walking in towns along the Jersey Shore.”
One witness said on the morning Marrone’s body was discovered that a man with a beard in a gold-coloured car with New Jersey tags was in the area. The description matched Biegenwald.
Just who was Richard Biegenwald?
First murder at 18 in 1958
Born in Staten Island in 1940, the son of a violent, alcoholic father, Biegenwald was on the fast tract to doom from childhood.
There were the developmental and behavioral problems from the get go and he was institutionalized for a brief time. He set fire to the family home and was gambling and drinking by the time he was eight.
After a stint in a mental hospital, next stop was reform school. When on furlough from kiddie jail, he would steal money from his mother. When Biegenwald was sprung in 1958, he graduated to the big time.
On Dec. 18, 1958, Biegenwald robbed a Bayonne, New Jersey grocery store with an accomplice, and store proprietor Stephen Sladowski was shot and killed. The teen killer was picked up two days later in Salisbury, Maryland following a police-involved shooting.
He sounds great, right?
The thrill killer did 17 years in the big house before someone thought it was a good idea to release Biegenwald on parole. But after his release in 1975, his bloodlust could not be quenched but temporarily.
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‘Hunting for someone to kill’
“Mr. Biegenwald was not hunting for drugs, he was hunting for someone to kill,” District Attorney James Fagen told reporters in 1983.
And kill he did.
But like Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez, there was little logical about Biegenwald’s rampage with the victimology all over the map.
When it came to his first victim, John P. Petrone, it was very personal for Biegenwald, who suspected the ex-con was a jailhouse rat and was trying to extort his dear old mom. He was rubbed out in June 1978 – 20 years after the killer last committed a homicide in Jersey.
More victims followed: Maria Ciallella (1981); Deborah Osbourne (1982); Virginia Clayton (1982); Anna Olesiewicz (1982), and drug dealer William Ward, 34, was the grand finale.
On Sept. 21, 1982, Ward was shot to death in the backyard of Biegenwald’s Asbury Park apartment. Ward had been struggling with a Biegenwald pal when the serial killer parked five bullets into his head.
On Jan. 22, 1983, the violent weirdo was arrested charged with five of the murders. One of victims was an 18-year-old named Anna Olesiewicz. For killing her, Biegenwald was sentenced to die in the state’s electric chair.
Biegenwald slipped out of a date with executioner
As the verdict was read, he just looked at his hands and showed no emotion. Investigators found the bodies of two more teen victims buried in the backyard of his mother’s Staten Island home.
“Only God in heaven knows what he’s done or the reasons for it. But he is still my son and I will care for him and visit him. I guess that’s what they mean by a mother’s love,” Sally Biegenwald told reporters.
Biegenwald never faced ultimate justice.
Capital punishment in New Jersey was abolished on Dec. 17, 2007, when Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill repealing the death penalty and replacing it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Lucky for Biegenwald. Too bad for us.