December, 2007

South Florida Media Coverage

*~ December, 2007 -- Page 5 ~*


In Loving Memory Of Nancy Bochicchio & her daughter, Joey Noel Bochicchio-Hauser

Goggles Tie Robbery, Boca Mall Slayings (12/21/07)
Mother, Daughter Killed At Boca Mall Laid To Rest (12/21/07)
Would You Like a Gift Box? Mace? (12/21/07)
Police Release Video in The Bochicchio Murder Investigation (12/21/07)
Boca Detectives Go To Miami In Search Of Clues (12/21/07)
What Happened August 7? (12/21/07)
Boca Raton Funeral (12/21/07)
Boca Raton Double Slaying: Mall Killings Similar To August Incident (12/21/07)
Boca Raton Police Say Girl and Mom Were Taken To ATM Before Killings (12/22/07)
Boca Chief Seeks Help in Finding 'Evil' Gunman (12/22/07)

Goggles tie robbery, Boca mall slayings

By KEVIN DEUTSCH and MICHAEL LaFORGIA

Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

Friday, December 21, 2007

BOCA RATON — Unsettling similarities exist between an Aug. 7 armed robbery and kidnapping at the Town Center mall and a Dec. 12 double homicide at the same shopping center: In both cases, victims were bound at the neck and had goggles pulled over their heads, according to a relative of the earlier victim and a source familiar with the homicide investigation.

Boca Raton police say only that there are similarities between the two crimes, but will not elaborate.

The first victim, a 30-year-old woman shopping with her 2-year-old son, was driven to an ATM, forced at gunpoint to withdraw $600, taken back to the mall and left tied up in her vehicle.

On Dec. 13, the bodies of Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, 7, were found in Bochicchio's idling black 2007 Chrysler Aspen SUV outside the Sears loading dock at 6000 W. Glades Road. They had been bound and shot, and an unknown amount of money was stolen, Boca Raton police said.

Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter were shot in the head at point-blank range, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The mother had a plastic tie strip tightened around her neck and goggles pulled over her face. Boca Raton police would not confirm those details.

A relative of the Aug. 7 victim said the woman's neck was bound so she could not move it from her seat back. Her feet and wrists also were bound. Her attacker slid goggles over her eyes, the relative said.

The relative said Boca Raton investigators did not initially believe all the details of the earlier victim's story. But when the Bochicchios were found dead, police sought out the earlier victim, believing the attacks probably were carried out by the same man.

She described her attacker to police, who drafted and circulated a composite sketch identifying the man as someone they wanted to talk to in the double-homicide investigation.

Police haven't found the man pictured in the sketch. On Thursday, detectives passed out fliers in both English and Spanish and conducted searches in the Overtown section of Miami, where Bochicchio's cellphone was found last week by a homeless man.

Police are searching for a white or Hispanic male between 18 and 25 years old, between 5-feet-10 and 6-feet, with a medium build. He may wear his hair in a ponytail.

Gregg McCrary, a retired special agent who spent a decade with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, said the use of goggles in the crimes suggests a "signature," rather than a set of actions strictly necessary to commit the robberies.

McCrary's former unit is working in Quantico, Va., to build a profile of the Bochicchios' killer.

"There's a ritualistic element," said McCrary, who teaches forensic psychology at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale and worked for the FBI for 26 years. "The ritual can be done to satisfy some personal need or idiosyncratic need or underlying psychopathological need.

"Who knows why that's satisfying to him or why he's doing it? It's a signature aspect from a behavioral point of view that links the crimes together."

If the robber in the Aug. 7 crime and the double homicide is the same man, McCrary said, he's "clearly picking the mall because there's some sort of comfort zone for him there."

"Generally, people choose a place because they're comfortable and familiar with it for some reason," he said. "It will probably turn out that he's familiar with it for some reason and knows his way around, and that's why he selected this particular location."

Officials won't say how Bochicchio's cellphone wound up in Miami, but Town Center is barely a mile west of Interstate 95's Glades Road exit.

On Thursday, police located the homeless man who found the phone, 50-year-old Charles Jackson, but authorities wouldn't say what he told them.

Limited information from the Boca Raton police has frustrated some of Nancy Bochicchio's friends and relatives.

Sue and Stu Wein of Lake Worth said they met Bochicchio in New York 30 years ago and quickly became close friends. Since her death, the Weins have been struggling to publicize the murders on national television, hoping it will help police find the killer.

The sketch of the man wanted for questioning and details of the case have since been posted on the America's Most Wanted Web site.

The couple said that Bochicchio's family is learning very little from police and that most of what they know is coming from the local media.

"This is horrible. It's just so sick," Sue Wein said. "I just want (the killer) caught."

Meanwhile, the relative of the Aug. 7 victim said she is terrified that her attacker will track her down and try to harm her.

The woman went to police after the robbery and explained that she and her 2-year-old son had been inside their vehicle in the Nordstrom parking garage when the gunman got into the car and held them at gunpoint, the relative said. He made her drive to an ATM and withdraw $600. He took her back to the mall, leaving her and her son bound tightly in the car.

Somehow, the woman managed to get out of her vehicle. She and her son survived with cuts and bruises.

A day after the crime, police released a one-paragraph statement about the armed robbery but made no mention of goggles, or of the victim being bound or being taken from the mall to withdraw money.

Police won't say whether Bochicchio was forced to take money from a bank.

After the Dec. 12 killings, investigators re-interviewed the earlier victim and drafted a composite sketch of the gunman based on her recollections.

In addition to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, Boca Raton police are working closely with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and have reached out to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and U.S. Marshals Service, among other agencies.

Mother, daughter killed at Boca mall laid to rest
By Jerome Burdi |South Florida Sun-Sentinel
December 21, 2007

West Boca - The heart shaped "Happy Birthday" balloons floated into air, above the church and over the funeral mourners.

It was a final goodbye Thursday to Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, 7, killed last week at Boca Raton's Town Center mall. Joey would have turned 8 on Monday.

About 400 people came to St. Jude Catholic Church, west of Boca Raton, to mourn the loss of the mother and daughter who lived for each other and were remembered for their wide smiles. A display showing Joey smiling and playing, made by her Saint Jude Catholic School second-grade classmates, stood in the church lobby.

"Joey's light still shines," it read.

Inside, the two dark-gold colored, stainless steel caskets, lined with champagne colored velvet, remained closed.

The Rev. Michael Driscoll told mourners to have faith that the two were in a better place, closer to Joey's grandmother, Beatrice, who died two years ago.

"Joey loved and missed her grandmother," Driscoll said. "She described her grandmother and how she looked in heaven."

Nancy Bochicchio grew up in a different time, when values mattered, Driscoll said.

"There are people in our world who have no problem taking life," he said. "We all have to work together. It is our responsibility to better our world."

Among the mourners were Bochicchio's ex-husband, Phillip Hauser, and her sister, JoAnn Bruno. Hauser and Bochicchio were talking about reuniting, friends said.

"Nancy Bochicchio did not have it easy," Driscoll said. "She was a single mother with a young child ... and someone took the life of this young mother and young daughter."

JoAnn Stellino, a friend of Bochicchio's, delivered a eulogy in the form of a letter. She remembered how impressed she was when she first met Joey, a well-spoken, smart little girl. Other family friends said that when Joey was 6, she could name the president and members of Congress.

It was obvious that Bochicchio was from New York City from the way she talked and acted, Stellino said. It also was obvious how much she loved her daughter.

"Under that tough New York exterior, you are a big mushball," Stellino said. "Your whole world was Joey."

Stellino's daughter, Francesca, is still waiting for Joey to come back and play.

"Every time she sees a black SUV she says, 'Look, mom, here comes Nancy and Joey,'" Stellino said.

Bochicchio and her daughter were found shot to death Dec. 12 in their black Chrysler Aspen in the Town Center parking lot.

"My heart is broken for your families as they prepare to say goodbye to two people who died too soon," Stellino said, crying.

The choir sang a portion of The First Noel in memory of Joey, whose middle name was Noel. It brought family members to tears.

The Rev. Emiel Abalahin, who presided over the wake Wednesday, said the family still was in disbelief.

"There was a lot of crying, a lot of sadness and a lot of confusion. And among some of us, a lot of anger," he said. "We don't understand why the criminals did what they did."

At the funeral Mass, Bishop Gerald Barbarito said faith and sticking together are what will make this period of mourning easier.

"Now let us take our sisters Nancy and Joey to their place of grace," Barbarito said.

The caskets were moved from the front of the altar, about 40 feet from the baptismal font where Joey was baptized less than 8 years ago. She was to have received her first Holy Communion in the spring. Instead, she will be buried in Hartsdale, N.Y., with her mother in the white dress she would have worn.

Jerome Burdi can be reached at jjburdi@sun-sentinel.com 561-243-6531.

Would you like a gift box? Mace?

By Elisa Cramer

Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer

Friday, December 21, 2007

It wasn't even 9 o'clock. And I wasn't even planning to take my 4-year-old son.

But when I got ready to go shopping the other night, my husband said, "I think you should wait until tomorrow."

I naturally demanded to know why, and started scrolling in my mind the next day's post-work fatigue and hunger, which made waiting an unreasonable suggestion.

He slyly threw in: "It's just nice to have you home. Hang out with us."

But the real reason came out: "Something might happen."

We had talked earlier about the woman and her 7-year-old daughter, murdered last week outside the Town Center mall in Boca Raton.

My mind wandered further - to the Boynton Beach Mall shootings last Christmas Eve. And the shootings this month at that mall in Nebraska.

And my mother-in-law's frequent admonitions to "park close to the store." And my parents' frequent forwarded e-mails of the latest scam targeting women pushing baby strollers, fumbling for lost keys, walking in parking lots talking on cellphones, wearing hair in bouncy ponytails, carrying long-strapped purses, pumping gas while leaving wallets in unlocked cars. Easy prey all, as the "official" warnings from "Chief" "Captain" or "Sergeant" So-And-So proclaim.

I stayed home, of course.

But the fear has stuck with me even as I shop on lunch breaks in broad daylight.

People are crazy is my dismissive thought as newspapers and TV news shows announce the inexplicable at what is supposed to be a time of hope and joy. But I feel about as helpless as I do worrying about toxic toys from China, MRSA infections and germs in public bathrooms.

And the common-sense advice is of little assurance. Before buying toys, check recall lists (or take your chances on a fickle, do-it-yourself lead testing kit). To avoid MRSA and other icky things that literally make your skin crawl, wash your hands thoroughly and often.

For shopping, what are we to do? Valet park only? Take a man? Carry Mace, a billy club and a whistle?

The seasonal late-night shopping hours no doubt benefit the stores. But there's a convenience factor, too, for the consumer. Parents, especially, can appreciate browsing after the children have been put to bed.

It is in the best interest of public safety and their bottom line for malls, stores and shopping plazas to step up security - offering to escort customers to their cars, patrolling the parking lots, adding more and brighter lights - even if a carjacking, a shooting, a kidnapping or other horrific crime has not (yet) happened there.

When merchants (and police) delay releasing information about such crimes, they not only misplace their priorities by worrying more about image, they lose valuable time and potential that another shopper could help police catch the suspect. And finding out after-the-fact that a previous crime, following the same twisted pattern of cruelty, happened months ago and remains unsolved is even more unsettling. That's the case with the Town Center mall attacks. Could Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter, Joey, have been spared if more people had more information sooner about the suspects in an August attack on a 30-year-old woman and her 2-year-old son?

I'd be more afraid to shop at a mall without any officers than one swarming with security guards and cameras. In fact, I was relieved the other evening to find a police officer parked right outside the exit door of that big-box toy store. (Yes, I'm taking my chances with some toys made in China, after all.)

Even the manager at Publix this week doublechecked my after-sunset refusal of carryout service.

It's unrealistic to expect people to not shop, especially during the Christmas season. So, it's doubtful that reports of crimes - still rare, albeit jarring - will keep most shoppers out of malls and stores, regardless of the hour.

I'm trying not to be paranoid, but the tragedies have made me think twice. There is another reason to just stay home, of course: The safest option also is the cheapest.

Back To Top

Police release video in the Bochicchio murder investigation

By Kevin Deutsch

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 21, 2007

BOCA RATON — Police released security video images this afternoon of Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter, Joey, leaving and entering the Town Center mall on Dec. 12, the day they were murdered.

The next day, Dec. 13, their bodies were found in Bochicchio's idling black 2007 Chrysler Aspen SUV outside the Sears loading dock at 6000 W. Glades Road. They had been bound and shot, and an unknown amount of money was stolen, Boca Raton police said.

Police said this afternoon that they hope the video will help with their case, and perhaps prompt someone in the area that afternoon to recall anything out of the ordinary.

Police also said for the first time that Bochicchio had been forced to drive to an ATM to withdraw money that day.

That is another of the many similarities exist between an Aug. 7 armed robbery and kidnapping at the Town Center mall and the killing of Bochicchio and her daughter: In both cases, victims were bound at the neck and had goggles pulled over their heads, according to a relative of the earlier victim and a source familiar with the homicide investigation.

The first victim, a 30-year-old woman shopping with her 2-year-old son, was driven to an ATM, forced at gunpoint to withdraw $600, taken back to the mall and left tied up in her vehicle.

She described her attacker to police, who drafted and circulated a composite sketch identifying the man as someone they wanted to talk to in the double-homicide investigation.

BOCA DETECTIVES GO TO MIAMI IN SEARCH OF CLUES
South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
December 21, 2007
Author: Leon Fooksman Staff Writer

Boca Raton detectives fanned out across a blighted stretch of Miami on Thursday looking for clues in last week's discovery of a slain mother and her daughter at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton, police said.

They handed out fliers with a suspect's picture and searched for evidence in the 1500 block of Northeast First Avenue in the Overtown area, police said.
The area is where two homeless men found a purse and cell phone belonging to the mother, Nancy Bochicchio, 47, shortly after she and daughter Joey, 7, were found bound and fatally shot on Dec. 12, law enforcement officials said.

Investigators found Wednesday the last of the two homeless men wanted for questioning in the case. Police have not said if or how the two men knew each other.

They talked to Charles Jackson, 50, who told them he found the phone on Northeast First Avenue, police said. Earlier this week, David Goodman, 40, talked to detectives about finding the purse and what he knew about the killings at the mall. What he told them was not made public.

Miami police then arrested Goodman on a warrant for grand theft auto from Broward County. He was wanted for allegedly stealing the car of a woman he met at a gas station on May 23.

A security officer at Town Center discovered the Bochicchios in their Chrysler Aspen on Dec. 12.

Boca Raton is offering up to $350,000 for information leading to the capture of the suspect. The suspect also is believed to have carjacked, abducted and robbed a 30-year-old woman and her 2-year-old son in a parking lot at the Town Center mall on Aug. 7.

Police are asking anyone with information on the case to call investigators at 561-338-1352 or Crime Stoppers at 800-458-8477.

Leon Fooksman can be reached at lfooksman@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6647.

WHAT HAPPENED AUG. 7?
Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
December 21, 2007

If you have been confused in trying to follow what the Boca Raton Police Department has been saying about the double murder at Town Center mall, it's understandable.

Early on Thursday, Dec. 13, mall security guards discovered the bodies of Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter in Ms. Bochicchio's SUV. Sixteen hours passed before the Boca Raton Police Department confirmed that the two had been shot to death. The department also noted a possible link to another armed robbery at the mall last Aug. 7. As the story went, a man had pointed a gun at a 2-year-old's head, forced the mother to drive to an ATM and ordered her to withdraw money.
The department's news release from that incident, however, was vague and sanitized. It was "an alleged armed robbery." The victim was "accosted" by a man "with a weapon." There was no mention of a child held at gunpoint or a carjacking. The release came out a day later. The Post carried only a brief. The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, based on a search of the paper's archives, carried nothing.

So, why wasn't the public told more about the August incident? Police department officials say they couldn't confirm all the details. But members of the victim's family recounted her story, and Assistant Police Chief Ed Morley sounded clueless and defensive when he told the Sun-Sentinel that reporters didn't notice the August release because of the state budget crisis. Also this week, the department told The Post that it was backing away from its claim of a link between forensic evidence from the two crimes.

Police departments often withhold information to avoid copycat confessions and to help with interrogations of suspects. The question that naturally arises, however, is whether more public information about the August incident might have prevented the murders last week. Police Chief Dan Alexander said that he is "comfortable" with what the department put out in August. City Manager Leif Ahnell and Mayor Steven Abrams agree.

But since the department still believes that there are similarities between the two cases, the public must wonder about the department's decision to release so little information four months ago.

BOCA RATON FUNERAL: Mourners bid farewell to mother, child -
More than 400 mourners attended the funeral for a mother and daughter killed at a mall in Boca Raton.
Miami Herald, The (FL)
December 21, 2007
Author: DIANNA SMITH, Palm Beach Post

A choir of angelic voices sang through tears as two coffins were brought before the altar. First the mother, then the daughter. Side by side, as always.
Both were draped in ceremonial white cloths, though one looked more weathered than the other. The church didn't have two snowy white ones, a pastor said sadly, because it is rare to have two coffins to bless.

More than 400 people at St. Jude Catholic Church west of Boca Raton spent Thursday paying tribute to Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey Noel Bochicchio-Hauser, who were found shot to death inside their black 2007 Chrysler Aspen SUV at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton early on Dec. 13.

One week later in the church, a thin man with a deep voice sang Ave Maria, so powerful even some men choked back tears.

His operatic voice echoed through the crowded church. Beautifully. Thunderously. Loudly. Perhaps so those in the heavens could hear.

Pictures of Joey laughing with friends surrounded the coffins, where four plain Christmas trees and a simple cross served as a serene backdrop. Family members clutched one another in the front pew as they listened to the Rev. Michael Driscoll preach about love and forgiveness, while Bishop Gerald Barbarito sat nearby.

"The hardest thing will be the forgiveness we Christians are expected to give to those who hurt us. We all know how hard that is," said Driscoll, adding that forgiveness doesn't mean to forget about justice. "Jesus forgave those who nailed him to a cross."

Cars in the parking lot sported fliers in the windows advertising the $350,000 reward for catching the killer, and church member Sky Mercede, whose daughter attended school with Joey, said he was looking for volunteers to disperse the fliers throughout South Florida.

Not far from Mercede's car was a makeshift memorial for Joey, where children left goodbye letters promising to be friends forever. A brown teddy bear the size of a toddler sat in the middle of the bunch with a card that read "To: Joey From: Santa."

Inside, black-clad mothers cried, their fists filled with tissues and eyes stained red from tears as they listened to family friend JoAnn Stellino read a heartbreaking letter she had written to the pair after their murders. Stellino's daughter and Joey attended St. Jude Catholic School together.

Reading as she wept, Stellino said her daughter has been having nightmares. 'She doesn't understand that she will never see you again. Every time she sees a black SUV, she says, 'Look, Mom, maybe it's Nancy and Joey.' I told her you were angels in heaven and she said she wanted to go to heaven to play with Joey."

Friends and family members describe Bochicchio, whose nickname was "Titsi," as a tough woman with a kind heart who moved to suburban Boca Raton from New York soon after Joey was born.

She was a devoted single mother who worked hard in finance to pay Joey's tuition at St. Jude. She was looking forward to Joey's first Holy Communion this spring and was recently planning Joey's birthday party. She would have turned 8 on Monday.

BOCA RATON DOUBLE SLAYING: Mall killings similar to August incident -
Officials won't say how a victim's cellphone got to the Overtown section of Miami, but Town Center mall is barely a mile from Interstate 95.
Miami Herald, The (FL)
December 21, 2007
Author: KEVIN DEUTSCH AND MICHAEL LaFORGIA, Palm Beach Post

Unsettling similarities exist between an Aug. 7 armed robbery and kidnapping at the Town Center mall and the Dec. 12 slaying of a Boca Raton mother and her 7-year-old daughter at the same shopping center:

In both cases, the victims were bound at the neck and had goggles pulled over their heads, according to a relative of the Aug. 7 victim and a source familiar with the murder investigation.
Almost every officer in the Boca Raton Police Department is working on the case, which has also spanned to Miami, where police have questioned two people of interest in the case.

On Thursday, detectives passed out fliers in both English and Spanish and conducted searches in the Overtown section of Miami, where Bochicchio's cellphone was found last week by a homeless man. Police are searching for a white or Hispanic male between 18 and 25 years old, between 5-foot-10 and 6 feet, with a medium build. He may wear his hair in a ponytail.

On Dec. 13, the bodies of Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, 7, were found in Bochicchio's idling black 2007 Chrysler Aspen SUV outside the mall's Sears loading dock at 6000 W. Glades Rd.

They had been bound and shot to death and an unknown amount of money was stolen, Boca Raton police said.

Bochicchio and her daughter were shot in the head at point-blank range, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The mother had a plastic tie strip tightened around her neck and goggles pulled over her face. Boca Raton police would not confirm those details.

A relative of the Aug. 7 victim said the woman's neck was bound so that she could not move it from her seat back. Her feet and wrists were also bound. Her attacker slid goggles over her eyes, the relative said.

The relative said Boca Raton investigators did not initially believe all the details of the Aug. 7 victim's story. But when the Bochicchios were found dead, police sought the earlier victim out, believing the attacks were probably carried out by the same man.

She described her attacker to police, who drafted and circulated a composite sketch identifying the man as someone they wanted to talk to.

Officials won't say how Bochicchio's cellphone got to Overtown, but Town Center mall is barely a mile down Glades Road from southbound Interstate 95.

Police located the homeless man who found the phone, 50-year-old Charles Jackson, on Thursday. Jackson had found the woman's phone in downtown Miami and handed it to a Miami officer, who kept it for several hours, not knowing it was evidence.

Boca officials are offering a $350,000 reward for tips leading to the killer. Anyone with information should call Boca Raton police at 561-338-1352 or Crime Stoppers at 800-458-8477.

Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this story.

Boca Raton police say girl and mom were taken to ATM before killings
Boca Raton police say abductions similar to earlier robbery

By Rachael Joyner |South Florida Sun-Sentinel
December 22, 2007

Boca Raton - Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter were abducted from the Town Center mall and forced to drive to an ATM hours before they were found dead in their SUV at the mall, Police Chief Dan Alexander said Friday.

That is just one more similarity between the killing of the Bochicchios and the armed robbery of a mother and her young son at the mall in August, he said.

Both crimes occurred at Town Center mall and in both cases the victims were bound, a handgun was used and the mother and child were taken to an ATM, Alexander said.

Police on Friday released surveillance video of Joey and her mother entering the Town Center mall between Sears and Neiman Marcus and later leaving through the same doors on the south side.

"We're hoping the images might spur some recollection in the public," Alexander said.

"We see a very strong correlation with the earlier case," he said during a news conference Friday in front of police headquarters. "That case may very well help us solve this case."

Based on the similarities of the two cases, investigators said they suspect the same person is behind both incidents.

In the August case, a 30-year-old woman told police that a man held a gun to her 2-year-old son, forced her to withdraw money from a bank and tied her to her car seat . She also said the robber put darkened goggles over her eyes, put handcuffs around her wrists and secured her feet with a plastic tie, relatives said.

Alexander would not confirm that goggles, handcuffs or plastic ties were used in either case, saying only that both women were bound. Still, he said, the similarities were enough to reopen the Aug. 7 case.

Police released a sketch of a suspect in the August armed robbery hours after Bochicchio, 47, and her daughter Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, 7, were found tied up and shot in their idling Chrysler Aspen at the mall Dec. 12.

The August victim's family is indignant at Boca Raton police, saying investigators should have made more of an effort initially to find the robber and publicize the crime. Many people in the area, particularly mall shoppers, also have questioned why police didn't issue security precautions until Bochicchio and her daughter were killed.

"There wasn't enough associated with the case to release the sketch," Alexander said.

He said police did all they could to track down the August robber and investigate the case. The day after the Aug. 7 armed robbery, a detective drove with the woman to retrace the previous days events, Alexander said.

"We stopped pursuing the case because there was no more evidence or leads to follow up on at the time," he said.

Alexander declined to give details on what time the two left the mall, saying only it was in the late afternoon. He also would not say how long Joey and her mother had been dead before they were found or when they had been taken to the ATM. Police did not know whether the two were killed at the mall.

"We are not speculating where everything took place," Alexander said. "We still have a lot of evidence to sort through, but we have parts of a timeline that we are confident about."

Investigators have not been able to link the killing of the Bochicchios and the Aug. 7 armed robbery to any other incidents, but teams of law enforcement officials are extending their search throughout the state, Alexander said.

The double-homicide investigation has attracted national attention. The Bochicchios' case will be featured today on the Fox television program America's Most Wanted.

This week, investigators questioned two homeless men who said they found Bochicchio's purse and cell phone in a Miami neighborhood. Charles Jackson, 50, who said he found the phone on Northeast First Avenue, and David Goodman, 40, gave police details of places to check for more evidence and other people of interest, Alexander said.

"It is a lot of work," he said. "There is still a lot of evidence to sort through, and we recognize that we need the public's help."

Boca Raton is offering as much as $350,000 for information leading to the capture of a suspect. Police are asking anyone with information on the case to call investigators at 561-338-1352 or Crime Stoppers at 800-458-8477.

Rachael Joyner can be reached at rjoyner@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6645.

ONLINE
For more coverage of the Town Center killings, including the surveillance video, see www.sun-sentinel.com/mallmurders .

Boca chief seeks help in finding 'evil' gunman

By KEVIN DEUTSCH and MICHAEL LaFORGIA

Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

Saturday, December 22, 2007

BOCA RATON — Police took their case to catch a killer public Friday, releasing video of Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter at Town Center mall on the day they were murdered. The chief asked for help in the search for an "evil" gunman who binds his victims.

Police had said little in the days since the Dec. 12 slayings, but on Friday, Chief Dan Alexander made his first extensive public comments about the investigation, calling it an intensive effort that reaches beyond the state and involves everything from gumshoe detective work to "covert" tactics.

As authorities hunt for the killer, patrols have been "beefed up" not just at Town Center, but throughout the city, the chief said.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide are looking for similarities that could link the killer or killers to other crimes. Meanwhile, Boca Raton detectives are following a number of leads, processing evidence and searching for people who may have information about who bound the Bochicchios and shot them to death.

Alexander said investigators had made progress but a "lot of gaps still exist."

"It's a heinous crime," the chief said. "It's horrid. I think evil comes to mind when you consider what we're dealing with."

The footage released Friday shows the mother and daughter walking in and out of the mall entrance between Sears and Neiman Marcus, a shopping bag in Nancy Bochicchio's hand.

Police acknowledged for the first time Friday that Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and Joey Bochicchio-Hauser were forced to go to an ATM at some point during the robbery, adding yet another similarity to an Aug. 7 kidnapping and robbery in which a 30-year-old woman and her 2-year-old son were abducted from the mall.

The department had resisted specifying the similarities between the cases, but on Friday, Alexander highlighted some of those links: Both involved a mother and child held at gunpoint; both started at Town Center; victims were bound in both robberies; and both women were forced to go to an ATM.

"Throughout the nation, people are making comparisons and looking for similarities," Alexander said. "I feel real good about the progress we've made. We're not going to make predictions about victory, but we have the best team on the field."

A source familiar with the investigation said the first crime paralleled the second in other ways:

On Aug. 7, a gunman ambushed the earlier victim, forced her to withdraw $600 from an ATM, returned her to the mall and left her bound at the neck and wrists, a pair of goggles pulled over her eyes, with her son in her vehicle, a member of the victim's family said.

On Dec. 12, a gunman confronted Bochicchio and her daughter at the mall, forced the woman to take money from an ATM and secured her at the neck with a plastic tie strip, binding her and pulling goggles over her face, a source said.

The gunman shot the mother and her daughter in the head at point-blank range, a second source said. A security guard discovered the bodies in the idling sport utility vehicle after midnight, police said.

The Bochicchios were buried Friday in New York after hundreds of mourners packed their funeral Thursday at St. Jude Catholic Church west of Boca Raton.

After news of the slayings spread along with reports of the attack that preceded them, residents and Town Center patrons criticized Boca Raton police for releasing limited information last summer.

Alexander defended his department's response to the earlier crime and said officials have balanced the need to inform the public with their obligations to the integrity of the investigation.

The chief said he was pleased with his investigators' efforts in the Aug. 7 case and pointed to forensic evidence collected and hours spent with the victim. A detective even drove around with her a day after the crime to retrace her steps, the chief said.

"The work done in that case may very well help us solve this case," he said. "The case was worked on until there was no more evidence or leads to follow up on."

The first victim's attorney and family members said Boca Raton detectives initially regarded her story with skepticism. However, investigators re-interviewed her after the Bochicchios were killed and, based on her recollections, drafted a composite sketch of the suspected attacker on Dec. 13. They circulated it widely the next day.

The attacker is described as a white or Hispanic male, age 18-25, between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall, with a medium build. He might wear his hair in a ponytail.

If the same man committed both crimes, the use of goggles and restraints suggests the gunman left a signature: a set of ritualistic, extraneous actions not strictly necessary to carrying out the robberies, said former Special Agent Gregg McCrary, who spent 10 years profiling criminals for the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. It also might indicate that, for some reason, the attacker feels comfortable while operating at the Town Center mall, McCrary said.

Despite help from McCrary's former unit, which is lending expertise from Quantico, Va., and assistance from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, the killer so far has eluded capture.

On Tuesday, police described a development as a possible break in the case, but the information led only to a pair of homeless men, one of whom found Bochicchio's cellphone near the Miami Arena in Overtown. How it got there remains unclear, though the Town Center mall is barely a mile west of a southbound Interstate 95 entrance ramp.

Authorities said they since had located and interviewed both men.

With the killer still on the loose, the first victim is racked by anxiety.

Her attorney, former state Sen. Skip Campbell, said his client "felt there was a violation of safety procedures at the mall. Places like malls have an obligation to protect the public."

The mall should pay to provide her with 24-hour private security, Campbell said.

A spokesman for Town Center said mall officials were "evaluating" a response to Campbell's statements Friday night.

The first victim fears for her life, the attorney said.

"She knows he can probably identify her," Campbell said. "She just wants to catch the bad guy."

Back To Top