South Florida
Media Coverage
*~ February, 2008 -- Page 6 ~*
 |
 |
 |
| In Loving Memory Of |
||
What kind of accent does the
mall murderer have? (2/26/08)
Town Center attack victim speaks (2/26/08)
Town Center Mall Lawsuit Filed (2/26/08)
Tuesday bomb threat evacuates Boca mall (2/27/08)
Mall kidnap victim: 'He knew what he was doing' (2/27/08)
Abduction victim sues Boca Raton's Town Center mall (2/27/08)
Boca police add four surveillance cameras at mall (2/28/08)
Victim, then victimized (2/28/08)
What kind of accent does the mall murderer have?
Posted by Mary Kay at 7:46 PM
About a week ago on an episode of America's Most Wanted, the show focused on the heinous murder of Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter Joey Bachicchio-Hauser at Town Center in Boca Raton.
Another victim who along with her small child survived after being kidnapped earlier by the same man talked about her terrifying experience.
A drawing of him based on what she remembers was shown. But we weren't told what kind of accent he has.
Everyone has an accent and the more information that is given out, the sooner someone will identify this man.
Does he speak with an American accent? If so, what kind? A foreign accent? what kind?
All of his identifying characteristics need to be given to the public...and now.
Town Center attack victim speaks
Last Update: 2/26 11:00 pm
Reported by: Paige Kornblue
Photographer: Glenn Weston
The woman who was abducted with her young son in the mall parking lot in August is suing the mall owners for lack of security.
The victim from the August attack shared her story locally for the very first time Tuesday.
She is suing Simon Property Group, the company that owns Town Center at Boca Raton, for $15,000.
In the suit, she's listed as "Jane Doe" for safety reasons since she is the only one who has seen what some say could be a serial killer.
Life for her was normal before August 7th, 2007.
"It all changed when my son and I were kidnapped," she says.
Her son and their shopping bags were in their SUV parked in the Nordstrom's garage. She was tossing the stroller in the back of the SUV.
"I heard my son cry 'Mama, Mama' so I figured something was wrong so I went to front, to driver-side door, and looked in and that's when I saw a man sitting in the back seat," she says.
He had a gun in his hand, she explains.
She says he asked her to drive to an ATM.
She couldn't withdraw money from the first bank she pulled up to, but was able to take out $600 over three withdrawals from the second bank she drove to, the Bank of America on St. Andrews Boulevard.
"I looked in the camera a couple of times and I was thinking of mouthing something or saying something, but I figured he could see me in the side-view mirror," she says.
She says the parking lot behind the Hilton and former Pete's Restaurant on Glades Road was the next stop.
That's where she says she was handcuffed and tied up in the backseat.
He then took control of the car and headed north on the Turnpike to the Movies of Delray on West Atlantic Avenue, where she says he cut the zip tie from her neck, before returning them to Town Center.
This victim says she will always be terrified... just like she was in August and three months later when the Bochiccio's were murdered.
She suggests shoppers use valet parking.
"Even if you have to pay five, ten dollars... it's not worth losing your life or your child's life to go through anything like I went through," she says.
The victim says the man took his gloves off, and just walked away from the car when he returned to Town Center at Boca Raton.
She says released herself from the handcuffs and zip ties and drove to the "Saks" valet station for help and police were called.
This is the second lawsuit against Simon Property Group since the Bochiccio murders. The first lawsuit was from Joey and Nancy Bochicchio's family members.
Town Center Mall Lawsuit Filed
Last Update: 2/26 10:57 pm
Reported by:WPTV Staff
An attorney for a woman who was kidnapped from the Town Center Mall
in Boca Raton last August filed a lawsuit against the mall's management
company, Simon Group.
This is the second lawsuit against the mall.
The latest lawsuit seeks $15,000 in damages, claiming that the mall failed to provide adequate security, including surveillance cameras in the parking lot.
The victim, who is named in the suit as a Jane Doe, was with her 2-year-old son in August when she was abducted by a man at gunpoint and forced to drive her black SUV to an ATM. They were unharmed.
Four months later, Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey, were found bound and shot to death in the same mall parking lot. Their family has also filed suit against the mall.
In March 2007, Randi Gorenberg was found dead in a Delray park after leaving the Town Center Mall.
Police said that the three cases are very similar and the same man may be responsible for all of the crimes.
Tuesday bomb threat evacuates Boca mall
By MICHAEL LaFORGIA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
BOCA RATON - The Town Center mall was evacuated Tuesday after a man called in a bomb threat about 8:30 p.m., police said.
Police rushed to the shopping center at 6000 Glades Rd. after an unidentified man dialed 911 from a payphone in the mall's food court and told a dispatcher there was a bomb in the building.
The mall was emptied and searched but no bomb was found.
Crime scene investigators focused on the payphone and interviewed patrons and employees but no one said they saw anything suspicious.
Anyone with information can call Detective Flynn at (561) 620-6042.
The bomb threat came a day before police announced a beefed-up security camera system at the mall, which three months ago became the scene of a grisly double-murder of a mother and her 7-year-old daughter. Nancy Bochicchio, 47, of suburban Boca Raton and Joey Bochicchio-Hauser were abducted from the Town Center mall on Dec. 12.
Hours later their bodies were found in their bloodstained SUV idling in the shopping center parking lot. Nancy Bochicchio had been bound and blindfolded, and mother and daughter were shot in the head at point-blank range.
Their killer remains on the loose.
Police this afternoon announced enchancements to the mall's security cameras that sweep the mall parking lots and exits.
"The surveillance system enables Boca Raton police officers to locate, track, and record suspicious persons and activity from the police sub-station," said Officer Sandra Boonenberg, police spokeswoman, in a statement. "Additionally, the system includes a program that allows officers to control and view activity from their patrol cars."
The statement made no mention of the murders, or of an Aug. 7 robbery and carjacking at the mall that authorities suspect foreshadowed the December attack.
Mall kidnap victim: 'He knew what he was doing'
By MICHAEL LaFORGIA and KEVIN DEUTSCH
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE - Before a ritualistic killer shot a woman and her 7-year-old daughter to death in the parking lot of the Town Center mall, the attacker practiced his methods on an earlier victim and her 2-year-old son at the same Boca Raton shopping center, authorities suspect.
On Tuesday that first victim recounted her ordeal to The Palm Beach Post in her first newspaper interview since her Aug. 7 robbery and kidnapping.
"I was shaking," said the woman, who requested anonymity because her attacker remains on the loose. "He knew what he was doing."
In the office of her attorney, Skip Campbell, the woman described an abduction at the hands of a calm, meticulous and highly organized gunman who took pains to bind and blindfold the woman but also offered to refill her frightened boy's bottle and, before disappearing, used the woman's cellphone to call the child's father to pick them up.
Police suspect the bizarre encounter foreshadowed the Dec. 12 murders of Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, whose bodies were found in their black 2007 Chrysler Aspen idling near Sears early Dec. 13.
When police swarmed the scene they found Bochicchio's ankles, wrists and neck bound with plastic ties. A broken pair of novelty handcuffs dangled from her wrists, and a pair of swimming goggles covered her eyes. Both mother and daughter had been shot in the head at point-blank range.
Now the woman in the previous attack - who sat still as the man bound her ankles, wrists and neck, then pulled blackened swimming goggles over her eyes - lives in fear that her attacker will come back for her.
More than six months later she still recalled the kidnapping in vivid detail.
She remembers pulling into the Nordstrom parking garage at Town Center and noticing a brand-new silver Chevrolet Suburban parked in the space beside her.
Later, after the gunman had forced her to a nearby ATM, taken the wheel of her black 2007 Lincoln Navigator and driven up and down Florida's Turnpike, apparently by mistake, the woman would see the same Suburban again, idling in a remote corner of the Town Center parking lot near Sears.
The woman watched as the gunman slowed her SUV almost to a stop and made eye contact with a white man behind the wheel of the Suburban. Then her kidnapper continued to another part of the lot, where he eventually would leave her and her son.
Boca Raton police, who have been slow to release information in the case, have yet to make any mention of a silver Suburban in connection with the investigation.
A police spokeswoman wouldn't comment Tuesday.
Coupled with an official account of the Aug. 7 attack, the woman's descriptions brought the abduction into sharper focus.
She said after she walked out of the mall that day, the gunman - whose floppy brown hat and sunglasses would later appear in a forensic composite sketch that would become ubiquitous in South Florida - sneaked into the backseat of her Navigator as she loaded her son's stroller into the trunk. The silver Suburban remained parked in the space next to her SUV.
As she moved around to the driver's door she heard her son begin to call for her. Something strange registered in his voice. When she opened the door she saw the man, who brandished a semiautomatic handgun, sitting beside her boy.
He ordered her into the SUV.
"I said, 'Take whatever you want, just don't hurt my son or me,' " the woman recalled.
He demanded her wallet, credit cards and checkbook. He asked her what her account balances were. Then he told her to find an ATM and withdraw money.
Leaving the mall, the woman steered her Navigator by a Wachovia branch at 5355 Town Center Road, about a mile east, but kept going when she saw the bank had no drive-through ATM.
"He told me to drive back to the mall, that there was a bank on the other side of the mall," she said.
He directed her to the drive-through lane at a Bank of America at 21060 St. Andrews Blvd. He told her to check her account balance before making her attempt four $200 withdrawals. Looking back, she saw the man rooting in a bag he carried, withdrawing a thick wad of credit cards and folded cash. On the fourth try the machine denied her.
He told her to drive on.
She drove until the man told her to pull into the lot outside Pete's of Boca at 7940 Glades Road, just east Florida's Turnpike.
She and her captor changed places. The woman began to cry. Still holding the gun, he told her to put her arms behind her back. The man put the gun into a shoulder holster he wore concealed beneath a blue denim, short-sleeved, button-down shirt and picked up his bag, a bulging plastic shopping sack from Traffic, a shoe store found in malls throughout Florida and Georgia.
From the bag he withdrew a pair of novelty handcuffs and a plastic tie, and bound her wrists behind her back. He bound her ankles and secured her head to the headrest, took off her sunglasses and replaced them with a pair of fake Guccis, the lenses covered in black duct tape.
He got behind the wheel and, pausing to loosen the tie around her neck, which was choking her, pulled out of the parking lot going the wrong direction. He got on the turnpike heading northbound and, exhaling loudly, as if disgusted, asked if she had any change. She told him to use her SunPass.
He exited the turnpike west of Delray Beach and pulled behind Movies of Delray at 7421 W. Atlantic Ave. He unfolded a silver pocket knife and, sliding the blade between her neck and the tie, pulled to cut the plastic. He put the broken tie back in his bag before driving back to the mall. On the way, the gunman, a Hispanic or suntanned white man of medium height, kept repeating: "Tell the police I'm short, fat and black," the woman said.
In the parking lot, near Sears, he drove slowly by the idling Chevrolet Suburban before pulling over near Nordstrom.
"I'm going to call somebody," he told her. "Who do you want me to call?"
The man dialed the number for her son's father and held the phone to her ear. Following the man's instructions, she said her car had broken down and asked for a ride from the Town Center mall. The gunman ended the call and put her cellphone in a cup holder. He pulled another strip of plastic around her neck and the headrest and then walked away.
Four months passed.
In December, the Bochicchios were found sprawled in a bloodstained SUV.
Investigators are calling the Aug. 7 gunman a prime suspect in the double murder. In the coming months, police would join with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office - which was struggling to solve the March 23 murder of Randi Gorenberg, 52, shot west of Delray Beach after shopping at the Town Center mall - to form an investigative task force.
So far their efforts have met with little success.
Abduction victim sues Boca Raton's Town Center mall
Palm Beach Post Staff Report
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
FORT LAUDERDALE - A woman whose Aug. 7 robbery and kidnapping foreshadowed a grisly double murder at the Town Center mall of Boca Raton sued the shopping center earlier this month, claiming negligence.
Town Center officials knew of security shortcomings at the Glades Road mall long before the earlier victim, named as Jane Doe in the complaint, was accosted, kidnapped and robbed at gunpoint last summer.
The lawsuit was filed in Broward County Circuit Court on Feb. 1.
Investigators suspect the same man robbed Nancy Bochicchio, 47, of suburban Boca Raton outside Town Center before binding her hand and foot, pulling swimming goggles over her eyes and shooting her and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, in the head at point-blank range. Their bodies were found in their SUV idling outside Sears early Dec. 13.
Noting similarities with other crimes, including the murder of Randi Gorenberg, a 52-year-old wife and mother shot dead after shopping at Town Center on March 23, Boca Raton police and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office formed a joint investigative task force to probe the killings.
In an interview Tuesday at the office of her lawyer, Skip Campbell, the woman who survived the Aug. 7 attack said her priority is catching the killer before he strikes again.
Boca police add four surveillance cameras at mall
By Dianna Cahn |South Florida Sun-Sentinel
February 28, 2008
Boca Raton police completed the installation of four added surveillance cameras for the mall perimeter and parking lot at Town Center.
The camera views enable Boca Raton police officers to track and record suspicious people and activity from the police substation, department spokeswoman Sandra Boonenberg said Wednesday.
Additionally, the system includes a program that allows officers to view activity from their patrol cars, she said.
The announcement came the day after a woman who survived an abduction in August at the hands of a man suspected in the slayings of three other Town Center shoppers gave an interview about her ordeal.
The woman, who spoke on condition her identity not be revealed because her abductor is still at large, has filed a lawsuit in Broward County Circuit Court against mall owner Simon Property Group for failing to provide security.
The police cameras are intended to supplement Town Center's own surveillance cameras, which are on the perimeter of the building and the parking garages. Simon Property is adding more cameras, which will bring the number to more than 1,000, said spokesman Gary Bitner. Those cameras should be in place within the next six weeks, he said.
"It's one of several things that Town Center has been doing," Bitner said. Among the security steps taken, he said, was moving valet to the perimeter of the parking lot to open up more parking spots near the entrance, employee shuttle buses and valet programs for parents with children.
"There are a number of steps that have been taken and are now being taken to enhance security," Bitner said. "It's as strong a security program that can be found in any shopping center in the country."
Police installed five cameras at the perimeter of the parking lot in 2006 with federal grant money. They just got more funding and added another four cameras at the perimeter of the parking lot — which shows the parking lot and entrances to the mall.
Town Center has more than 900 cameras throughout the mall. These are on the perimeter of the building and at the building entrances and the parking garages. They intend to have more than 1,000 when this installation is complete.
Bitner said the added cameras were planned in late 2006, before any of the murders took place.
Dianna Cahn can be reached at dcahn@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6645.
Victim, Then Victimized
Palm Beach Post Editorial
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The terrifying story of a woman who was attacked at Town Center at Boca Raton in August is equally heartbreaking because her story might have saved the lives of another woman and her daughter.
Instead, the Boca Raton police department discounted the most terrifying details, which match those from the December double murder of Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter Joey - at Town Center mall. On Tuesday, the woman - who doesn't want her name released because the attacker/killer hasn't been caught - retold her story at the office of Fort Lauderdale attorney Skip Campbell, who is representing her in a lawsuit against the mall.
In August, the police department news release reported "an alleged armed robbery," in which the victim was "accosted" by a man "with a weapon." There was no mention of a gun being held to a toddler's head, to extort money. There was no mention of the plastic ties used to restrain the woman. There was no mention of goggles placed over the eyes of the woman and her son. Had these details become public, the reaction would have led to added security and scrutiny, and the Bochicchios might be alive.
In December, the elected leaders of Boca Raton defended the department. The two candidates running for a vacant council seat, however, both correctly criticize the department's failure to release information that the public needed to protect itself. Imagine the horror this woman went through. Imagine the horror of not being believed.