By Kevin Deutsch
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Monday marks the 13th anniversary of the killing of Randi Gorenberg, whose disappearance from a posh Boca Raton mall and ensuing murder remain one of South Florida’s most vexing unsolved cases.
A Brooklyn-born mother of two, Gorenberg was abducted and slain on March 23, 2007 after an afternoon of shopping at Town Center. Last seen on surveillance footage exiting the sprawling property, Gorenberg wasn’t spotted in public again until more than half an hour later, when shocked witnesses watched her being fatally shot and tossed from the passenger side of her new Mercedes SUV.
Any commemoration of Gorenberg’s killing – once observed annually with press conferences by law enforcement – went unmentioned by local media Monday amid the coronavirus pandemic. And crime scenes once considered vital to the case, from the mall parking lot where Gorenberg vanished, to Governor Lawton Chiles Memorial Park, where she was fatally shot and dumped, stood empty amid the national crisis.
Gorenberg’s murder happened nine months before the killings of Nancy and Joey Bochicchio in the same parking lot at Town Center. The Bronx-born and bred mother, 47, and her 7-year-daughter were shot in their heads at point blank range December 12, 2007 after going Christmas shopping at the mall.
The crimes – among the most disturbing murders ever committed in the region, and part of a series of abductions and killings of Boca mall patrons that year – had an outsized impact in New York, where the rest of the Bochicchio family, and some of Nancy’s friends, still reside.
The mother and daughter are interred in the Rosewood Mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, just north of the Bronx.
Bronx Justice News published an investigation into the crimes in October 2019, based on a trove of court and law enforcement records not previously seen by the public. The documents shed new light on the mall attacks, revealing previously unknown details about detectives’ pursuit of the killer or killers, the lives of the victims, and security lapses at Town Center in the lead-up to the abductions and murders.
The spree spurred authorities to offer the largest reward in Florida’s history.
Yet the crimes continue to baffle investigators from the FBI, Boca Raton Police, and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Whether the same attacker or attackers carried out all the abductions and murders, or whether different criminals committed them, remains unclear.
Anyone with information about the Gorenberg or Bochicchio cases may be eligible for a reward by calling Palm Beach County Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-458-TIPS (8477) or the Boca Raton Police Department’s anonymous tip line at 561-416-3350.
With additional reporting by Sasha Gonzales.