By Kevin Deutsch and Sasha Gonzales
[email protected], [email protected]
BOCA RATON, FL.— Saturday marks the 13th anniversary of the killings of Nancy and Joey Bochicchio at Town Center at Boca Raton mall—unsolved crimes that continue to haunt this upscale city.
Nearly a dozen years ago – roughly 1,260 miles from the Bronx neighborhood where Nancy, 47, grew up – she and her 7-year-old daughter were murdered in shocking fashion, shot in their heads at point blank range on December 12, 2007 after going Christmas shopping at the luxury mall.
The crimes – among the most disturbing murders ever committed in modern-day South Florida, and part of a series of abductions and killings of 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.
The slain pair weren’t the only victims with roots in New York City; Randi Gorenberg, a Brooklyn-born mother of two, was abducted and slain in March 2007 after an afternoon of shopping at the same mall. Last seen on surveillance footage exiting the posh retail property, Gorenberg wasn’t seen in public again until half an hour later, when shocked witnesses watched her being fatally shot and tossed from the passenger side of her new Mercedes SUV.
Another mother and her 2-year-old-son were also kidnapped, taken from the same mall before the mother was ritualistically bound with goggles and zip ties in August of 2007—the same year as the other attacks. Goggles and zip ties were also used in the Bochicchio murders, police said.
The abductor later returned the mother and son to the mall, where he left both victims – terrified but alive – inside the mother’s luxury SUV.
Investigators believe the same man carried out the Aug. 7 attack and the Bochicchio murders, but are uncertain whether there is any connection to Randi Gorenberg’s murder—or to an armed robbery that occurred at Mizner Park on Aug. 10, 2007.
The 2007 abduction and murder spree spurred authorities to offer the largest reward in Florida’s history, but the killer or killers have never been found.
Anyone with information about any of the mall cases is asked to call Palm Beach County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-458-TIPS.