Boca Raton police seek clues one year after killings

Victim's sister appeals for help in Town Center carjackings

By Dianna Cahn | South Florida Sun-Sentinel

December 5, 2008

Boca Raton - Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter Joey have been gone a year and police leads into the brutal Town Center mall killings are drying up.

But the absence of JoAnn Bruno's baby sister and niece is just starting to sink in as Bruno faces a second Christmas without them.

Police said Thursday that they've put in 9,000 investigative hours, completed most of the 1,600 leads they've developed and have forensic evidence that could implicate a suspect if they could apprehend one.

In a tearful plea, Bruno urged anyone with information to come forward.

"My sister, she needs to rest in peace and as long as he's out there, she won't," Bruno said. "It's not just what he did to her. It's what he did to her baby."

Bochicchio, 47, and Joey, 7, were found bound and shot to death in their SUV in the Town Center parking lot on Dec. 12, 2007, hours after they'd been shopping at the mall. They'd also been robbed of $500 at an ATM.

Police said they were able to link forensic evidence developed since the murders to a similar carjacking on Aug. 7, 2007, in which a woman and her 2-year-old son were abducted as she got into her SUV at the mall. The woman, who has remained anonymous, was also bound and forced to drive to an ATM and withdraw $600, but their lives were spared.

Investigators could find no forensic evidence linking those two attacks to the March 23, 2007, murder of Randi Gorenberg, said Boca Raton Police Chief Dan Alexander. Gorenberg's body was thrown from her vehicle west of Delray Beach a short time after she left the mall and her murder is under investigation by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Police Capt. Matt Duggan said police have completed 89 percent of the leads they've developed and have spent more than $15,000 on advanced forensic testing.

Police think that like the August abductions, the Bochicchio case started as a robbery and turned fatally violent.

Police have not found any indication of more recent assaults by the same attacker, Alexander said.

"There's a lot of time and effort and money that's gone into this investigation," he said. "We are certainly not going to rest until we resolve this case.

"We have a brutal crime. It's touched all our hearts," he added.

Police are still offering a $350,000 reward for information leading to the capture of a suspect, Alexander said.

Bruno said she was begging for people to come forward with information.

"It's just sinking in how long I prayed that I'd wake up one day and it was just a bad dream," she said.

"Please," she added. "Everyone has a mother, a sister, a child. If you know anything. It could happen to anybody. It could be you."

Dianna Cahn can be reached at dcahn@SunSentinel.com or 561-243-6645.