Terror at the mall

After the mother-daughter murders in December, police had no doubt that Jane was telling the truth about her abduction from the same Boca Raton mall in August, 2007.

The swimming goggles, the handcuffs, the plastic ties around her neck -- everything he'd done to Jane, the killer had also done to Nancy Bocchicchio and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey.

Jane Doe: It haunts me every day. My son and I might not be here today.

Once skeptical police had given Jane a lie detector test. Now she was their star witness. They re-interviewed her.

Dennis Murphy: Are they more interested the second time than they were the first? When they're taking down your report?

Jane Doe: Yes. I went through it all again. You know, numerous times.

This was the composite police sketch she'd come up with. And this is the word picture description that went with it. A man she thought in his late 20s or early 30s. No body hair. Someone who could have been at the bar next to you.

Jane Doe: He didn't have an accent, but he could have been Hispanic or maybe Pacific Islands, you know.

Dennis Murphy: About 6 feet tall, not much taller?

Jane Doe: Yeah, about six feet. Regular build. I saw he had a ponytail -- about this long from the base of the back of his neck and it was curly.

Jane had also told investigators that tucked inside a plastic bag from a shoe store called Traffic was a kidnap kit, a well thought-out set of tools he used to control his victims. But still, something wasn't adding up.

Capt. Matthew Duggan: The work that went in to committing this crime -- the planning, the preparation, does not equate to the ultimate reward.

The killer, after all, got just a few hundred dollars from his victims.

And now it was a matter of catch him before he strikes again. A reward of $350,000 was offered.

The Boca Raton police and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office formed a task force of nine detectives assigned to the case.

Behind the unmarked door of the task force office, there's a visual reminder for investigators about what's at stake.

Capt. Duggan: We put up a couple of pictures of the victims, with just simple words underneath saying that "This is why we're here."

The task force determined after reviewing hundreds of hours of security camera tapes…

“I’m just looking at the different people that were passing by in front of the store here.”

...that the man in the floppy hat was not seen anywhere inside the mall following his victims.

Matthew Duggan: We got at least three clear shots of Nancy and Joey, and we're confident that they weren't actually targeted, or at least stalked, while in the mall.

That meant the killer laid in wait for his victims in the parking lot, pouncing only after they left the mall in broad daylight with thousands of people around.

Capt. Duggan: During the Christmas season, there's approximately 70,000 people a day going in and out of that mall.

Thousands of people, but just which one had blood on his hands?

Police tried to get inside the killer's head. They reasoned that the mall was a place where he operated comfortably. Did that mean maybe he was a current or former mall employee? Someone who perhaps knew that there were no security cameras in the parking lot? Detectives ran down hundreds of leads.

Capt. Matthew Duggan: To date, we received over 850 leads, and we've completed over 90 percent of them.

Within days of the mother-daughter murder, one of the most promising leads was a report that Nancy’s credit cards and cell phone had been found by two homeless men in a vacant lot in an African-American neighborhood in Miami, sixty-miles to the south.

Matthew Duggan: It could have been a tactic he used to send us on a wild goose chase down to Miami. It could also be on his way home. It could be a place that he frequents but doesn't live.

It wasn't the first time the killer had tried to get police to think an African-American might be involved in the crimes.

Remember, before he left Jane, the carjacker told her to lie to police about his description.

Jane Doe: “I want you to tell them that I’m short, fat and black."

But she hadn't done that. She worked with the police artist at refining the sketch.

She combed through magazines and went online studying men's pictures looking for facial characteristics that resembled her carjacker.

In February -- by then six months since her terrifying abduction -- Jane sat down once again with a new forensic artist, John McMahon of the Broward county sheriff's office.

Det. John McMahon: When I was doing that composite, I just felt that I was dealing with a very brave and strong person.

Unlike the first sketch attempts, where the floppy hat and sunglasses predominated, this time there was more nuance to the character--like the small pony tail. Detective McMahon had a hard time replicating the skin tone Jane had described-- a golden brown--so he used bronzing lotion which worked perfectly.

Jane Doe: It's very good. You know, as close as you can get from a sketch.

Soon the sketch was out there in south Florida: on moving billboards, and wanted posters. And some went up at the Town Center Mall, where the killer had targeted his victims beginning almost a year before.

And there's one more incident that's come to light since the murders, but it happened way back in August when Jane Doe had been abducted. A few days later, here at another upscale shopping area of Boca Raton -- Mizner Park -- an armed man approached a woman in a parking garage and demanded she take him to an ATM machine.

If it was the same carjacker who'd pulled off the Jane Doe robbery and who'd murdered the two women and a child, the target of the assault here would get away from the gunman altogether. She wasn't getting in the car with him.

Capt. Matthew Duggan: She refuses, and actually threw her purse on the other side of the car in the passenger seat well of the car, gives him $200 cash, and basically says, "Go away."

Initially, the woman refused to file a report. But months later, after the double murders, she came forward and gave police a description of the suspect. It matched that of Jane’s carjacker to a tee.

Matthew Duggan: This is why this case is so interesting and so frustrating. Because the actions of the perpetrator on this date totally are inconsistent with his actions on other dates.

Dennis Murphy: And then, of course, after the second event there's a firestorm of criticism of Boca Raton PD that "if we'd only known about August -- if they'd only put up signs -- if they told us --," mother and daughter would never have gone to the mall that day. Is that a fair criticism?

Matthew Duggan: I believe that our response to the August case was swift, and it was thorough. We put it out to the mall, and we put it out to the media. So no, I really don't think it's a valid criticism. However, hindsight being 20/20, if we could have done anything to alleviate, you know, what happened to Nancy and Joey, you’ve got to believe we would have done it.

The mall killer task force has sent its investigative work onto the FBI behavioral science unit, the so-called profilers for a psychological portrait of what makes this perpetrator tick.

Capt. Jack Strenges: It does give us a fresh set of eyes to look at the case.

We had our own veteran of that same FBI unit set eyes on the case, too. He wanted to talk to Jane Doe, and check out the crime scene. Maybe Clint Van Zandt would see a new piece of the puzzle.

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