Terror at the mall

Jane Doe: When my son sees the sketch on TV, he says, "bad man." So he knows what happened.

What kind of man kidnaps women? Terrorizes children? Sometimes kills and sometimes doesn't?

What goes on in the brain of the man in the fishing hat and the wraparounds?

We asked our colleague, former FBI agent Clint Van Zandt, what he makes of the ongoing investigation. Van Zandt was with the Behavioral Sciences Unit -- the profilers -- when it first started. He's an NBC News analyst.

Dennis Murphy: Clint, this is the entrance and exit where the security camera sees two of the victims coming out.

We drove to the upscale Town Center Mall in Boca Raton. On any given day here, there were an estimated 35,000 shoppers for the killer to choose from when selecting his prey.

Dennis Murphy: Clint, your idea of a hunting ground, a mall? Put me in the head of a perpetrator?

Clint Van Zandt: This is the place to come and find it all. This is a cash predator's shopping ground.

Van Zandt also spent two hours debriefing Jane, the only woman carjacked by the killer who lived to talk about it, trying to understand why the killer let her live when others died.

Jane Doe: I just tried to talk to him like he was just a regular person. Maybe try to relate to him in some way.

Clint Van Zandt: I think that's what really saved you in this situation. Does he seem to have any particular knowledge about police procedures? About mall security? Were there things he was trying to avoid, or that he seemed to have knowledge of?

Jane Doe: Well, he avoided cameras, you know, like at the ATM. I mean, he—

Van Zandt: Intentionally, you thought, he was trying to stay away from the cameras?

Jane Doe: Yeah, I mean -- I felt like he's definitely done this before.

The elaborate paraphernalia he brought with him, dime-store handcuffs, swimming goggles prepped as blackout masks, suggested that we were in psychopath country in trying to understand him.

Dennis Murphy: It seems to me, after the ATM you go from a scary incident to absolutely horrifying when he gets out his bag of tricks.

Clint Van Zandt: There's something unique about those cuffs for him. Whether there's a ritualistic aspect about it, whether that means something psychologically to him. But a signature aspect, just like Picasso signing a painting, the signature says, "This is unique to me."

But remember that unique bag of tricks was absent in the Randy Gorenberg case.

She was the only victim who wasn’t blindfolded or handcuffed...

And that critical difference, what Van Zandt calls the killer’s signature, has caused investigators two years on to now rethink their theory of the case.

Maybe the Gorenberg murder is not related to the Jane Doe or Bocchiccio cases after all?

Capt. Jack Strenges: At this point in the investigation, we have not been able to forensically link. Gorenberg case to the other incidents that occurred at the mall.

No forensic link - even though Gorenberg like the other two women was last seen at the mall before she was carjacked.  

And then last December, police released a new theory about the Gorenberg case, a lead that could put Randy’s husband Stuart Gorenberg in the picture, perhaps as the true intended victim that day.

Police say they’ve learned he was seeing prostitutes before his wife’s murder, cruising the family’s black Mercedes GL though some of the seedier streets of nearby Broward County.  

Investigators theorize that maybe some toughs also living in that neighborhood spotted his fancy SUV coming and going and decided to tail him home one day with the idea of a future rip-off in mind.

Sgt. Bill Springer, Palm Beach Co. Sheriff’s Office, press conference:
“It may be possible that he was a target, that somebody may have followed him, knew where he lived and that maybe he was the intended victim that day but Randi happened to have been driving that Mercedes Benz.”

A theory that suggests robbery—but if that was the motive why did the killer take only Randy’s purse, leaving behind a valuable Cartier watch and diamond pendant?

It’s only a working theory and investigators acknowledge problems with it—a woman mistaken for a man.

Maybe it was something botched and hurried.

Capt. Jack Strenges: Well, if he was the intended target, and again this is just an investigative theory, it was just a crime of opportunity at that point.  She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When Randy Gorenberg’s mother heard the police say that the killer or killers may have actually been after her son-in-law rather than her daughter, it was another hammer blow to the family.

Idey Elias, mother: You have no idea how difficult that was to hear, the fact that someone else may have been the target, and not my daughter.  That’s like a double murder to me. 

Stuart Gorenberg’s attorney responds that the allegation of his client seeing prostitutes is baseless. And while the police may be floating this theory to generate leads, the tactic hasn’t worked.  As a result of local media coverage of the prostitutes angle, the lawyers says that, Dr. Gorenberg - a chiropractor - had to close his practice.

And just last month police interviewed the Gorenberg’s son, Daniel - who police say was uncooperative in the early stages of the investigation.

In this go-round this time he answered all of the detectives’ questions and has now been officially ruled out as a suspect.

So now two police agencies in two different counties are pursuing two different theories of the crimes. As a result, the Boca Mall Murder Task Force is no more.

Capt Matt Duggan: Technically this task force would be termed I guess disbanded, at this point—and by the time the forensics came in, we felt comfortable in saying that the cases are not linked. Plus both investigations appeared to be heading in different directions.

Boca Raton P.D. has only one full-time detective working a case getting colder and colder.

Jo Ann Bruno: It hurts.  Makes me feel that they’re giving up or at least before Palm Beach County and Boca Raton were working together.  I felt it was more manpower. 

At Nancy’s Bochiccio’s house time has been frozen back to that day in December, 2007. Joann Bruno has preserved her sister’s house just as it was when Nancy and her seven-year old daughter left to go Christmas shopping at the mall.   Joann goes over to the house a few times a week to feel Nancy’s warmth, to think about Joey’s smile... and to grieve all over again.

Jo Ann Bruno: I promised my sister, before she was buried, that I wouldn’t give up. And I won’t. But I just pray to God every day that before I leave this earth, that do catch him.  The one thing I need — that he’s caught.

Van Zandt: I can’t imagine anyone coming up with a profile that would suggest anything other than the killer is probably still out there, and fully capable of doing this again.Jane Doe: I'd like to see him get caught. I'd like to be able to just look in his eyes, you know? To see who this person was that did this to me and that did this to Nancy and Joey, and possibly Randi, yeah.

For now, he's still only a sketch and a lifetime of horrifying memories.

"Jane Doe" has sued the owners of the Town Center Mall -- and so have the families of Randi Gorenberg and Nancy Bochicchio. The lawsuits allege that the mall did not have adequate security in place. Mall owners deny those allegations, saying the mall was and is a safe place. They say they have increased security since the attacks -- including installing some surveillance cameras in the parking lots.

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