Terror at the mall

It was the most wonderful time of the year, December 2007, and the retailers at the Town Center Mall in Boca Raton, Fla., couldn't agree more.

The parking lot was jammed with shoppers, few of them aware that one, and probably two, women had been abducted from that very place as they got in their SUV’s. One had been murdered.

Jane Doe was the other who lived to tell the harrowing tale.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline NBC: Come the holidays, you’ve got to do some Christmas shopping, I imagine? Do you think about going back to the mall?

Jane Doe: No. I don't go to that mall. I pretty much stayed out of the malls.

It was a good call on her part, because on Dec. 12, a Town Center security camera took this photo about 1 p.m. of a mother and daughter entering the mall.

Single mom Nancy Bocchiccio and 7-year-old Joey, were shopping for Christmas cards.

The little girl was regarded by her family as a kind of miracle daughter. Nancy's sister, Joann Bruno, remembered her sister thinking that once she turned 40, children weren't going to happen for her.

Joann Bruno: The doctor said she wasn't going to be able to have any. So when she was having Joey, she was thrilled because it was really a miracle.

Joann Bruno: Her original due date was Christmas day. And she was our Christmas angel.

And what a bundle Joey turned out to be: A center of attention, dancing, karaoke-singing cutie. A budding golfer.

But on that December day, as they walked past the Sony store security camera on the way to the food court, they had only hours left to live.

At 3 p.m. Nancy and Joey left the mall through the same exit that Randi Gorenberg had used on the day she was killed. These are last pictures ever taken of them.

We don't see Nancy and Joey reach their car -- a big black SUV -- because the owners of the mall had still not installed security cameras out there.

They must have been grabbed upon reaching the SUV.

Capt. Matthew Duggan, Boca P.D.: Within minutes of them being on video exiting the mall, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office gets a 911 phone call from Nancy’s cell phone. There's no dialogue, and the phone immediately hangs up.

Minutes later, Nancy Bocchicchio's black SUV is spotted at this drive-through ATM -- the same one Jane Doe had been directed to. She withdraws $500.

Hours passed without any word about the mother and daughter, then, just before midnight, a security guard at the mall noticed a black SUV with its engine idling.

Inside the vehicle, it was as bad as you'd expect.

Both of them.

Capt. Duggan: There was a female and apparently her daughter -- were dead in the back of a dark SUV.

The festive Christmas ribbons at the mall were joined by strung yellow crime scene tape as Capt. Matt Duggan took charge.

Dennis Murphy: You're a veteran investigator. You've seen a lot of rough stuff. How cold, how bad is this mother-daughter?

Matthew Duggan: I mean, how does anyone describe a mother and a daughter being shot at basically point blank range?

Family members believe without hesitation that Nancy died trying to defend Joey.

Joann Bruno: I know my sister and I know to protect Joey, I know she was fighting.

And evidence of her resistance: the cheap novelty store handcuffs used to restrain Nancy were broken, an indication that she'd struggled to get free.

The timeline of the crime was a blank. No one had seen, and no cameras recorded, the SUV returning to the lot but the unknown person at the wheel had almost certainly been there before in almost identical circumstances.

Matthew Duggan: Nancy had handcuffs on her hands, her feet were tied with tie wraps. She had goggles over her eyes that were also blacked out, and her head had been affixed to the head rest.

Dennis Murphy: This is all the signature of your August robber-abductor.

Matthew Duggan: To a tee.

Dennis Murphy: There's no question in your mind that you're looking for the same guy in those two cases.

Matthew Duggan: In my mind, there's no question at all.

The cops knew what they had and they were going to have to bring Jane Doe back into the picture ASAP.

Jane Doe: I got a phone call in the morning telling me that a mother and her child were found murdered at the mall. I don't even know the words to describe it. Like, my heart sank. I just -- I knew it was him.

Dennis Murphy: I imagine it's a double feeling of incomprehension, those poor people, and "there but for the grace of God, on that day it could have been me"?

Jane Doe: Yeah. Maybe he was going to murder me. And some chance, he didn't. I don't know why. And then I had to deal with him murdering, you know, a mother and her child.

Looking back, Joanne, the sister, remembered that she and Nancy had even talked about the first incident.

But as they casually followed the news, it didn't seem to have had any connection to the Boca mall.

And few but her friends knew anything about the second incident -- Jane Doe's carjacking ordeal.

Some Boca Raton residents became outraged to learn that a kidnapper and killer had savaged women and children, apparently at will, and the cops hadn't found him.

(TV news reports)

This may be one in a string of similar violent crimes committed by a man or group of men preying on a group of shoppers.

Now Boca Raton was a town deeply distressed. With the specter of a possible serial killer hanging over one of south Florida’s most affluent communities, councilmen were up in arms, and shoppers were thinking twice about going to the mall.

I'm afraid to go to the mall, I’m afraid to take my kids anywhere.

The Jane Doe story was certainly horrifying news to Nancy’s sister.

Dennis Murphy: It must have been chilling for you to read and hear the account of that survivor of the abduction, the details about being restrained, threatened. And you have to wonder, "Are these the last kinds of words that my sister heard?"

Joann Bruno: It had to be. I mean they were -- they were tied up, also. And Joey, poor little thing. She looked so frightened. It was a look I’ll never forget.

Dennis Murphy: 7 years old.

Joann Bruno: Yeah. Seven. And on her eighth birthday, I bought her a coffin.

And, of course, the horror in an echo chamber, was reverberating most of all for the woman who got away, a mother with her own young child.

Jane Doe: I feel horrible. Horrible for what they're going through.

Jane Doe was back in the police interview room. Go over it again. Give us a detail. Who is this guy?

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