The 21 most notorious murders in New Jersey history (2023)

By Vicki Hyman | NJ Advance Media

A rabbi with a roving eye, a housewife whose secret ingredient was arsenic, a failing financial planner who requested cremations for the family that he killed(more economical),a real estate mogul in a nasty feud with a newsman: the Garden State has been home to some of thenation's most singularmurderers, and some of the most horrifying acts of revenge, greed, jealousy, insanity, perversion and pure evil. Here are the 21 most notorious murders, crime sprees and serial killers in New Jersey history.

Descendants of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton reenactthe famed duel on its 200th anniversary in 2004 in Weehawken. (Mario Tama | Getty Images)

Deadly politics, 1804

As fans of the blockbuster musical "Hamilton" are now acutely aware, Founding Father and architect of the American financial system Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded in a duel with his longtime rivalAaron Burr, then Thomas Jefferson's vice president, on July 11, 1804 in Weehawken.

The dueling pistols used by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. (Courtesy New York Historical Society)

Hamiltondied the next day in New York, and authorities in both New York and New Jerseyindicted Burr for murder, although he was not convicted. Burr died on Staten Island in 1836 at 80.

Charles K. Landis, the founder of Vineland, was a progressive, but apparently didn't take kindly to criticism. He shot and killed a local newspaper editor who opposed him, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. (Courtesy Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society)

Fake news gets lethal, 1875

Vineland founder Charles K. Landis had a long-standing feud with Uri Carruth, the editor of the weekly Vineland Independent, but when Carruth published an editorial on March 20, 1875 that suggested a town leader was considering committing his wife to an insane asylum, all but naming Landis, Landis stormed the newspaper offices and shot Carruth in the back of the head. Landis was acquitted by reason of insanity (the sort that "never occurs with anyone unless he is very rich," according to the New Jerseyattorney general at the time). He later developed Sea Isle City and died in 1900 at 67.

Detectives re-create the positions of Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall and Eleanor Mills, the victims in the infamous Hall-Mills murders of 1922.(Courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University)

An ungodly affair, 1922

The lurid double murder of a pastor and his mistress, the death scene littered with theirlusty love letters,gripped the nation in the 1920s. Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall, of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick, was found dead in a field from a gunshot wound alongside Eleanor Mills, whose throat was slit ear to ear, onSept. 16, 1922.

The so-called 'Pig Lady' testifies at the 1926 trial of Frances Stevens Hall in the murder of her husband and his mistress. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Police suspected Hall's older and wealthier wife, Frances Stevens Hall, but she wasn't indicted until a local hog farmer called the Pig Woman came forward with claims that she witnessed the soon-to-be-widow and her brother confronting Hall and Mills that day. The ailing Pig Woman, wheeled into the courtroom for her testimony, was not found to be credible, and Hall and her brother were acquitted. No one else was ever arrested for the double murder.

A wanted posted following the disappearance of Charles Lindbergh's son in 1932. (Star-Ledger file photo)

The Lindbergh baby kidnapping, 1932

On March 1, 1932, famed aviator Charles Lindberghdiscovered his 20-month-old son missing from hissecond-story bedroom of their Hopewell home and a ransom note on the window sill. The sensational story took a weird turn when a retired school principal from the Bronx named John Condon volunteered to be a go-between and received a note from the alleged kidnapper. After two meetings, Condon arranged the ransom drop, but the child did not turn up. In May, the baby's skeletal remains were found in woods near the Lindbergh estate.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the German immigrant convicted in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. (AP file photo)

The bills from the ransom drop eventually led investigators to a German immigrant named Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who lived near the cemetery where the alleged kidnapper met Condon. The 1935 trial resulted in Hauptmann's conviction, based largely on circumstantial evidence. He was killed in the electric chair in Trenton on April 3, 1936. His widow, Anna, was never convinced of his guilt (many still aren't) and spent nearly60 yearspetitioning the state to reopen the case.

The mobster Dutch Schultz was the victim of a hit in Newark in 1935. (Ervin Hess)

Dutch Schultz snuffed out, 1935

The bootlegger and early Mafioso Dutch Schultz (nee Arthur Flegenheimer) was bumped off by fellow mobsters after he proposed a hit on New York anti-organized crime crusader (and future New York governor) Thomas Dewey.

On Oct. 23, 1935, two men opened fire at Newark's Palace Chop House, where Schultz was dining. Schultz was actually in the restroom when he was gunned downand stumbled back into the dining room. He died at Newark City Hospital at the age of 33.

Mary Frances Creighton with her husband John, and their two children Ruth and John Jr. Creighton. (Newark Evening News)

Housewife with a hit list, 1920-1935

Newark housewife Mary Frances Creighton was called the Lucrezia Borgia of New Jersey after she was arrested in 1921 for killing her brother with arsenic-laced chocolate pudding and was suspected of dispatching her in-laws in the same manner. She was acquitted, and to escape the notoriety, she and her husband moved to Long Island, where they shared a home with another couple. She and the other husband started an affair, and soon after the man's wifedied after drinking arsenic-tainted milk. And yet Creighton might have escaped notice had a packet of newspaper clippings about the Newark poisonings not found its way to investigators on Long Island. Creighton and her lover were convicted of first-degree murder and electrocuted at Sing Sing prison in New York in 1936.

Howard Unruh, center, shown after his capture on Sept. 6, 1949, was one of the earliest spree killersin America. (AP file photo)

'Walk of Death,' 1949

In one of the nation's earliest shooting rampages (it was dubbed the "Walk of Death"), World War II veteran Howard Unruh sprayed a Camden neighborhood with gunfire on the morning of Sept. 6, 1949, killing 13 people in the space of 20 minutes.

Howard Unruh spent the rest of his life in state mental hospital, dying in 2009. (AP file photo)

Unruh was captured at his home after the shooting spree and toldpolice,"I'd have killed a thousand if I'd had bullets enough." He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent the remainder of his life at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, where he died in 2009 at the age of 88.

Garrulous gangster taken out of commission, 1951

Genovese crime family underboss Willie Moretti is best remembered for reportedlypressuring bandleader Tommy Dorsey to let a young singer named Frank Sinatra out of his contract (supposedly inspiring Mario Puzo's horse-head-in-the-bed scene in "The Godfather"). On Oct. 4, 1951, Moretti was at Joe's Elbow Room in Cliffside Parkwhen he was gunned down by four men with whom he had been joking moments before. Investigators speculated that fellow mob leaders wanted Morettisilenced after the talkative gangster, said to be suffering brain damage fromsyphilis, testified (but did not incriminate anyone) before local and federal committees on organized crime.

Carl Coppolino and his second wife Mary, whom he married less than two months after the sudden death of his first wife Carmela. He was later convicted of poisoning Carmela. (Newark Public Library | Star-Ledger file photo)

Deadly house calls, 1963-1965

Middletown anesthesiologist Carl Coppolino allegedly had been carrying on an affair with the wife of his neighbor, Col. William E. Farber, when Farber died suddenly on July 30, 1963. Two years later, Coppolino and his wife Carmela moved to Florida, where Carmela died suddenly, justafterCoppolino increased his wife's insurance policy. Less than two months later, Coppolinomarried wealthy divorcee Mary Gibson. But Coppolino's vengeful ex-lover in New Jersey told investigators in Floridathat she believed Coppolinopoisoned Carmela with a powerful dose of a muscle relaxant — because that's how he had planned to kill Farber tow years earlier, although she claims Coppolino ended up suffocating him to death.

Coppolino, represented by F. Lee Bailey, was acquitted in Farber's murder in New Jersey because the jury dismissed Farber's widow as a scorned lover seeking revenge. But he was convicted of second-degree murder inCamela's deathin Florida. Coppolino served 12 years and was paroled in 1979, published a memoir called "The Crime That Never Was," about the case, and then completely dropped off the radar. If he is still alive, he would beabout 84.

In 1975, Robert Zarinsky of Linden was brought in for the 1969 murder of 17-year-old Rosemary Calandriello. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Convicted without a body, 1969

Linden nativeRobert Zarinskywas the firstperson ever convicted in New Jersey without evidence of a corpse. in 1975, he was convicted ofkilling 17-year-old Rosemary Calandriello of Atlantic Highlands, last seen in August 1969 on her way to the corner store. But he is also believed to have killed at least four other teenaged girls in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 2001, he was tried but ultimately acquitted in the shooting death of Rahway police officer Charles Bernoskie in 1958.

Investigators in the field near the spot where Jane Durrua's body was found in 1968 in East Keansburg. She is believed to have been killed by Robert Zarinsky. (Courtesy of investigative file of Dr. Robert Shaler)

Zarinsky, who was convicted in Calandriello's death after four boys testified they saw her get into hiscar the day she disappeared, was sentenced to 98 years in prison. But in 2005, DNA evidence linked him to the 1968 murder of 13-year-old Jane Durrua. Zarinksy died at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton in 2008 before he could be brought to trial in Durrua's murder. He was 68.

John List, bottom left, murdered his entire family in Westfield and disappeared in 1971. (AP file photo)

Family killer, 1971

John List, a failing financial planner, meticulously planned every detail of the murder of his wife, three children and mother-in-law, down to his request that that they be cremated to keep costs low. Police didn't discover the bodies until nearly a month later, by which time List had disappeared.

A bust of John List was commissioned by 'America's Most Wanted' in 1989 for a segment on the 1971 murders.(Star-Ledger file photo)

List took on another name and remarried, and it wasn't until 1989, when "America's Most Wanted" aired an episode on the killings that included a bust of what List might look like, that he was brought to justice. He was found guilty on five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, where he diedof complications due to pneumoniain 2008at the age of 82.

A memorial for Trooper Werner Foerster, who was killed in a shootout with Joanne Chesimard and other black radicals on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. (Alexandra Pais | For NJ Advance Media)

Traffic stop shootout, 1973

On May 2, 1973, a car carrying Joanne Chesimard of the Black Liberation Army and two others waspulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick by State Trooper James H. Harper, who noticed a broken taillight and called fellow trooper Werner Foerster for back-up. A gunfight ensued, leaving Foerster dead from two gunshots to the head with his own service weapon, the first trooper, Chesimard and the car's driver wounded, and the other man dead in the backseat. The driver, Clark E. Squire, drove away withChesimard, but police soon captured both. Authorities said Chesimard shot first, but Chesimard's lawyer said the gunshot wound that broke her clavicle could only have happened if she had been sittingin the car with her hands raised.

Joanne Chesimard, arrested in the murder of Trooper Werner Foerster, at the Middlesex County Courthouse in 1976. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Squire, who is also known as Sundiata Acoli, was convicted in Foerster's murder and remains in prison.Chesimard was also convicted of first-degree murderbut in 1979 escaped from the New Jersey State Reformatory for Women at Clinton and resurfaced a few years later in Cuba, where she still lives. The 69-year-old, who is also known as Assata Shakur, remains on FBI's most wanted terrorist list with a $2 million reward for her capture and return.

'The Shoemaker,' 1974-1975

Philadelphia cobbler Joseph Kallinger, who claimed he was working on orders from God, went on a home invasion and sexual assault spree withhis teenaged son Michael starting in late 1974. On Jan. 8, 1975, they invaded a Leonia home, where he stabbed to death a nurse named Maria Fasching who had stopped by to check on a patient.Kallinger left behind a bloodstained shirt with a laundry label that led to police to him. He later confessed to killing another son, 14, and a 10-year-old neighbor prior to the robbery spree, and was convictedin allthree murders. In 1996, he died after a seizure at the State Correctional Institute at Cresson, Pa., at the age of 59. Michael Kallinger pleaded guilty to two counts of armed robbery, was eventually released from juvenile custody, moved out of state and changed his name. If alive, he is now in his 50s.

Richard Biegenwald, convicted in five murders, appears at the Monmouth County Courthouse in Freehold in 2008. (Star-Ledger file photo)

'Jersey Shore Thrill Killer,' 1981-1984

Dubbed the Jersey Shore Thrill Killer, Richard Biegenwald, a veteran of psychiatric hospitals and reform schools, had served 17 years in prison for the 1958murder of a grocery store owner before being paroled in 1975. In 1983, Biegenwald became the suspect in the death of Anna Olesiewicz, 18, of Camden, whodisappeared from the Asbury Park boardwalk and whose body was found, shot in the head, behind a Burger King in Ocean Township. A friend of Biegenwald told police that Biegenwald killed three other teens and a drug dealer since 1981 and told them where to find the bodies.

Richard Biegenwald during a 1984 court appearance at the Burlington County Courthouse in Mount Holly. (AP file photo)

Police eventually unearthed the four bodies from shallow graves, including two from the side yard of Biegenwald's mother's home on Staten Island. Biegenwald was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the murder of Olesiewicz, but the state Supreme Court overturned the death sentence twice. He was also convicted in the four other murders. Hedied in 2008 at the age of 67in the prison ward of St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton.

Robert O. Marshall and his wife Maria in the weeks before her 1984 murder. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Insurance mogul plots murder, 1984

Returning from Atlantic City to their home in Toms River on Sept. 7, 1984, prominent insurance agent Robert O. Marshall and his wife Mariapulled over to a picnic area off the Garden State Parkway. There, Marshall claimed, he was checking his tire when he was knocked unconscious and a man shot and killed his wife — on whom, police soon discovered, he had taken out a $1.5 million insurance policy. And they also learned Marshall was heavily in debt and had been carrying on an affair with a woman to whom he had discussed "getting rid of" his wife.

Robert O. Marshall at his resentencing hearing at the Ocean County Courthouse in Toms River in 2006. (Patti Sapone | Star-Ledger file photo)

Marshall was convicted of murder in 1986 and sentenced to death by lethal injection, but it was overturned in 2004 because of ineffective legal counsel during the death penalty phase. He was resentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2015. His family was torn apart by the crime, with his youngestson standing by his father and the other sons disowning him. Bestselling true crime writer Joe McGinniss turned the tale into "Blind Faith," which became a TV movie starring Robert Urich and Johnny Galecki.

'The Iceman,' 1950s-1986

Husband and father of three Richard Kuklinski appeared to be a successful businesman from Dumont, but in reality, he was a longtime mafia hitman who earned the name the Iceman for putting some of his bodies in the deep freeze before disposing of them. Among his weapons: guns, ice picks, chain saws, hand grenades and cyanide in a nasal spray bottle. Kuklinski was captured after investigators linked him to several unsolved homicides, and an undercover federal agent posing as another hit man got close to him and sold Kuklinski what he claimed was pure cyanide.

Richard Kuklinski at the Bergen County courthouse in 2003, when the former hitman, already serving time in New Jersey for a string of murders, pleaded guilty to the 1980 murder of New York police officer Peter Calabro. (Amanda Brown | Star-Ledger)

Once imprisoned, Kuklinski made hyperbolic claims about his career, even boasting at one point that he killed Jimmy Hoffa. He participated in three documentaries before his death in 2006 at the age of 70 in the prison ward of St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton. In 2012, Michael Shannon played Kuklinski in the film "The Iceman."

Timothy Wiltsey, seen here in a school photo, was reported missing by his mother, Michelle Lodzinski, who was onlycharged in his death decades later. (Star-Ledger file photo)

The mom who (almost) got away with murder, 1991

In 1991, South Amboy single mother Michelle Lodzinskiclaimed her 5-year-old son Timothy Wiltsey had disappeared during a trip to a Sayreville carnival. Nearly a year later, his skeletal remains were found in a marshy area in Edison near where she used to work. Though she changed her initial story a couple of times, she was not charged due to a lack of forensic evidence.

Michelle Lodzinksi at the Middlesex County Courthouse duringher 2016 trial in the murder of her son Timothyin 1991.(Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media)

The cold case was reopened in 2011, and Lodzinksi's niece, who also babysat Timothy, identified the blue and white blanket found with hisremains as the boy's. In 2014, Lodzinksi, who had moved to Florida and had two more children,was charged in Timothy'smurder, and after a high-profile trial in 2016, she was convicted of first-degree murder. Earlier this year, the 49-year-oldwas sentenced to 30 years in prisonwith no possibility of parole.

Cherry Hill rabbi Fred Neulander was convicted of hiring a former congregant to kill his wife Carol in 1994. (Noah K. Murray | Star-Ledger file photo)

The rabbi and the hitman, 1994

Carol Neulander was beaten to death in herCherry Hill home on Nov. 1, 1994, but it wasn't untilfour years later that police had enough evidence to arrest her husband Fred Neulander, a rabbi with a wandering eye, for murder. His congregation had already removed Neulander from the pulpit afternews of his affair with Philadelphia radio personality came to light. In 2000, a former congregant named Len Jenoff finally confessed tothe murder, saying Neulander had offered him $30,000 and told him his wife was "an enemy of Israel."

A former congregant confessed in 2000 that the rabbipaid him and another man beat Carol Neulander to death. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Neulander was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2003. While he admitted his extramarital affairs, he still denies arranging his wife's murder. Jenoff and his accomplice, Paul Michael Daniels, a mentally ill drug addict, werereleased from prison in 2014.

Megan Kanka, 7, of Hamilton Township, was sexually assaulted and murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Predator in plain sight, 1994

Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old girl who lived with her family in a middle-class Hamilton Township neighborhood, was lured into the home across the street by neighbor Jesse Timmendequas, who claimed he had a puppy to show her. In his room, he sexually assaultedher and strangled her with his belt, then stuffed her body in a toy chest and dumped it in a park.

Jesse Timmendequas in 1997, after he was sentenced to death in the murder of Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township three years earlier. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Police quickly zeroed in on Timmendequas because of his two previous convictions for sexual assault, about which his neighbors had known nothing. Within days of her death, Richard and Maureen Kanka began their crusade for a sex offender registry law. That year, New Jersey legislators passed Megan's Law, while a national version was signed into law in 1996. In 1997, Timmendequas was convicted in the murder and sentenced to death, though that wascommuted to life in prisonwhen New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.

Charles Cullen, the nurse who administered fatal doses of drugs to at least 29 of his patients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. (Star-Ledger file photo)

The night nurse, 1988-2003

Charles Cullen, an ICU nurse who preferred night shifts, worked at 10 hospitals and health care centers for16 years before he fell under suspicion of delivering fatal doses of drugs to his patients. He was finally fired from his last position at Somerset Medical Center onOct. 31, 2003, and was arrested less than two months later for murder and attempted murder.

Workers remove the urn continaing the ashes of Larry Dean, believed to be one of Charles Cullen's murder victims, from his grave in Phillipsburg in 2004. Investigators wanted to test the body for traces of digoxin, Cullen's poison of choice. (Star-Ledger file photo)

Hewas sentenced to11 consecutive life sentencesin New Jersey in 2006, and refused to explain his actions to the judge."There is evil in this world and sometimes there is no explanation for this evil," Essex County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Norman Menz has said. He is eligible for parole in 2403.

Melanie McGuire in her mug shot for the murder of her husband William in 2004. (New Jersey State Police)

Have suitcase, will murder, 2004

On April 28, 2004, Melanie McGuire, a nurse andmarried mother of two whohad been having an affair with a co-worker, drugged her husband, shot him twice in their Woodbridge townhouse, and dismembered him. She placedthe parts in trash bags and packed them in suitcases that she then dumped in the Chesapeake, and then filed for a restraining order, claiming her husband had hit her, packed his bags and stormed off.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Wendy Gunther indicates one of the places William McGuire was dismembered during Melanie McGuire's murder trial in in 2007. (Star-Ledger file photo)

After the suitcases turned up in the Chesapeake, investigators foundE-ZPass records of McGuire's car at a Delaware toll (which she tried to remove from her account history) and matched the luggage with a set she had in her basement. Her computer search history also turned up "how to commit murder." She was found guilty of first-degree murderand sentenced to life in prison in 2007.

From left, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, executed for the murder of the Lindbergh baby; Howard Unruh, one of America's earliest spree killers; RobertZarinsky, the first person ever convicted in New Jersey of murder without a body; Joanne Chesmard, aka Assata Shakur, convicted in the killing of a New Jersey state trooper and who then escaped from prison and resurfaced in Cuba; and John List, who masterminded the murder of his entire family and disappeared, only to be captured years later after "America's Most Wanted" publicized the case.

What other infamous New Jersey murders are you haunted by? Tell us in the comments.

• Here is a look at the Atlantic City prostitute killingson the 10th anniversary last year.
• Here is the latest about a 50-year-old cold casethat was recently linked to serial killer Robert Zarinsky.
• Here is a story about whether the thaw in Cuban-American relations willresult in a return of escaped cop killer Joanne Chesimardto New Jersey.

Vicki Hyman may be reached atvhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter@vickihyorlike her on Facebook.FindNJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.