Senseless murders and Florida often go hand-in-hand.
Violent, depraved, callous, and frequently sprinkled with shocking levels of cruelty.
During nine months in 2007, evil lurked at the trendy Town Center in Boca Raton. Murder and the mall coupled up for horror.
Now, a Swedish documentary team claims they know the killer’s identity in the long-unsolved cases.
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On March 23, 2007, Randi Gorenberg decided to head out to the high-end retail emporium.
“She was at home, and we know she went to the mall,” Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Det. William Springer told WPTV. “She bought a John Legend CD and a top at a store. We have her walking out of the mall around 1:15 in the afternoon.”
The last time she was seen alive was on a mall surveillance video. What unfolded next is a mystery.
Cops theorize that Gorenberg may have been driven around in her pricey Mercedes SUV to an ATM. But she did not have a debit card, no doubt infuriating her captor.
“He probably did not believe her,” Springer added. “She has a high-end car – Mercedes SUV. She’s dressed in nice clothes. She has a nice pocketbook. Why wouldn’t she have a debit card?”
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Around 45 minutes after Gorenberg was captured on the mall’s CCTV, a person called 911 claiming they heard gunshots and saw a woman pushed out of an SUV.
Her body was dumped at the Governor Lawton Chiles Memorial Park. Later, more CCTV footage captured the vehicle at a hardware store approximately 3.5 kilometres from the park.
“In my mind, Randi is away. She’s not gone,” her mother Idey Elias said. “She’s just away, and one day, you know, she’ll come bouncing back like she always would, (saying), ‘Hi mom.’”
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The suspect struck again on Aug. 7, 2007, again at the Town Center. This time he targeted a mother and her young son. But this time the victims survived their harrowing ordeal.
“Jane Doe went to Boca Town Center mall to do some shopping with her 2-year-old son in August, you know, just like any other day you’d go shopping,” Retired FBI Special Agent John MacVeigh said.
The suspect slipped into her vehicle after she strapped her son into the car. She then put her packages in the trunk but by the time she got into the car, she was facing a killer.
The maniac forced Doe to drive to various ATMs but her account was low. She managed to withdraw $600 before driving at gunpoint to a hotel parking lot where she was tied up and blindfolded.
Oddly, the killer had compassion for her crying child, McVeigh said: “[The killer asked] do we need to give him some water or a bottle?’ And she’s like, ‘No, no. He’s OK.’”
Finally, the man dumped the mother and child back at the mall.
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As Christmas approached, Nancy Bochicchio was looking to get a gift card at the Town Center and her daughter Joey, almost 8, tagged along. That was Dec. 12, 2007.
“I was still on the phone with her when she got out of the car to walk into the mall, and that was our last conversation,” her sister JoAnne Bruno said, adding that Nancy never showed up for a scheduled dinner.
Just before midnight, a security guard found Nancy’s SUV idling in the mall’s parking lot. Mother and daughter had been tied up and shot to death.
“I’m driven by this case because anyone who could shoot a 7-year-old girl in the face and her mother is dangerous, beyond dangerous, a sociopathic killer, hunter of women, and I’d like to see this guy caught,” said John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted.
Cops have always believed they were hunting one psychopath in all three incidents.
“Are they all three connected? There’s a possibility,” Springer said. “I mean, you look at the odds of, what’s the possibility of three people being taken from the mall in the same year?”
He added: “The one I keep coming back to is that they’re all three connected, that whoever was doing it had picked the Town Center mall as a place where there’s a great hunting ground for victims.”
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The cases are now 17 years cold and have appeared no closer to resolution — until now. In a three-part series called Under the Radar, producers propose that the fiend is Swedish serial killer Peter Mangs.
Former investigator Jim Rathmann and Swedish documentary producer John Mork teamed up to investigate the vexing case. And they settled upon Mangs, who committed at least 15 racially motivated murders in Europe starting in 2009.
The team theorizes that Mangs may have started his killing spree in Florida where he was visiting family in 2007.
“It’s a game for them. He wants the notoriety. He wants to be famous. But you have to figure it out. You’re going to have to work for it. And that’s what Peter Mangs is doing right now. He’s trying to make us work for it,” Rathmann told CBS12.
And the motive? To instill fear.
“Peter, with all his radicalized views, you know, Boca Raton is known for a very heavy Jewish population,” Rathmann said.