On a cold December day in 1974, a sense of unease settled over Woodbridge, New Jersey, when two teenage girls, 14-year-old Doreen Carlucci and her friend Joanne Delardo, vanished after attending a church recreation function on the 13th of the month. Initially, the Woodbridge Police Department treated the disappearance as a runaway case, a common assumption at the time.
However, the grim reality of their fate would surface two weeks later, shattering the hopes of their families and sending a chill through the community.
On December 27, 1974, the bodies of both Doreen and Joanne were discovered in a wooded area in Manalapan, more than twenty miles south of where they were last seen. The scene was one of brutal violence; the young girls had been beaten and strangled to death with an electrical cord. The discovery of their bodies launched a homicide investigation that would remain a topic of fear and speculation for decades to come. Doreen Ann Carlucci, born on June 18, 1960, was tragically pronounced dead on December 13, 1974, the day of her disappearance.
For many years, law enforcement authorities have pointed to one primary suspect in the murders of Doreen Carlucci and Joanne Delardo: Robert Zarinsky. A convicted murderer, Zarinsky was considered by many investigators to be a serial killer responsible for a string of unsolved murders of young women in the area. A former assistant prosecutor who tried Zarinsky for another murder expressed his conviction that Zarinsky was responsible for the deaths of the two Woodbridge teens, though he was never formally charged in their case.
While Zarinsky remained the main person of interest, another notorious serial killer’s name has been associated with the crime. Richard Cottingham, also known as the 'Torso Killer,' was active in New Jersey during the same period. The method of abduction and the cause of death—ligature strangulation—in Doreen's case bear similarities to Cottingham's known methods of operation, leading to speculation that he could have been responsible. Despite the strong suspicions surrounding both Zarinsky and Cottingham, no definitive arrest and conviction were ever made specifically for the murder of Doreen Carlucci, leaving her case officially unsolved and her family without complete closure.
