Jane Katherine Durrua, a 13-year-old girl described by a friend as a talented ball player, was growing up in Middletown, New Jersey, in the autumn of 1968. An orphan, Jane lived with her older sister and her family. On the evening of Monday, November 4, she visited another sister, Joan, at her home in the East Keansburg section of town. After the visit, Jane began her walk home, taking a familiar shortcut along a railroad track through a grassy field.
It was the last time she was seen alive.
The following morning, after Jane failed to return home, her brother-in-law, Ronald Connors, began to search. He made a devastating discovery in a ditch filled with waist-high grass just south of the railroad tracks. Jane’s body was found with her clothes disheveled; she had been sexually assaulted and beaten to death, suffering a severe head injury. Her purse and shoes were found at the scene, with her shoes discovered underneath her body. The cause of death was determined to be a cerebral hemorrhage resulting from blunt force trauma to the head. The brutal killing left her family and the community in shock, beginning a decades-long search for answers.
The initial investigation into Jane's murder went cold for many years. At one point, authorities focused on a man named Jerry Bellamy, but a later examination of physical evidence, specifically Jane's slip, cleared him of any involvement. For forty years, Jane’s case remained unsolved, a painful open wound for her surviving sisters, Delores and Joan, and the rest of her family. The break they had long awaited finally came thanks to advancements in forensic science that were unimaginable in 1968.
The case was reopened, and investigators submitted evidence from the crime scene for DNA analysis. In 2008, the results delivered a definitive answer. The DNA profile developed from semen found on Jane's slip was a match to Robert Zarinsky, a convicted murderer and suspected serial killer from Linden, New Jersey. Known as Bob, Zarinsky was already serving a life sentence for the 1969 murder of 17-year-old Rosemary Calandriello, a landmark case in which he became the first person in New Jersey convicted of murder without the victim's body ever being found.
Zarinsky had a long and violent criminal history, beginning with arson and escalating to murder. He was the proven killer of three teenage girls and was a suspect in at least four other homicides between 1965 and 1969. In addition to Jane Durrua and Rosemary Calandriello, DNA posthumously linked him to the 1965 rape and murder of 18-year-old Mary Agnes Klinsky. He was also a prime suspect in the killings of Linda Balabanow, 17; Doreen Carlucci, 14; Joanne Delardo, 15; and Ann Logan, 19. He often boasted to authorities that he could solve up to ten homicides, hoping to leverage the information for a more lenient sentence.
On March 11, 2008, a grand jury indicted Robert Zarinsky for the murder of Jane Durrua, forty years after he took her life. The Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office announced the charges, finally bringing a name to the person responsible for the long-unsolved crime. However, Jane's family would be denied the chance to see him stand trial. On November 28, 2008, the night before he was to face justice in court for Jane's murder, the 68-year-old Zarinsky died of pulmonary fibrosis at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton.
Though the criminal trial never proceeded, Jane's family pursued a measure of justice through the civil courts. They filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Zarinsky's estate. A Superior Court judge, declaring that the evidence proved Zarinsky had raped and murdered the 13-year-old girl, awarded her family $13 million. While the case is still technically classified as unsolved because Zarinsky died before a criminal conviction could be obtained, for her family and the investigators who never gave up, the DNA match and the civil verdict confirmed the truth of who was responsible for the death of Jane Durrua.
