On a quiet Saturday afternoon in December 1975, the tranquility of a Teaneck, New Jersey neighborhood was shattered by a horrific discovery. Wesley Diggs, a successful Black entrepreneur who owned several bars in Harlem, returned to his suburban home to find an unnerving silence. The house was dark, with only the faint sound of a television playing upstairs. His unease turned to horror when he went upstairs and found his 17-year-old daughter, Audrey, lifeless on a bed in her brother's room, the mattress soaked in blood.
After frantically seeking help from a neighbor to call the police, the full scope of the tragedy was revealed. Inside the home, law enforcement discovered the bodies of Wesley's entire family. His 39-year-old wife, Jean, was found in the basement recreation room. His other children, 16-year-old Allison, 12-year-old Wesley Jr., and 5-year-old Roger, were also found deceased in their bedrooms. All five family members had been shot multiple times with a.
22-caliber weapon. There were no signs of forced entry into the home, suggesting the killer or killers were known to the family and had been let inside.
The investigation that followed was fraught with questions and very few answers. Wesley Diggs, as the sole surviving family member, was immediately considered a person of interest. However, he had a verified alibi for the time of the murders and passed a polygraph test, eventually being cleared as a suspect. The lack of a clear motive or suspect led to several theories. One theory suggested a robbery gone wrong, as it was speculated that Wesley might have kept cash receipts from his businesses in the house. Another, more troubling theory, proposed by a Teaneck police lieutenant, was that Jean Diggs had killed her children before taking her own life, possibly due to depression. However, the evidence did not conclusively support this, particularly the presence of two gunshot wounds to Jean, one of which appeared to have been fired from a distance.
Over the years, the case grew cold, leaving a lasting scar on the community and a legacy of unanswered questions. No arrests were ever made, and no definitive suspects were ever named. The brutal slaying of Audrey Diggs and her family remains one of New Jersey's most haunting and unsolved mass murders. Despite the passage of decades, the identity of the person or persons responsible for the violent deaths of a mother and her four children in their own home remains a mystery.
