Death of Jeannette DePalma

During the Spring of 2021, convicted New Jersey serial killer Richard Cottingham made a series of written statements to journalist Jesse P. Pollack alluding to him having possibly abducted and killed Jeannette while she was hitchhiking. Pollack forwarded this correspondence to the Union County Prosecutor's Office after Cottingham agreed to speak with investigators if they would meet with him. Cottingham's statements regarding Jeannette's murder were later printed in the 2022 updated and revised edition of Death on the Devil's Teeth. As of December 2022, no updates have been given by law enforcement.

The case, currently unsolved, has become a matter of significant controversy due in part to coverage in Weird NJ magazine and in the 2015 book Death on the Devil's Teeth.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Weird NJ magazine began to report on the decades-old cold case after receiving several anonymous letters regarding DePalma's death. Editor and co-founder Mark Moran began investigating the case and wrote about many purportedly suspicious details, including the allegation that Springfield police had lost or destroyed the case file. The Springfield Police Department maintains that the file was lost due to flooding caused by Hurricane Floyd in 1999. Others allege that a copy is still on file.

On the afternoon of Monday, August 7, 1972, 16-year-old Jeannette DePalma left her home on Clearview Road in Springfield Township, Union County, New Jersey, telling her mother that she was going to take a train to a friend's house. When she did not arrive at her friend's house or return later that evening, her parents filed a missing person report with the Springfield Police Department the following day.

Jeannette DePalma (August 3, 1956 – c. August 7, 1972) was an American teenager who is believed to have been murdered sometime on or around August 7, 1972 in Springfield Township, Union County, New Jersey, United States.