Three days before Christmas, Jean strangled her 78-year-old mother to death in their home. Standing over Julia Zelinsky’s body, Jean took a kitchen knife and decapitated her. Tossing the head into a plastic shopping bag, Jean got into her car and headed straight for Trenton – but not before stopping to wave to a neighbor. Continue reading
Father Knows Best: The Strange and Horrific Saga of John Emil List You’d think that it would be easy to identify a human being who had gone completely off the deep end. You’d think that the type of person who … Continue reading
Exploring the Inner Earth with John Cleves Symmes, Jr. It seems there’s a lot of crackpot theories going around these days. There are Flat-earth believers, moon landing deniers, and all kinds of Q-anonsense. One such far-fetched idea was hatched by … Continue reading
Since this is Thanksgiving week, we thought we’d share a story about a pilgrim today. No, not one of those puritans with the big buckles on their hats and shoes who came to this land fleeing religious persecution, but a woman from Egg Harbor City whose pilgrimage was made in the name of peace. Continue reading
The New Jersey Gangster Who Inspired the Creation of HBO’s The Sopranos Richie “the Boot” Boiardo was one of the most powerful and feared men in the New Jersey underworld in the 20th Century. Richie, his son Anthony “Tony Boy” … Continue reading
Often referred to as “The Robin Hood Of The Pine Barrens,” Joe Mulliner was a Tory outlaw who was forced to flee his home in 1779 to avoid arrest, then went on a crime spree throughout the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey, burning farmhouses, kidnapping, and holding up stagecoaches. Continue reading
Today it’s hard to imagine that the following sentence is describing an actual rally that once took place in a rural Sussex County, NJ town: “Flames from the wooden cross, forty feet high, crackled into the night throwing lurid shadows on the participants below, some of whom were dressed in hooded white robes, others in the gray uniforms of the German-American Bund. The scene took place at Bund Camp Nordland in New Jersey on August 18, 1940, when the Klan staged a monster anti-war, pro-American mass meeting jointly with the Bund.” Continue reading
Now, for the first time anywhere, the artist responsible for the Matawan Man-Eater Mural tells his story in an exclusive interview with Weird NJ. Continue reading
After being executed for the triple murder of one of Morristown’s most respected families, the story of Antoine Le Blanc should have been over. But his public hanging on the town green was really just the beginning of the tale. For after his hanging Le Blanc was skinned and turned into “charming little keepsakes” like wallets and bookmarks. Continue reading
In the late 70s and early 80s rumors of a “Sex and Drugs” cult residing at “Monks Castle” began circulating around Montclair. One resident described the reaction of the community as “panic stricken” in a New York Times article about the cult, which ran under the headline “Guru’s Cult in Castle Troubles Montclair.” Continue reading
