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“Mom doesn’t work. I live at home to try to help with bills,” Stella Tulli told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Tulli has set up a PayPal account, in hopes of replacing the wooden cross sticking from her sister‘s grave at St. Mary‘s Cemetery in Saddle Brook.
David Goodell was finishing out a sentence in a halfway house when he suffered a seizure and was taken to UMDNJ Medical Center on Aug. 29.
Soon after, “Goodell absconded,” Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said, and a parole warrant was issued.
Hours later, Goodell met up with Tulli, his ex-girlfriend, at a mutual friend’s house in Elmwood Park.
They were in her car when he strangled her, and he was standing outside the 2007 Nissan Versa when a 911 caller reported seeing him bloodied and disoriented.
When Ridgefield Park Police showed up, he peeled out, the prosecutor said. Following a brief chase, he ended up in a cul-de-sac in Ridgefield.
With Tulli’s lifeless body still in the passenger seat, Goodell plowed her car head-on into a police cruiser, in what many close to the case believe was an attempt at “suicide by cop.”
Goodell, 30, of Clifton (formerly of Ridgefield Park) is being held in the Bergen County Jail, awaiting trial on murder and other charges.
A Mass of Remembrance was held last Friday — Stella Tulli’s brother’s birthday — at St. Joseph’s Church in Lodi.
Stella Tulli was there. She also is frequently at St. Mary’s Cemetery, often several days in a row. She posts her visits on Facebook, sharing her grief with friends and loved ones.
“I think about her constantly. I can’t stop,” she told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “Just when I’m starting to be OK, I get thrown back.
“I hope he gets what he deserves, although it isn’t going to bring my sister back.
“I don’t understand why. I never will.”
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