46°
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli (CLIFFVIEW PILOT photo by Mary K. Miraglia) INSET: Barbara Vernieri
From the start, Molinelli insisted it was premature to suggest that Vernieri’s murder was connected in any way to two unsolved homicides two years ago, one in Palisades Park and the other in Teaneck.
What they do share in common is a killing followed by an arson, presumably set by the murderer to destroy evidence — not a rarity.
What they don’t share, the county Medical Examiner determined today, is the cause of death.
Members of the East Rutherford Fire and Police Departments found Vernieri’s body after rushing to the fire on the first floor of her two-family house at 18 Sheppard Terrace around 12:30 Friday afternoon.
She had been killed a short time earlier, Molinelli said tonight.
A local newspaper published stories in which an unidentified person, said to be a borough official, said that it appeared Vernieri was stabbed.
That isn’t true, the prosecutor said.
Molinelli was also concerned that certain media organizations were using the incorrect information to draw direct connections to the April 2010 stabbing death in Palisades Park of 69-year-old Dolores Alliotts, whose house was torched, and the killing four months later in Teaneck of Joan Davis, 74, a political watchdog who’d been beaten and stabbed before a fire was set.
Both lived alone.
Vernieri’s husband died in 2009 in an apparent accident, drowning in a backyard pool.
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: An East Rutherford woman’s killer torched her house after hitting her with something — and not stabbing her, as incorrectly reported elsewhere, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said this morning. Investigators “have not ruled out the possibility” of a link to similar killings of two elderly women in 2010, he added. READ MORE….
Click here to follow Daily Voice Rutherford and receive free news updates.
