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- UPDATE: The bodies of a New Jersey couple whose families reported them missing last month were found in the man’s car in a storage garage near the Wayne apartment that the woman shared with her mother — and not attached to the building, authorities said late yesterday. READ MORE ….
Preliminary causes of death were being withheld pending autopsy results, they said.
Melissa A. Pereira, 25 and her boyfriend, 24-year-old Jorge E. Rodriguez of Garfield, left Pereira’s home on Dec. 27, telling people they were “going for a short ride.”
Loved ones reported them missing three days later.
Their frozen bodies were found in Rodriguez’s car around 10:30 a.m.today in a garage in the development of two-story brick garden apartments just off Hamburg Turnpike where Pereira and her mother lived, authorities said in a brief statement.
No notes were found, sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
“He grew up with us in church,” a friend of Rodriguez’s said. “My cousins are dev[a]stated.”
Police learned that the couple had New Years’ Eve reservations at the Cherry Valley Manor, a bed-and-breakfast in the Poconos, but never showed up. Pereira didn’t take her wallet and Rodriguez didn’t call out of work, they added.
The New Jersey State Police this past Monday issued a separate alert, saying that was a “significant threat to life or property” and that “responsive action SHOULD be taken immediately” if they were spotted.
Perriera worked as a production assistant for FOX News and, before that, as a technology director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America in Paterson.
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