Richard Fran Biegenwald

Richard Fran Biegenwald (born August 24, 1940 in Rockland County , New York , USA ; † March 10, 2008 in Trenton , New Jersey , USA) was an American serial killer who lived in Monmouth County , New Jersey between 1958 and 1983 at least Killed nine people and suspected at least two other cases .

Childhood and youth

As a child, Biegenwald was regularly beaten by his alcoholic father. At the age of five, he set the family home on fire and was then admitted to a psychiatric clinic for observation. At the age of eight he was already drinking alcohol and gambling . At the age of nine he was at New York's Bellevue Hospital of electroshock therapy subjected. He was then admitted to a state boys' institution in Warwick . While there, he was charged with stealing and inciting other inmates to flee. Whenever he went to visit his mother on Staten Island , he stole her money. At the age of eleven, he set himself on fire in his mother's apartment. At the age of 16, he successfully graduated from the eighth grade and was released from the asylum for high school . He broke this off after just a few weeks. Shortly thereafter, he went to Nashville and stayed there for two years. After stealing a car and driving it to Kentucky , he was arrested by federal agents on charges of hauling a stolen car across a state border.

First murder

After being brought back to his mother in 1958, he stole another car and drove it to Bayonne . There he robbed a grocery store and killed the seller. He then fled the state of New Jersey, but was two days later in Salisbury in the state of Maryland was arrested after he shot a police officer there. He was extradited to New Jersey , where he was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. However, in 1974 he was released for good conduct after 16 years in prison.

Life after early release

He lived for the next three years without noticing odd jobs. In 1977 he was suspected of rape and was searched for for failing to report to his probation officer . He was arrested in Brooklyn in 1980 for the rape . However, after the victim failed to identify him during a confrontation , he was released. After his release, Biegenwald married and moved to Asbury Park with his wife .

Another arrest

On January 4, 1983, Biegenwald shot and killed eighteen-year-old Anna Olesiewicz in Ocean Township . He had lured the young woman into his car earlier in Asbury Park. Her body was found by playing children on a wooded property near Biegenwald's house. He showed no signs of sexual abuse. Four bullets were found in the head.

A friend of his wife's reported the police after showing her the body of a young woman he had hidden in his garage. On January 22, 1983, the police surrounded Biegenwald's house and arrested him and his friend Dherran Fitzgerald, who was visiting there. The search of the house revealed a pipe bomb , several handguns , a machine gun , Rohypnol and marijuana as well as a living puff adder . Floor plans of various business districts were also found.

During the interrogation, Fitzgerald told about the body of another young woman that Biegenwald had shown him in his garage and said he had helped him transport it to his mother's house on Staten Island and buried it in the basement. There, while digging, he came across the remains of a corpse that Biegenwald had previously buried there. Fitzgerald also led the police to three other bodies. A ninth victim was found in a shallow grave in Neptune City . It was the escaped convict William Ward, who was friends with Biegenwald. He shot him five times in the head.

Procedure and judgment

The evidence submitted to the murders for only five charges . A Monmouth County jury found Biegenwald guilty of all of the indicted counts. He was initially sentenced to death by lethal injection . In the second instance, however, the sentence was commuted to four times life imprisonment with no possibility of early release. She served Biegenwald in the New Jersey State Prison . During the trial it became known that the daughter of a mafioso was also one of his victims. He then offered a bounty of US $ 100,000 for whoever kills Biegenwald. Biegenwald has reportedly admitted to a guard that he killed around 300 women in New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.

Fitzgerald, who appeared as a key witness in the proceedings against Biegenwald , whose statements had contributed significantly to the verdict against him, was in return only charged with illegal possession of weapons and aiding and abetting murder in one case and received a ten-year prison sentence, after which he was released in 1994.

literature

• Murakami, Peter and Julia: Lexicon of Serial Killers 450 case studies of a pathological type of killing. 7th edition, Ullstein Taschenbuch, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-548-35935-3 .

Web links

• Richard Fran BIEGENWALD. In: murderpedia.org. Retrieved March 15, 2013 .