Robert Zarinsky | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers

Robert Zarinsky (1940? – November 28, 2008) was a convicted murderer and suspected serial killer from Linden, New Jersey. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1969 murder of Rosemary Calandriello of Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.

On March 11, 2008, he was indicted for the 1968 murder of Jane Durrua of Keansburg. He was acquitted in 2001 of the 1958 murder of Rahway, New Jersey police officer Charles Bernoskie. He was also a suspect in the murders of Linda Balabano ,Ann Logan of Elizabeth, Doreen Carlucci and Joanne Delardo of Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.

On November 28, 2008, Zarinsky died at the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New Jersey of pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lung tissue that made it increasingly difficult for him to breathe.

Robert Zarinsky, a suspected serial killer who spent the last three decades in prison for the murder of an Atlantic Highlands girl, died Friday at the South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. He was 68.

Zarinsky died at 8:25 p.m. in the hospice unit at the South Jersey prison, said Matt Schuman, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. An exact cause of death was not given, but Zarinsky had suffered from "major respiratory issues" before his death, Schuman said.

Zarinsky's death came as he was nearing trial for the 1968 murder of 13-year-old Jane Durrua of Keansburg.

He had been in prison since his 1975 conviction for killing Rosemary Calandriello of Atlantic Highlands. The timid 17-year-old disappeared Aug. 25, 1969, on her way to the corner store for a carton of milk. She was last seen alive in Zarinsky's Ford convertible, but her body has never been found.

Zarinsky was the first person in New Jersey to be convicted of murder without a body for evidence. He was sentenced to life in prison and was entitled to an annual parole review. He consistently denied committing the murder, and only in recent years, in his bid for early parole, admitted killing Calandriello. Then, he claimed, she died when he accidentally backed over her with his car.

In 2007, Zarinsky was transferred from the maximum security New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, to the extended care unit at South Woods State Prison.

In correspondence with The Star-Ledger, Zarinsky denied any role in the Durrua homicide. "I most certainly was not involved in it, as I was not not involved in the numerous other allegations made against me over the years," he wrote on May 26, 2007.

A Dec. 10 hearing was scheduled in Superior Court in Monmouth County in which the prosecutor's office was seeking the court's permission to use testimony about Zarinsky's alleged attempts to lure four other Monmouth County teenagers into his car to buttress the Durrua case. Those alleged incidents took place nine months after Durrua's death.

Authorities also believe Zarinsky had a long list of victims, most of them teenage girls. Among the unsolved murders for which he was a suspect are that of Linda Balabanow, 17, of Union in 1969, and Joanne Delardo, 15, and Doreen Carlucci, 14, of Woodbridge in 1974.

In 1999, Zarinsky's sister, Judith Sapsa, implicated him in the 1958 unsolved murder of Rahway police officer Charles Bernoskie. Sapsa turned on her brother after he reported her to authorities for stealing money from his mutual fund. She, in turn, told police she remembered, in vivid detail, a November night, four decades earlier, when her older brother and their cousin stumbled into the Zarinsky home, wounded and bleeding. According to Sapsa, they told Zarinsky's parents they were caught breaking into a Rahway car dealership and Robert shot a cop.

Sapsa claimed her mother used a pair of tweezers to dig a bullet out of Zarinsky and then swore the family to secrecy about the shooting. Theodore Schiffer, the cousin who was there that night, corroborated Sapsa's story. He spent three years in prison for his role as an accomplice in the shooting.

Zarinsky was acquitted of Bernoskie's murder after a jury trial in 2001. Members of the jury said afterward they believed Zarinsky killed the officer, but the prosecutor had not convinced them "beyond a reasonable doubt." Ironically, Zarinsky died on the 50th anniversary of Bernoskie's murder.

Elizabeth Bernoskie went on to sue Zarinsky for causing her husband's death. In 2003, a jury awarded the widow $9.5 million in damages. She collected $154,000 from Zarinsky's mutual fund account. But last year an appeals court ordered her to give the money back. Zarinsky returned her check, demanding additional interest.

On 19 august 1999, Judith Sapsa implicated her brother Robert Zarinsky and her cousin, Theodore Schiffer, in the 1958 killing of Rahway Police Officer Charles Bernoskie. Sapsa came forth after Zarinsky accused her husband, Peter, of stealing more than 100-thousand dollars from an inheritance Zarinsky's mother had left him.

Zarinsky was convicted in 1975 of murdering the 17-year-old Atlantic Highlands girl. After Zarinsky's sister, Judith Sapsa, implicated her brother and their cousin in the cop killing, authorities in Monmouth, Union and Middlesex counties began this week focusing on Zarinsky as a possible suspect in four long-unsolved murders.

Zarinsky had been a suspect all along in the deaths of three teenage girls besides Calandriello, but was never charged in the other cases. "Let me tell you something. Back then, when we prosecuted him, we were convinced beyond a doubt that he was a serial killer," John T. Mullaney, the former assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County who tried Zarinsky in the Calandriello case. "We knew he had killed Rosemary. We also knew he had killed the two from Woodbridge, though I couldn't prove it," he said.

The bodies of Doreen Carlucci, 14, and Joanne Delardo, 15, were living in the Colonia section of Woodbridge, were found in Monmouth County struck and strangled with an electrical cable.

"I also knew he killed Linda Balabanow, though they wouldn't try it," Mullaney said, referring to a Union Township teen whose body was found floating in the Raritan River in Middlesex County.

Middlesex County authorities didn't think they had enough evidence to bring Zarinsky to trial for Balabanow's murder, but Monmouth County authorities were willing to gamble.

"I stuck my head out. I just thought, there were just too many dead young females, too many bodies," Mullaney added. "There are people alive today that wouldn't be alive if he was still on the street."

Investigators with drills and saws tore apart a "haunted house" in Linden, New Jersey, looking for evidence that might link Zarinsky to the unsolved slayings of at least at least four more teenage girls. Officials from eight law enforcement agencies, including the State Police and FBI, were hoping to find personal belongings that Robert Zarinsky, 59, might have taken from his victims and stashed in the house he inherited from his mother.

Judith Sapsa, his sister, startled authorities in recent weeks by talking about her brother's role in Bernoskie's slaying as well as in the disappearance of "five to 10" girls. Sapsa, described to police her childhood home under the "hypnotic" domination by her sadistic brother Robert who repeatedly beat her, debased their father, and tortured animals.

Judith came forward after her husband, Peter, was charged in June with stealing $110,500 from a mutual fund that Zarinsky inherited when their mother died in 1995. Zarinsky, now at Northern State Prison in Newark, unwittingly inspired the new investigations by reporting the missing money.

According to police the Sapsas took the money because of mounting medical bills. Peter Sapsa worked in supermarkets and is now on disability awaiting a heart transplant. Judith Sapsa, who is recovering from cancer, never worked outside the home.

In trouble since age 14 and periodically under psychiatric care, Zarinsky was arrested at age 21 for desecrating a cemetery and setting lumberyard fires. He was a self-styled Nazi who commanded two or three like-minded friends, but imagined he led an entire army.

Interrupting a robbery at a car dealership, Rahway Patrolman Bernoskie was gunned down in 1958, when Zarinsky was a teenager. No one was arrested at the time. Last week though, Zarinsky's cousin, Schiffer, was arrested in the officer's death, and Zarinsky was named as a second suspect.

Robert Zarinsky's history of violence and delusions of power began as a teenager, and at 14, he was admitted to Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.

Zarinsky, who turns 59 next month, is in prison for the 1969 murder of a 17-year-old Atlantic Highlands girl. He has been implicated by his sister in the 1958 slaying of a Rahway police officer, when he was 18, and is a suspect in the murders of at least four teenage girls in the late 1960s and early '70s.

The night that officer Bernoskie was gunned down, the policeman was able to get off several rounds, injuring Zarinsky. But Zarinsky's mother, Veronica, tended to his wounds at home and swore the family to silence.

When he was 21 and charged with the desecration of 1,500 headstones at the Rosedale-Linden Cemetery and setting five lumberyards on fire, he maintained he was insane and did not know right from wrong.

When he was 34 and brought in for a lineup in the murder of Rosemary Calandriello, guards were told not to let him alter his facial hair. He had long sideburns in a mutton chop style and a goatee. But when the guards were not looking, he got a hold of some hair-removal cream.

During Zarinsky's trial in 1975 for the murder of Calandriello, his wife, Lynn Zarinsky, took the stand in her husband's defense and told the jury that a pair of blue bikini panties taken from Zarinsky's car belonged to her. She also told them that she was with her husband the night of Aug. 25, 1969, when Calandriello disappeared.

Veronica doted on her son, even though he once beat Judith so badly she was out of school for two or three weeks, Weiner said. "Don't hit her in the face," was the mother's advice to her son, the lawyer said Mrs. Sapsa told him.

Demonstrating classic serial killer behavior Zarinsky, as a teenager, formed a gang, "The Panthers," and gleefully committed arson. His sister remembers his pleasure ripping the wings off a bird, or chopping the head off a bird.

Zarinsky abused his father, Julius, who ran a grocery, by pushing tomatoes into his face. When the son finished high school, he took the shop's proceeds and put his father on a $5 weekly salary. Mrs. Sapsa was about 15 in 1958 when her brother and cousin, both wounded, were brought to their Linden home by an aunt after the shootout with Officer Bernoskie, who had found the young men robbing a car dealership, Weiner said. She recalls her brother saying, "'He pissed me off, that's why I shot him,' because (Bernoskie) shot his cousin."

The young girl said she watched as her mother used tongue depressors and tweezers to extract bullets from her brother and cousin, who were spirited to the Poconos in Pennsylvania to recover. When Julius Zarinsky read in the newspaper the next day that the officer was dead, he vomited. The family never spoke about the shooting.

Julius Zarinsky was Jewish, and Veronica was not. However Robert was convicted at age 22 of desecrating hundreds of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery in Linden.

Zarinsky, 67, has been in prison since 1975 for the murder of an Atlantic Highlands teenager. But he has long been suspected in other deaths, including Durrua's.

"I've been waiting for this day for so many years. I have always believed it was Zarinsky," said Joan Conway, the victim's sister.

Valentin said Jane Durrua disappeared on the evening of Monday, Nov. 4, 1968 after she took a shortcut through a grassy field by a railroad track on her way to her East Keansburg home. He added the case will go to a grand jury later this month.

"For the last several years up through last week, evidence has been thoroughly and comprehensively analyzed by multiple laboratories to ensure the reliability of the results. The investigation culminated with the charges lodged against Zarinsky," Valentin said.

Retired Atlantic Highlands Police Chief Samuel Guzzi, who was responsible for winning the conviction against Zarinsky in 1975 in the Rosemary Calandriello case, was at the press conference this afternoon. Alan Balabanow, the brother of Linda Balabanow, whose body washed up along the Raritan River in 1969, was also there. Zarinsky is the only suspect in the Balabanow murder, but the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office told The Star-Ledger in August that there was not enough evidence to charge him.

Zarinsky is expected to appear in court Thursday to face the new charges against him.

He was served in South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton this morning on the murder and felony murder charge.

Valentin refused to describe Zarinsky's demeanor when he was served in the 40-year-old case.

Valentin was at times defensive when asked why the Monmouth County prosecutor's office took two years to charge Zarinsky, even though they had developed DNA evidence against him.

He acknowledged that a former mix-up of DNA evidence that resulted in the wrongful arrest of Jerry Lee Bellamy would make this case more difficult to try, but remains confident Zarinsky will be convicted.

"The evidence was examined and re-examined," Valentin said. "We have been working diligently on this case."

Authorities are also attempting to link Zarinsky through DNA to the 1974 killings of Woodbridge teenagers Joanne Delardo and Doreen Carlucci, according to law enforcement sources who asked not to be named because the investigation is ongoing.

Marc Lemieux, an investigator for the Monmouth County Prosecutors Office, today called Jeanette Delardo -- the victim's mother -- and told her they did not have enough DNA to file charges against Zarinsky in the two cases, she said. But Lemieux said they are continuing to investigate, according to Delardo.

Nevertheless, Delardo said she is finished hoping for a resolution.

"We've given up now ... We get the feeling they are never going to try him," Delardo said.

In 1999, Zarinsky's sister implicated him in the 1958 killing of Rahway Police Officer Charles Bernoskie. Zarinsky was acquitted at trial in 2001, with the jury saying the prosecutor had not managed to prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." But several jurors said they were convinced Zarinsky killed the officer.

Jane Durrua was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death on her way home from school in November of 1968. Her killing was one of several cold cases reopened after Zarinsky was charged with Bernoskie's murder.

In a 15-part series, "Deadly Secrets," published in August, The Star-Ledger first reported that prosecutors had additional evidence in the Durrua case, including a DNA match between Zarinsky and semen stains found on the girl's slip.

The stains were discovered in 2005 after Paul Seitz, a detective in the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office, recruited Robert Shaler, a nationally known DNA expert from the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, to examine evidence in the case.

Shaler told The Star-Ledger he discovered large stains that had not been detected years earlier by forensic scientists in the New Jersey State Police lab. He was able to raise enough DNA to develop a profile and compare it with a sample on file for Zarinsky.

In January, prosecutors asked a Superior Court judge in Monmouth County to force Zarinsky to submit a fresh DNA sample. The judge barred reporters from the hearing.

Zarinsky is serving time at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton for the murder of Rosemary Calandriello. He is eligible each year for parole.

Sam Guzzi, a retired Atlantic Highlands police sergeant who for years built cases against Zarinsky, welcomed news he would be charged in the Durrua case.

"It's unbelievable," Guzzi said. "What can I tell you. I'm so elated for the family."

Conway credited Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office Det. Paul Seitz and the Star-Ledger series for the keeping the case alive.

Meanwhile, relatives of other victims linked to Zarinsky continue waiting.

"I only want to know who killed my daughter," said John Delardo.