A Dark Chapter in Boca Raton
For nearly two decades, the image from a surveillance camera has haunted a Florida community: a mother and daughter leaving a luxury mall, unaware that within minutes they would be abducted, bound and executed. Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her seven-year-old daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, were found dead in a running car in the Town Center Mall parking lot in December 2007, each killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. But the gruesome discovery was only part of a larger, chilling pattern at the shopping destination—three murders and an attempted kidnapping, all within the span of a single year.
The Predators’ Pattern
Former FBI agent John MacVeigh said that 19 years ago, a predator turned Boca Raton into his hunting ground, targeting the high-end mall to prey on unsuspecting women, in two cases with children by their side. 
Randi Gorenberg, 52, became the first victim after being abducted while leaving the mall, shot in the face and thrown from her vehicle five miles away. Five months later, a gunman emerged in the back seat of Jane Doe’s car beside her two-year-old son, ordering her to drive and robbing her at an ATM. In the end, however, he spared their lives. Then came Bochicchio and her daughter, discovered executed just before Christmas after a mall security guard noticed their car idling alone in a vacant parking lot.
‘Clearly it was somebody who did all three,’ MacVeigh, who worked on the case before his retirement, told the Daily Mail. ‘It was a progression,’ he added. ‘I mean, nothing happened before and nothing happened after.’
There were chilling similarities in all three: each victim exited through the same mall doorway and was approached in broad daylight. In two of the attacks, blacked-out goggles and zip ties were used. The public also suspected a connection, prompting a three-part series exploring possible links between Swedish serial killer Peter Mangs and fueling widespread theories that he had been a potential suspect all along. MacVeigh, however, told the Daily Mail that the theory is ‘rubbish.’
The Unresolved Cases
‘The TV show that came out about the guy from Sweden was total fabrication. I was appalled that they even let that thing air, because everything on there, none of it was accurate,’ he said. ‘The private investigator they interviewed, it was full of rubbish. There was so much assumption and so much innuendo—it was rubbish. Everything in there.’
Instead, he believes the suspect was not the infamous convicted killer, but a stranger driven by a ‘deviant sexual’ motive or a desire for control over women. ‘He takes Randi, she resists, he doesn’t get what he wants, or maybe he did get what he wants,’ MacVeigh said. ‘Then he says, “Well, I’ll take somebody who has a child that I can control.” Well, the child was a pain in the ass. It cried, it did all this stuff.’ ‘Then he progresses to, “Okay, well, I’ll take somebody with a child but a little older that’s not going to cry and whine, where I can still control them too,” the retired detective added. ‘That’s what I think he did.’
Still, all three cases remain unsolved, and a mall once deemed safe even for the elite is now overshadowed by a dark, lingering cloud. ‘It’s the one case in my career I never solved, and it’s upsetting, because I still see images of them. The dates are still profound to me,’ MacVeigh said. ‘It’s just the belief of how we didn’t catch somebody or how he got away with it—it’s mind boggling.’
The Victims
Randi Gorenberg was the first victim in a string of three nightmares that shook the Town Center Mall in 2007. On March 23, the mother stopped at the mall to pick up a John Legend CD. Surveillance video later showed her walking back to her Mercedes SUV around 1.12pm. Within 40 minutes, she had been shot to death and dumped from her car in West Delray Beach, with the vehicle found abandoned behind a nearby Home Depot. 
‘At the time, there was really no motive,’ MacVeigh, who became involved after the later murders, told the Daily Mail. ‘We know from the evidence that clearly there was a struggle between them at some point,’ he added.
While it remains unclear what transpired between Gorenberg leaving the mall and her death, investigators believe she was taken from the parking lot, put up a fight, and was killed shortly afterward by a gunshot to the face. It wasn’t until years later, when a financial motive was raised, that detectives learned Gorenberg did not appear to use ATM cards and instead consistently used an American Express card. ‘Ironically, she was found about a half a mile from where she banked,’ MacVeigh said.
The investigation remained stuck, with no answers about where she was taken, why she was targeted, or why it ended in her death. As MacVeigh put it, it ‘went to a deaf ear.’ But it wasn’t long before another horrific nightmare involving a mother and her toddler rocked the wealthy community.
The Survivor
On August 7, 2007, a surviving victim—known to this day only as Jane Doe—and her two-year-old son narrowly escaped a similar fate after walking out of Saks Fifth Avenue. Once she reached her car in the parking garage, she followed a familiar routine: unlocked the doors, buckled her toddler into the back seat, loaded her packages and stroller into the trunk and headed towards the driver’s seat. When she opened her door, a man was already sitting beside her son, holding a gun. 
‘He clearly was standing very close to her. He knew when the doors unlocked,’ MacVeigh told the Daily Mail. ‘From the time it took her to walk from the back of her car to the driver’s seat, he was already sitting in her car ordering her to drive,’ he added. He demanded she drive to a drive-through ATM and withdraw $500—a demand MacVeigh said she simply laughed at. Jane Doe said she did not have that amount in her account and then showed that she only had about $200. He forced her to withdraw what she had, then ordered her back into her car, where she drove off pleading with him as he asked where a nearby church was.
They actually pass a church just north of the mall, which is a pretty isolated church with a real big parking lot. It was suspected he was trying to take her there. We believe he just couldn’t figure out where it was.
After her desperate pleas for freedom, the suspect removed her from the car, handcuffed her, and placed her in the back seat with her eyes covered, driving off at 80-90 mph with no apparent destination. ‘They get all the way back to the mall and the kid is crying during the time frame. He’s upset,’ McVeigh said. In an unexpected turn, the man seemed to show concern for the mother and, above all, her son. ‘It’s August, it’s hot here, and he says to her, “Do you want me to give your kid a drink or water or something? What about a bottle or something like that?”’ MacVeigh said, adding that the woman reported seeing a large amount of money inside his bag. ‘It didn’t make any sense to us, like why was there a large sum of money in the bag if he was taking 500 bucks from her?’ he added.
By a stroke of luck, the abductor told Jane Doe while sitting in a Bloomingdale’s parking spot that he would release them both. He bound her with zip ties, covered her eyes with blacked-out swim goggles and placed toy handcuffs on her wrists before addressing her one last time. ‘Before he leaves, he explains her, like, look, don’t get out of the car. I have your driver’s license. I know where you live,’ MacVeigh said. ‘If you call the police, tell them I’m a short, fat black man. And he basically leaves at that point.’
Jane Doe managed to free herself, ran to the Saks valet stand and alerted staff, who immediately called the police. Following her statement, authorities released a sketch of the suspect. ‘The police do their due diligence. It didn’t appear that they put a lot of leg work into it, and then that went silent,’ MacVeigh said.
The Final Tragedy
In December 2007, Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and her eight-year-old daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, were found dead inside their running SUV. After Joey was picked up early from school for a doctor’s appointment, the pair went to the mall and were last seen leaving through the same exit as the previous victims. But as night fell, the mother never showed up for a planned dinner. Shortly before midnight, a mall security guard noticed the family’s car parked in the merchandise pickup zone outside Sears. 
Inside, Nancy and her daughter were found fatally shot and tied up, bound with duct tape, plastic ties, handcuffs and goggles. ‘There’s no cameras in the parking lot. The only cameras that were in the parking lot were from Sears, and they didn’t record only when their investigators would hit the button to record,’ MacVeigh told the Daily Mail. ‘So there’s nothing in the parking lot. We don’t know where they went, what happened,’ he added. ‘We know that they drove out and went to the same ATM, we have the video of her doing a withdrawal for $500.’
The former agent said Nancy made the withdrawal—though there was no clear video showing who appeared in the footage—before returning to the mall at an unknown time. Investigators believe the pair were placed in the back seat within about 30 minutes, as both Nancy and Joey were later found there. MacVeigh added that evidence suggested the mother broke her handcuffs at some point. ‘What I believe is she probably tried to get Joey out of the car, and then he just reached back and shot them both,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘Then he got out of the car and walked away. He was ballsy enough to walk away from that in broad daylight.’
They ultimately remained there, already deceased, for nearly nine hours before being discovered. MacVeigh revealed that authorities interviewed people parked next to Nancy and Joey throughout the day, and several said they saw two individuals in the back seat but left them alone, believing they were sleeping after Christmas shopping. Yet even after repeated public calls to find the killer, there was no evidence.
[BREAK]
‘Boca always gives these statements that they’re checking DNA, but there’s no DNA. He got lucky. He either didn’t sweat, didn’t touch anything or was covered up. There was really nothing DNA wise,’ MacVeigh said. There was one item that was found in the car that was never revealed, that we located the manufacturer,’ he added. ‘We located how many were sold, and there was well over 300 sold.’ ‘We went door to door for almost two and a half years, trying to find every single one of them, and we didn’t find out who purchased it, or at least had enough with who we found to identify as a suspect.’
When asked why he believed Jane Doe and her toddler were let go unscathed, MacVeigh said: ‘Because she didn’t resist the situation.’ To this day, the identity and location of the killer remain unknown. ‘Look, it could be anybody,’ MacVeigh said. ‘That’s what’s so scary. It could be just Joe Shmoo citizen that just got off on this, you know. And then the million dollar question is, why did it not continue?’
