Long-Buried Secrets: The Serial Killer and the Detective

For decades, a string of killings of teenage girls haunted suburban New Jersey. A local investigator began to wonder: Could there be a link to a series of infamous Times Square murders?

A woman walking to her car found them: two teenage girls, naked and dead in a sliver of woods behind an apartment parking lot. They were facedown, side by side, as if placed there with care. “A horrible scene,” the police commissioner said that day. “Like two little dolls at Christmastime.” It was Aug. 14, 1974, in Montvale, N.J., a suburb just over the New York state line. The girls, Mary Ann Pryor, 17, and Lorraine Kelly, 16, had last been seen days earlier at a nearby bus stop. The police believed they had given up on the bus and were trying to hitchhike to a mall. Their murders shook the region. No one could find any clues in the girls’ backgrounds: no drugs, no trouble with the law. Boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, family members — all were questioned and cleared of suspicion. The police “pursued a welter of tips, rumors and false alarms,” The New York Times reported at the time.