Death on the Devil's Teeth: The Strange Murder That Shocked Suburban New Jersey (True Crime) by Jesse P. Pollack & Mark Moran

Author:Jesse P. Pollack & Mark Moran [Pollack, Jesse P.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2015-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

A teenaged parishioner of Elizabeth’s Assemblies of God Evangel Church stands outside of His Place, Evangel’s youth outreach center. Jeannette’s involvement with His Place continues to be controversial decades after her death. Collection of the authors.

However, Curtis Dady provides some insight into this notion. “The idea of a help line came about,” he says. “It was actually a network. The young people would be trained just to answer the phones and be a compassionate and empathetic listener, but there was no direct counseling or anything like that. There were these weekly sessions on how to reach out to people in trouble. Basically, if someone called up on the phone and said, ‘My parents just kicked me out, and I’m out of money and high on drugs and I’m thinking about committing suicide’ or whatever, the kids on the phone would say to them, ‘We want you to know that God loves you, and why don’t you come down to the center and have a cup of coffee? It’s not worth taking your life at this point.’ That’s kind of a crude example of it, but you get the idea.” Dady believes that Jeannette DePalma could very well have received this kind of training at His Place.

However, shortly after the Star-Ledger revealed Jeannette’s association with the coffeehouse, His Place went into complete damage control mode, disavowing any professional connection with her. On Monday, October 2, 1972, members of the coffeehouse contacted the Elizabeth Daily Journal to minimize “the role of the facility in connection with the death of Jeannette DePalma of Springfield.” William Edkins, the coordinator of counselors at His Place, told the newspaper that there was “virtually no chance” of Jeannette having been a “counselor for drug addicts, alcoholics or other troubled persons.” According to the Daily Journal, His Place’s staff insisted that Jeannette had “visited the coffeehouse only twice” for “Bible study sessions.”

Several of the former staff members at His Place continue to downplay or deny the coffeehouse’s connection to Jeannette to this very day. William Edkins did not reply to our requests for comment. Reverend Louis LaGatta, who was the youth pastor at His Place, claims to have very little memory of the teenager, despite previous comments to the press about her personality and love for life. “I really did not know her very well,” he told the authors of this book. “She wasn’t involved enough with me when I was the youth pastor for me to make any definitive statements.”

Alexis Keturwitis, a His Place staff member who allegedly drove Jeannette to the coffeehouse and other church activities, was far more discreet when we asked her to comment on her relationship with the dead girl. “I cannot assist you at this present time,” she wrote via e-mail.

Joseph Cosentino is not terribly surprised by the hesitancy of some of the coffeehouse’s former staff to speak about any controversial matters, let alone Jeannette. “Something bad went down over there when His Place shut down,” he says. “I heard that there was a big drug thing going on.

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