Ep 6: Joseph "Joby" Palczynski

Co-host Rebecca Johnson joins Natalie to discuss Joseph Palczynski, the quadruple-murderer, and 97-hour standoff that led to his capture. We drink a lot of wine and get side-tracked.

Show Intro:

In 1987: Amie Gearhart was 16 a normal teenager, hanging out on the beach, when Joby, her 19 yr old exboyfriend, beat her in front of her brother and friends, then held her captive. Marching Amie and her brother Jason at gunpoint to the Delaware state line and trying to coerce Jason into beating his own sister.

When Jason refused, Amie screamed for him to run.

With Jason gone, Joby told the girl to choose her death: drowning, choking or beating.
Either she would die, or her family would.

Later, X-rays and photographs taken at the medical clinic at 93rd Street showed Amie suffered contusions of the left eardrum -- she couldn't hear correctly for months -- lacerations and swelling of her cheek and nose, a contusion of the right eye that caused it to hemorrhage, and a bruised rib cage.

In 1988: Amie spotted Kimberly, who was 16 with a black eye. She was Joby's new girlfriend.
He had searched Kimberly's bedroom without permission when she was in the shower. While searching he found birth control pills. He became enraged and punched her, held her to the ground. He screamed and dragged Kimberly into the bathroom where he tried to have sex with her. When she refused, he became very angry and very forceful. and threatened to cut her throat with a razor blade.

He spent 2 years in prison, but in 1991 less than six months after his release from jail, He met Sharon, who was 17 when he attacked her at her school. He pushed her up against the wall. she pleaded with him not to hit her but the next thing she knew she was on the ground screaming.

He has also threatened her parents. To kill them and leave me living to suffer. He said if he goes to jail he would kill her or get someone else to hurt her! He had sent people to her house before.

Out on bail, Joby was ordered to have no contact with Sharon. But he phoned her repeatedly, she complained, threatening "to blow her brains out" if she didn't drop her charges against him.
But Sharon insisted on pressing charges, and Joby was sent to Spring Grove State Hospital for evaluation. On Dec. 16, 1991, two days after arriving at the facility, he escaped and fled the state with the identification cards of a friend.

In 1992: He would show up in Gooding, Idaho, where he assaulted a 15-year-old girl and threatened to kill her brother. He was apprehended and eventually returned to Maryland.

Things looked pretty grim: Less than a year after leaving jail, he now faced charges of violating federal gun laws, of battering and threatening Sharon and of escaping from Spring Grove Hospital. Any conviction could return him to prison.

Unless he was judged legally insane. And that's just the beginning.

These are the victims of Joseph Palczynski.