Robert Zarinsky

Flashback - 1969

A harrowing final image.

Calandriello being driven out of town in a beat-up, black and white Ford Galaxy convertible. She holds her glasses in her hands and leans away from the driver, against the passenger side door.

Ford Galaxy convertible, similar to Zarinsky's car

Zarinsky is behind the wheel.

Sam Guzzi, retired police chief of Atlantic Highlands, and the lead detective who investigated Calandriello's disappearance, recounted the case in a lengthy interview with Court TV's Crime Library.

Said Guzzi..., "I'll take this one to my grave."

The details:

Calandriello goes to the store around 6:15 p.m. to buy ice cream pops and milk.

She never returns.

Two hours later her mother reports her missing.

The next morning, Guzzi, assigned to the case, interviews four boys. They lived on the same block as Calandriello, had seen her the night before.

It was end of day. They had been cruising Center Avenue and had stopped in the parking lot of the local bowling alley. They saw Calandriello in the rag top seated beside "a husky guy with a goatee and pork chop sideburns." He was in his late 20's.

"They couldn't understand why she was in this car," said Guzzi. "They knew her. They knew she didn't have any boyfriends. They knew she was a homebody."

They tailed them for three blocks; then got bored and turned around.

The story ran in the local papers.

A woman came forward and said that someone had recently tried to pick-up her daughter and her friends - all between the ages of 11 and 13. He had come back on three separate occasions, had offered the girls wine. One of the girls took a stick and wrote the car's license plate number in the sand: CGI-109.

Investigators ran the plates, traced the vehicle to Linden. It was registered under Julius Zarinsky - Robert's father.

The car matched the description.

"We made out a warrant for contributing to the delinquency of a minor," Guzzi said. "That's all we could do. Rosemary was still considered a missing person."

Linden police observed Zarinsky washing out the trunk of his car with a sponge and pail. "The car was a junkyard dog," Guzzi said. "When we asked him why he was cleaning it

he said, 'Oh, I had some stuff in there...'"

Veronica Zarinsky was angry that police would even think her son would be involved with missing girls.

"She was different...," Guzzi said. "I'll tell you that much. And the father was like a vegetable. The mother totally dominated that family."

Detectives checked the car and found no window or door handles on the passenger side. Guzzi theorized, "He opened the car door from the inside, then hid the handles under the seat so that his victims were trapped in the car."

One of Rosemary's hair clips was found on the floor of the car. In the backseat was a pair of panties that Rosemary's mother thought belonged to her daughter; although Zarinsky's wife would later testify that the panties were hers, and that she was with her husband on the night of Calandriello's disappearance.

Guzzi claimed Zarinsky's wife was scared to death of him.

Investigators also found a bloodstained hair on the end of a ball-peen hammer.

Zarinsky was arrested and his car impounded.

Zarinsky under arrest, in cuffs