Who Murdered Jacqueline Saunders and Mary Ann Marzullo?
( Jacqueline Saunders Relative Speaks !)
It is the Biggest Unsolved Murder Mystery in the History of Syracuse, New York.
It was back on Friday, August 11th 1967 that two teenage girls Jacqueline Saunders and Mary Ann Marzullo attended the Fireman’s Field Days in Mattydale, New York.
At 10:30 P.M. or shortly thereafter Mary Ann called home to tell her brother Tom that she and Jacqueline would be home in 5 minutes.
They never arrived.
They were last seen walking on Route 11 in North Syracuse and then – they just disappeared.
The next morning their bodies were discovered in a field in Bridgeport, New York approximately 10 miles away from where they were last seen walking.
The District Attorney at the time Frank Gualteri was confident that an arrest would be made in 48 hours.
59 years later no one has ever been arrested for these murders.
100 Police officers conducted over 1,000 interviews and came up with nothing.
It is a cold case that is still an active, open investigation.
Now for the very first time anywhere in the press, Sarah Savage , a relative of Jacqueline Saunders spoke with us about the murders.
Q – Sarah, your grandmother was Jackie’s Moms sister. That’s how you’re related to Jackie. I’m not very good with genealogy .What does that make you in relation to Jackie?
A – So, I would have been a cousin of hers. My Dad would’ve been first cousins with her.
So, my grandmother was her Mom’s sister and then my Dad was Jacqueline’s first cousin.
Q – I don’t know how old you are and I’m not going to ask, but do you remember the first time someone in the family told you about Jackie and what happened to her?
A – As far as when I found out, I have a family member by the name of Richard and he was basically the guru of our family and kept track of all of the family and where they went to and who their kids were and grandkids.
It was never mentioned within my family about this murder. It really wasn’t talked about.
Personally, it doesn’t offend me to tell you my age. I’m 39.
My brother and I had heard nothing of it.
Richard , a distant cousin of ours created portfolios of all of our family members and their Family Tree; who had whose kids and what happened to them and where they ended up.
And I was given a copy that he created for people throughout the family.
As I was going through that I saw Jacqueline’s name and then it just said briefly that she had been murdered. That was all it said. There was nothing else about it and that’s the first time I even heard anything about it.
Q – Did you then try to do some research and find out more information?
A – I started doing some research of my own and was able to pool some of the old articles about it and read a little more about it. Then I did ask some family members but, it was one of those things where they didn’t really know a whole lot ‘cause their parents didn’t really talk about it either.
Q – Which is what I find really strange. This was headline news for a short period across the United States and then it just disappeared like it never happened. I don’t understand.
A – It personally feels like it was the Silent Generation where a lot of these generations didn’t really talk about things like that because it was about the family name.
I understand why I may not have heard about it. But, I genuinely think that another reason why this case went without a lot of attention to it is because most of the family members who really knew about it or were really close to her have died out.
There’s not a lot of push back on the police department and the investigation, so why do anything about it when nobody is creating a fuss about it at this point, some 60 years later?
Q – Did anyone ever tell you what kind of a girl Jackie was? I’m talking about her personality.
A – My Dad told me stories recently. I was asking him about it. I’ve gotten some old photos of my family. My Aunt passed and she had a lot of photos. She had a lot of the originals from our family. I obtained a picture of Jackie with her dog. It’s an original black and white small photo.
So, I was asking him questions about it. He said he remembers being a young boy and running across this little path way. He would run across and he still remembers Jackie vaguely because he was young as well.
He said she was funny and very mischievous is the way he talked about her. So, that’s kind of the way he described her.
Q – Do you know why no one would have picked the girls up after the Field Days had ended?
Do you know the answer to that?
Other kids had their parents pick them up and if they couldn’t, arrangements were made to have a cab drive them home.
A – I don’t have an answer for that. I do know from my own research and speaking to a couple of people that Mary Ann had called home and said they would be on their way home but I don’t know why anyone didn’t pick them up. I don’t know if Mary Ann’s Mom was working. I really don’t know.
It was also a different generation at that point.
Q – Mary Ann’s mother drove around for 4 hours looking for the girls before she called the police. She felt it was out of character for Mary Ann not to be on time.
If it was out of character why did she wait 4 hours to call the police? Have you any idea?
A – I do not. I did not know that her mother looked for her for 4 hours.
Q – In a brief conversation I had with Tom Marzullo, Mary Ann’s brother on July 21st 2017, he said there was a political candidate running for some office who talked about re-opening the case and Tom discouraged him from doing that.
I don’t know why he would’ve have said that, do you?
A – I think that comes down to the way my grandparents were.
I never met my grandmother’s husband. He passed before I was born. I was close with my grandmother who was Jacqueline’s Aunt.
I know they were all kind of the same. They didn’t talk about a lot of their family things. I would’ve assumed a lot of people from that generation were kind of the same. It’s better left alone is what they always used to say.
Q – Did anyone in the family think the girls might have had a stalker or enemies?
A – No, I never heard that. I never heard that anybody was after them.
Q – Do you know if the F.B.I was ever brought into the case?
A – I do not know. That is something I could ask my Dad about but he was very young and I don’t know what information he heard through my grandmother which was his Mom, or his brothers and sisters.
Q – Do you know if a psychic was ever brought into this investigation?
A – I do not know.
Q – According to Mark Nell of the New York State Police, Mary Ann and Jackie were last seen talking to a group of boys in McKinley’s parking lot.
Someone told me the girls were only with one boy at the Field Days and they walked with that boy to McKinley’s when Mary Ann called home. Then the girls went their way and the boy went his way. Have you heard about that?
A – No. I never heard that. That’s news to me which is interesting.
Q – Have you heard that Mary Ann’s coffin was closed with her photo on top because she had numerous cigarette burns and they couldn’t show her body.
A – I’ve also heard the cigarette burn information. Somebody had said and this was small town chatter, they kind of made up their own information,that they were assaulted with beer bottles and broken beer bottles had been shoved down their throat and it was coming out of their neck. I’ve heard multiple things but the information didn’t come directly from my family.
Q – Do you believe we’ll ever find out who murdered Jackie and Mary Ann?
A – If it was somebody their age who may have had something to do with it maybe they are still alive and maybe there is some sort of justice to be sought after.
But, I genuinely think with all the information you hear and read that the person responsible for this has probably passed away.
We can get an answer to this case and it comes from genealogy. That DNA if there is any, which I’ve not been told there is, but I’ve been told there is evidence in Syracuse that has been saved and stored from this case.
It needs to be re-tested.
Is there any DNA that does not match the girls?
Can we test that and trace the family line to say well at least we know who did it even if they have passed away.
I do think there is closure to this case but it’s going to take the police really pushing this investigation with new scientific ways of tracing that to have some sort of closure given.
I think we need to push harder for some sort of resolution.
©Gary James
