On Friday, August 9, 1974, 17-year-old Mary Ann Pryor and 16-year-old Lorraine Marie Kelly left North Bergen, New Jersey with plans to go shopping at the Garden State Plaza. The last person to see the pair was Kelly’s boyfriend, Ricky Molinari, who dropped them off at a bus stop on Broad Street in Ridgefield, New Jersey. From there, they planned to get to Paramus either by bus or by hitchhiking.

Pryor and Kelly never made it to the mall that day. Despite the fact that Pryor always carried a dime to ensure she’d have enough money to call home, neither girl made contact with family and friends. They were reported missing within 24 hours.

In 2016, Mary Ann Pryor’s sister Nancy, then-19, described the night her sister disappeared:

After no sleep, my parents were too distraught to do anything. They manned the phones and we had the news on constantly. And I immediately started going out searching. I went by everybody I thought she knew’s house. Nobody’d seen her. Nobody’d heard from her. I just roamed the streets calling her name: ‘Mary Ann, Mary Ann, where are you?’ 

Although both girls “enjoyed a good time,” they were consistently described as polite and popular, despite the hardships they faced.  Lorraine Kelly was just two-months an orphan after her mother’s death in June 1974—preceded by her father’s death in 1969—leaving her 23-year-old brother, Thomas, to serve as her and siblings’ legal guardian. Kelly and her two siblings, living alone in a house on 71st street, resisted their brother’s attempts to persuade them to move to Arizona, where Thomas resided.

Kelly was just days away from her 17th birthday when she disappeared. According to Thomas Kelly, she loved working with children, and relished the opportunity to work with them during her summer jobs at the North Bergen Recreation Department. Thomas said his sister was “…a good kid. She was outgoing, popular, and easy to get along with.”

Although Pryor’s family was significantly more intact, they were no strangers to struggle. Mary Ann Pryor’s father, James, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1969, leaving her mother, Wanda, as the family’s sole support structure. Still, the family was pretty tight, and Mary Ann was doing okay. At the time of her disappearance, she was dating Sal Rubiano, who was living in Georgia, and was preparing for a vacation on the Jersey Shore, according to Nancy.

Related: What’s Going on at Florence Crittenton?

Both girls were consistently described as normal, nice teens. They spent most evenings in a booth at the local White Castle, where a waitress described them as polite and respectful. Classmates interviewed by the Daily News said they weren’t into drugs, and simply “not the type to run away.”

In fact, they may not have even been the type to hitchhike—at least not both of them. In Death on the Devil’s Teeth, author Jesse Pollack details how Wanda Pryor’s claim that Lorraine Kelly liked to hitchhike was misquoted, leading to the established narrative in which both girls’ favorite hobby was hitchhiking. Seriously, there’s even newspaper articles that literally say that.

Pollack also quotes Sal Rubiano—Pryor’s then-boyfriend—who said he wasn’t aware of any habitual hitchhiking:

I never knew of Mary Ann hitchhiking. I never knew of a situation where she hitchhiked. Back in that era, hitchhiking was pretty common for us guys to get around sometimes. It was a different time where most of the time, it was pretty much safe for us. If we were going to a concert in Jersey City, a few of us guys might hitch a ride down there. We didn’t think anything of it back then. Were ally weren’t concerned about those things back then. But I don’t know of any situation where Mary Ann hitchhiked. Now, Lorraine was a little more outgoing, so maybe she had hitchhiked before. I wouldn’t be able to say for certain.

Nancy Pryor echoes this sentiment, saying in recent years that her sister claimed to be taking the bus to Paramus that day. She also says that Kelly was the one known to accept rides from strangers.

“There is no longer any reason to fear the girls are victim of foul play.”

Three days after their disappearance, an alleged sighting at a Union City diner led Lt. James Braddock to tell reporters, “There is no longer any reason to fear the girls are victim of foul play.” A waitress at the Coachhouse Diner reportedly identified Lorraine Kelly as a customer who, in the company of an unidentified man, she served at around 6 AM on August 11th.

Despite most friends and relatives suggesting otherwise, law enforcement declared the girls to be runaways. Because it wouldn’t be the seventies if a cop didn’t erroneously rule a suspiciously-missing teen to be a runaway. Why then ran away, Lt. Braddock told reporters, could not be determined until the girls were found.  

Although initially confident her daughter hadn’t run away, Wanda Pryor was somewhat heartened by the sighting, telling reporters, “I’ve got the opinion the girls may have met bad boys and got dumped and are now afraid to return home.”

“Those girls went through a horror.”

At 8 AM on Wednesday, August 14, 1974, Enis Perry left her apartment in the Ridgemont Gardens complex in Montvale and walked through the parking lot to her car. In a small wooded area less than 10 feet from the lot, she spotted two bodies that definitely hadn’t been there when she’d parked there at 6 PM the day before.

Contemporaneous reporting states the area in which the bodies were discovered was near a hotel or motel, perhaps a Ramada Inn. There’s no Ramada in Montvale today; however, there is a Courtyard Marriott, separated from the Ridgemont Gardens by only a wooded thicket. I can’t help but wonder if this was where the bodies were spotted.

When investigators arrived, they discovered the nude bodies lying facedown, side-by-side, and bound to each other at the wrists and ankles. They had been dead approximately 36 to 40 hours before their discovery, but were almost undoubtedly recently moved to the dumpsite. 

Both had been raped and beaten, and had ligature marks on their necks suggesting they were strangled, according to Bergen County Prosecutor Joseph C. Woodcock.  The cause of death was initially uncertain, but was ultimately determined to be asphyxiation. It was clear that the girls had been tortured. Detective Bob Herb—who later stated the girls were likely tortured with lit cigarette burns prior to death—said of their injuries, “Those girls went through a horror.”

Related: What Really Happened to Harriet Elizabeth Riley?

The Pryor family heard that two female bodies were discovered in Montvale in a radio broadcast, shortly after which a North Bergen detective arrived at their home to escort Wanda and Nancy to identify one of the bodies.

The families first identified jewelry retrieved from the bodies: Pryor was found wearing a golden cross gifted to her by her godfather, while Kelly wore a beaded bracelet and a necklace enngraved with the words, “Lorraine and Ricky.” After IDing the cross, Wanda and Nancy Pryor were then led to a viewing window to identify the body. Of the experience, Nancy Pryor told the AP in 2016:

My father couldn’t. My father had a nervous disability. … They only open the curtain partially. She was covered, except for her face, because the body was bruised and already starting to [decompose] and I said, ‘That’s not my sister.’ … My mother didn’t say a word. … But they gave us like a few more seconds, and in my heart, I knew it was her.

Over 200 mourners attended the girls’ funerals, held on August 20, 1974. In attendance were fleets of undercover police officers, dressed in plainclothes or disguised as grave diggers. Kelly was buried next to her parents in Long Island, while Pryor was buried in Hackensack Cemetery.

Many Leads, No Major Suspects

A massive, if not ineffective, investigation ensued. According to Woodcock, the investigation was triple-pronged, with efforts focused in North Bergen, Ridgefield, and Montvale. Woodcock told the New York Times:

“We’re trying to find out where they were, where they were going, and who they were with.” 

The favored theory was that Kelly and Pryor were raped, tortured, and killed by someone who picked them up while hitchhiking. Montvale and North Bergen investigators canvassed the areas surrounding the dumpsite, and began looking into local sex offenders. North Bergen investigators also interviewed the girls’ friends and family, questioning both girls’ boyfriends, as well as boys with whom they’d been on dates in the past. Eventually, their peers and relatives were cleared, some via lie detector test, according to Daily News reporting.

And slowly but surely, the case continued to slow down until it reached a rolling halt. Years later, North Bergen Sgt. Timothy Kelly said of the investigation:

We followed numerous leads, we had piles and piles of information that we went through, but there were no major suspects.

As we approach their 45th anniversary, not a single person has been arrested in connection with Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly’s murders.

Ten years after the slayings, Wanda Pryor told The Record:

“The first six years were tough. I’d look out at the street and say to myself, ‘Maybe she’s still around somewhere.’ But I know she’s not. I know she’s dead.”

James Pryor added:

“There’s not a day that goes by but I don’t think about here…I really don’t want to see an article [about the 10th anniversary]. You know people are going to say to me, ‘I know how you feel, I’m sorry.’ They’re well-meaning, but they don’t know how I feel.”

---

While substantive leads dried up, speculation continued. The case continues to be periodically mentioned in the media in connection to other murders in the area, including: 

• The November 27, 1975 murder of 18-year-old Dorothy Dietrich, found in a wooded area in Wayne, NJ, shot three times in head, six days after her parents reported her missing. 
• The June 12, 1976 shooting murders of 20-year-old Emily Sierra and “Milagros“—a 22- to 25-year-old woman who, thanks to five aliases, could not be identified—found near Route 95 in Ridgefield Park, NJ.
• The October 1975 murders of 22-year-old Susan Reeve and 28-year-old Susan Heynes, who were found nude and strangled a few miles apart in Rockland County, NY. 

In 1976, after 22-year-old Jules Prevy was convicted of killing someone in the Adelphi University area,  Kings County authorities told North Bergen authorities that Prevy may know something about the Pryor-Kelly slayings. However,  Joseph Woodcock quickly dismissed the idea.

In 1980, the Pryor-Kelly murders were one of three cases reviewed after the arrest of 34-year-old Richard Cottingham. Cottingham raped and killed at least six women in New York and New Jersey between the late 1960’s and 1980, known for the brutal way in which he tortured and mutilated his victims. The Pryor-Kelly murders bore striking similarities to Cottingham’s crimes. Some of his early victims were also found bound, nude, raped, and strangled. In 2010, he pled guilty to killing Nancy Vogel in Montvale, NJ during 1967. However, to date,no connection to Cottingham has definitively established.

Another serial killer’s name has been raised in connection with the crimes. In 1979, Robert Reldan was convicted of murdering two women in Bergen County, and is suspected of many other murders in the area. Michael Newton, author of the Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers, erroneously attributes the Pryor-Kelly murders to Reldan; however, according to data compiled by Radford University, Reldan was in custody for assault from the spring of 1971 until he was paroled on May 30, 1975. Barring a prison break, Reldan would’ve been unable to kill Pryor and Kelly.

A Flawed Investigation

In 1990, North Bergen police Sgt. Timothy Kelly said:

I think a lot of the guys who worked on it think about it. Before their retirement, if there was a case they would like to solve, that would be it.

But, the odds of the solving the case seem slim: for one, the case’s files were destroyed in a fire. When asked by PIX11 news if he found it suspicious that files may have been severely damaged, then-retired (now-deceased) detective Carmine Balzano said, “Not really, because this is North Bergen. This is Hudson County. That means it’s very, to a point, corrupt.”

Related: The Body in the Freezer – What Happened to Heather Anne Lacey?

Nancy Pryor echoed the cries of corruption in a 2015 Hudson Reporter article. Feeling stonewalled, she wasn’t super jazzed by the state of the investigation as files disappeared, detectives took photos of her sister and never returned them, and she struggled to get clear information from authorities. She began to feel there was more to the story than the official narrative.

I believe there was more than one person involved in this. North Bergen back then was very corrupt, everybody kept going to jail in town hall.

— Nancy Pryor

Nancy Pryor believes her sister’s killer was somehow connected to Lorraine Kelly, whom she claims was more of an acquaintance than a best friend.

Lorraine knew a lot of people. She worked for the town, knew the mayor…If someone came along and said, ‘You want a ride?’ Lorraine would say, ‘Okay, let’s go.’ It was somebody known to one or both of them…My theory is someone came along that Lorraine knew from her brother or sister and she said, ‘It’s okay, I know this person,’ and they offered them a ride and reluctantly my sister went along.

The case is still open, but—despite Nancy Pryor’s fastidious efforts to keep her sister’s murder in the public consciousness—it appears stagnant. With missing case files, it’s unclear what, if any, evidence in this case still exists. This leads me to wonder if this case might only start moving again with the right tip or confession.

I am frustrated with how little is out there about this case and the girls—particularly Lorraine Kelly. It seems like I’m mostly drawn to cases where there’s very little information. I cannot, for the life of me, find a high-quality picture of her, nor do I know much about who she was in life. Nancy Pryor has ensured the public knows more about who Mary Ann was. but what remained of Kelly’s family appears to have left the North Bergen area after Lorraine’s murder.

---

Who do you think killed Mary Ann Pryor and Lorraine Kelly in 1974? Drop me a comment below or send me an email! Also, if you knew either girl and would like to speak to me about them, please contact me! I would love to create a more three-dimensional picture of who they were in life.

Sources and Further Reading

• Schwartz, A. (2015, November 01). Conspiracy, or serial killer? Hudson Reporter.
• Hardy, D. (1974, August 14). Missing Girls Seen, Labeled Runaways. Daily News, p. JL5. Retrieved from Newspapers.com.
• Lieberman, P. and J. Koster (1974, August 15). Police pursuing tips in girls’ slayings. The Record, p. D-3. Retrieved from Newspapers.com.
• Joyce, J. (1974, August 15). Girls’ Bodies Found in Parking Lot. Daily News, p. JL3. Retrieved from Newspapers.com.
• Barringer, F. (1974, August 22). Two cleared by lie tests. The Record, p. A-2. Retrieved from Newspapers.com.
• Cook, J. (1975, December 01). 3 Killings in Jersey Stir a Wave of Fear. New York Times, p. 35.
• Cook, J. (1975, December 01). Women in Bergen Fearful Following Slaying of Three. New York Times, p. 67.
• Dazio, S. (2016, August 08). Decades later, Bergen County teen slayings remain unsolved. AP.