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Kevin Deutsch Reports on the Boca Mall Murders from Town Center mall
The creator's telling of the case, the strongest entry point on file.
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What happened
Town Center at Boca Raton is an upscale shopping mall in Boca Raton, Florida, that opened in 1980. In 2007, the mall and its parking areas were the site of a series of violent incidents that drew national attention and remain unsolved.
In March 2007, a 52-year-old woman was kidnapped and murdered in connection with the mall. In December 2007, 47-year-old Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey Bochicchio, were kidnapped and later found bound and shot in the head inside the mother's SUV in the mall's parking lot. A third, non-fatal incident occurred in August 2007, in which an unnamed woman ("Jane Doe") and her 2-year-old son were kidnapped and tied up in their car after a male assailant forced the woman to withdraw cash from an ATM; the woman and child survived.
Investigators found no forensic evidence definitively linking the three 2007 incidents to a single perpetrator, but similarities among the cases led police to consider them potentially related. The case was featured on the television program America's Most Wanted, and its host, John Walsh, stated he believed a serial offender was active in the area at the time. All of the 2007 murders remain unsolved, and no one has been charged in connection with the deaths of the woman killed in March, Nancy Bochicchio, or Joey Bochicchio.
Following his 2012 arrest in Alaska on suspicion of murder, Israel Keyes (1978–2012) was later described in reporting as a possible suspect in the Boca Raton murders. Keyes died by suicide in prison after confessing to multiple killings but before he could be tried on any charges related to the Boca Raton cases specifically. Reporting notes that Keyes was a tall, slender, athletic white man whose description was said to be physically similar to the assailant described by the surviving mother from the August 2007 incident, and that his documented pattern of traveling long distances to commit murders of random victims — including withdrawing money from ATMs tied to victims — meant his known travel and timeline could not rule him out as a suspect. He has not been charged in connection with the Boca Raton case.
Separately, in October 2019, a false active-shooter scare occurred at the same mall when shoppers reported hearing sounds resembling gunfire, prompting a SWAT response, grid searches, and a store-by-store evacuation. Investigators determined there was no evidence of gunfire; the sound was traced to a janitor popping a balloon in the food court. Minor injuries were reported from the resulting panic, but no shooting occurred. This 2019 incident is unrelated to the 2007 killings.
