Horrific murder in Brick, 1981 (Richard Biegenwald)

Philadelphia Inquirer Apr 2 1983
Officials yesterday identified the dismembered body of one of the two teenage girls found Tuesday in a shallow grave at a Staten Island home, and they said they would seek a murder indictment against the son of the woman who lived there.
Monmouth County Prosecutor Alexander Lehrer identified the girl as Maria Ciallella, of Brick Township, Ocean County , who was 17 when she disappeared on Halloween night in 1981. Lehrer said he would seek a murder indictment in the case against Richard Biegenwald, who also is being held in the August slaying of Anna Olesiewicz, 18, of Camden. Lehrer said at a news conference here yesterday that Miss Ciallella had been shot twice in the head before being dismembered and buried in three green plastic trash bags in the yard of the home belonging to Biegenwald's mother, Sally Biegenwald.
"There is no motive in this senseless killing, in my opinion," Lehrer said at the news conference, "other than the opinion I gave in the killing of Anna Olesiewicz - that of wanting to see someone die."
Lehrer said autopsies were performed yesterday on two bodies - a teenage girl and a man believed to be in his late 20s - that were found in graves in Monmouth County over the weekend. He said he would announce the identities of the man and girl at a news conference today.
Lehrer said an autopsy on Miss Ciallella was performed Wednesday in New York. The identity of the second teenage girl found at the Staten Island home still has not been determined, Lehrer said.
Elliot Gross, chief medical examiner for New York City, said he believed that the second girl had been stabbed to death, but said he could not be sure until an autopsy was completed.
While Lehrer was holding his news conference, investigators were continuing to dig up the yard surrounding the blue bungalow in the rural Charleston section of Staten Island. Mike Comardo, 51, of Staten Island, a Biegenwald family friend for 30 years, visited Mrs. Biegenwald yesterday and said afterward that she had not heard from her son in two days. He said Mrs. Biegenwald had not slept for three days.
"How would a mother feel when her son is in a problem?" he said. "Plus they are tearing up her property that she worked so hard on. It breaks her heart. She loves her son, and she'll stand by him as much as she can."
Biegenwald, 42, is being held without bail in Trenton State Prison.
Gross, the medical examiner, was called to the home late yesterday morning after investigators discovered some bones in an area of city-owned land about 15 feet beyond Mrs. Biegenwald's property line. "At this time, they don't appear to be human bones," Gross said.
Police worked in the yard from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and said they would return today to dig up the remaining third of the 100-by-100-foot lot that they have not searched. Police said they also would have a search warrant today to search the rear porch of the house, which a neighbor said was constructed by Biegenwald for his mother last year.
Miss Ciallella was last seen by her parents on Oct. 31, 1981, when she left her home on Village Way about 6:30 p.m. to go out for the evening. Before she left, she borrowed $1 from her father and promised to be home by midnight, according to Lehrer.
The last time the girl was seen alive was shortly after midnight when a Point Pleasant police officer, responding to a radio call, spotted her walking along Route 88 toward her home, Lehrer said. "His intention was to finish answering his call and then return and pick up the girl," Lehrer said of the officer. "When he returned about 10 minutes later, she was gone. It is believed that Richard Biegenwald picked her up and murdered her."
Biegenwald, who served 16 years in prison for the 1958 murder of a New Jersey prosecutor, is being held pending action by a grand jury in connection with the slaying of Miss Olesiewicz, who disappeared in August in Asbury Park. Her body was discovered in Ocean Township in January.
Biegenwald and Dherran Fitzgerald, 52, who served time in prison with Biegenwald and lived with him in Asbury Park, were arrested Jan. 22 and charged with the Olesiewicz slaying. Fitzgerald led investigators to the graves in Staten Island, investigators said. Lehrer said Fitzgerald was not a suspect in the Ciallella slaying because he was in jail at the time of her disappearance.