All in the Family: Sadistic Crimes of Joseph, Michael Kallinger

On January 8, 1975, Sgt. Robert MacDougall responded to a report of a woman having some sort of breakdown in Leonia, New Jersey. Under the impression that it was a simple case of disturbance of peace, he was completely unprepared for what he was about to see...

Minutes earlier, Lucy Bevacqua saw her neighbor, Edwinna Romaine hobble out of her house. She was bound at the ankles and screaming uncontrollably. Lucy was only able to catch the words "gun" and "basement." She called the police immediately.

When he arrived at the scene, Sgt. MacDougall gently approached Edwinna to try to get more information. Although she was hyperventilating and severely panicked, she managed to tell the officer that two men with guns and knives had broken into her home and attacked her and her family. The distraught woman shouted, "My God! They're killing my family!" MacDougall untied her ankles, called for backup and cautiously entered the house.

Upon entering the house, he noticed that it was in disarray and there were signs that a struggle had taken place. The furniture was overturned and the power cords had been cut from the vacuum and lamp, possibly used by the attackers to tie or strangle the victims. MacDougall found a woman lying on the floor behind the couch. She was breathing so hard that she could barely speak. Her ankles were bound and all she could manage to utter was "upstairs." He untied her, told her to get out of the house, and then headed upstairs.

He followed sounds of pain and fear to one of the bedrooms on the floor. When he opened the door, he found two women and a young boy, bound and naked. He freed them and asked them what had happened. The women told him that a man with a gun and a knife had broken into the home and attacked them. They mentioned that the attacker had an adolescent boy with him.

The backup arrived and went with MacDougall to check the basement. They turned on the light and found a woman lying on the floor. Her hands were tied behind her back and her dress was heavily stained with blood. Upon closer examination, the officers realized that she was dead. Her throat had been slit.

The officers heard a man groaning. On the floor near the furnace, they found another victim. The male was bound at the wrists and ankles. His eyes, mouth and nose were duct taped and his pants and underwear were pulled down. The officers freed him and led him out of the house.

The police conducted a thorough search of the house, but the perpetrators had already left. The officers tended to the victims and then began trying to piece together what had happened.

Earlier that day, 28-year-old Didi Wiseman and her 4-year-old son, Bobby, had gone to the home of her parents, Edwinna and DeWitt Romaine. Her parents and two sisters were not home at the time. Her father had suffered a heart attack about a month earlier and was still in the hospital. Her mother and sisters were at the hospital visiting with him. She had gone to the house to look after her bedridden grandmother until the others returned.

Around 1:30 p.m., an unfamiliar man and an adolescent boy came knocking at the door, claiming to be salespeople. Didi opened the door slightly to tell them that she was not interested in making any purchases and the man forced his way inside the house. He held her and her young son at gunpoint and told them to do as he said.

The man led the terrified mother and child upstairs. The teenage boy locked the front door and headed up the stairs after the others. Once on the second floor, the man checked the rooms. He found the elderly woman in one of them and made sure that she was not able to move or leave the room.

He then took the Didi and Bobby into another room. He made the woman sit on the bed while he covered her eyes and mouth with duct tape. He told her to remove her clothes. When she refused, he removed them himself. He taped her hands behind her back and took her jewelry. He asked her if she was expecting anyone else at the house that day. She nodded, hoping that he might be intimidated and leave, but he did not. Instead, he made her lie on her back. He was going to rape her, but was deterred when he noticed that she was menstruating. He then undressed Bobby and told him to lie next his mother on the bed and pretend to be asleep.

To Didi's relief, the doorbell rang. She hoped that this would scare off her attackers, but again, she was wrong.

Randi Romaine had just returned home. She forgot her keys, so she rang the doorbell. She had expected her older sister, Didi, to answer and was surprised when a strange man opened the door. He smiled at her and then held a gun to her head and told her to do as she was told. He led her into the house and locked the door.

At gunpoint, the man led Randi up the stairs to her own bedroom where her sister and nephew were lying on the bed, naked and bound. The man then told Randi to undress; she reluctantly complied. He tied her, gagged her and forced her to lie on the bed. He was going to rape her, but she too was menstruating, which deterred him.

The man left the room and his young accomplice stayed behind to search for money and valuables. To their horror, Didi and Randi heard their mother, Edwinna, and sister, Retta, enter the house. They tried to shout to warn them, but it was too late. The man had already met them as they came in the front door. Also with the two women was Retta's boyfriend, Frank Welby.

Edwinna began hyperventilating. The strange man told them all to lie face down on the floor. He tied the three of them using the power cords that he had cut from the vacuum and lamps. He searched all three of them for valuables and took whatever appealed to him. He was then joined by his young accomplice and the two wrecked the house while searching for valuables.

At that point, the doorbell rang. The man answered the door and an eighth person was dragged into the hellish situation. Maria Fasching was one of the nurses at the hospital who was caring for DeWitt. She was forced into the house and told to lay face down on the floor next to Frank.

Frank was then led at gunpoint to the basement. The man gagged and bound him. He then pulled down Frank's pants and underwear to further assert his power. A few moments later, Maria was taken to the basement. Frank could hear nothing but the roaring sound of the furnace, but the others reported hearing Maria cry out for help and scream, "I'm drowning." The man stabbed her and slit her throat after she refused to bite off Frank's penis. She had choked to death on her own blood.

While the attacker was killing Maria, Edwinna managed to free her hands. She hopped outside as quickly as she was able to (her feet were still bound) and screamed for help. This is when her neighbor, Lucy, saw her and phoned the police. The young accomplice called down to the basement and told his partner that one of the captives had escaped. The two intruders fled the house via the back door.

A woman who was walking her dog saw a man and a teenage boy run down a hill, bend over a puddle of water for a few moments and then take off. After hearing about what had happened at the Romaine residence, the woman reported the event to the police. Thanks to the her report, the officers were able to collect a bloody shirt and tie that had been discarded near the puddle. They also were able to take a cast of a footprint found in the mud.

Detective Robert Roseman made a list of the items that were taken from the Romaine home. Officers dusted the house for fingerprints and also found a bloody footprint and some adhesive tape with hair on it.

While interviewing potential witnesses, the police found that many of the locals had reported seeing the suspicious duo, but no one knew who they were. A bus driver reported that he had picked up two passengers who fit the description of the attackers. He said that the two seemed to be in a hurry and he dropped them off in New York City.

Along their journey, the perpetrators had discarded several of the stolen items, so it was not difficult for police officers to trace their trip. The police found several of the items, as well as a bloody knife. The knife was tested and was determined to match to Maria's wounds. They also found a .32-caliber revolver, which the victims recognized as the gun that was used by their attacker to threaten them.

Convinced that the duo had committed other robberies/crimes, Prosecutor Larry McClure sent out a description of the two males and their activities. He received four separate reports from people in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland who had encountered the two. All of the people agreed that the man had an odd smell and the duo's MO consisted of the adolescent ringing the front doorbell and asking whoever answered if the "Joneses" lived there. They would then force their way into the house, steal valuables and sexually assault female victims. Joan Carty, one of the victims, was tied to her bed and sexually assaulted. Two others were forced to fellate the man at gunpoint. After one particular burglary, the two made off with over $20,000 in cash and jewelry. All of these cases were unfortunately not connected until after Maria's death.

Thus far, the officers' only lead was a laundry mark on the discarded shirt that read "Kalinger." No one by that name had a criminal record in any of the towns and states that the reports had come from.

Noticing that the shirt was made in Philadelphia, Detective Roseman headed over there and discovered that the shirt manufacturers only distributed goods to one outlet. Roseman asked the employees at the Berg Brothers outlet store if they remembered anyone fitting the perpetrator's description, but no one did.

Since the shirt had to have been purchased at that store, the detective surmised that the man that he was looking for might live in the vicinity. He looked up the name "Kalinger" in the phone book, which turned up many results. He then consulted with the local police department and learned that they had a record for a man with the name Kallinger (spelled with two l's, not one).

Roseman traveled from one laundry service to another until someone remembered the suspicious man. He got lucky at Bright Sun Cleaners on North Front Street. The owner quickly recognized the shirt from its smell. The customer who the shirt belonged to was a regular. His name was Joe Kallinger and the odd smell came from a chemical used in his shoe repair business.

The owner also told Roseman that Joe lived in the Kensington area of Philadelphia and had a wife and five children. One of his children had died mysteriously in 1974, which was why he was on file with the police department.

Born on December 11, 1936, Joseph Michael Kallinger was adopted at age 18 months by a sadistic Austrian couple. They were heavily abusive and frequently beat the boy with a hammer. As a child, Joe was gang raped at knifepoint by a group of older boys. In his adolescent years, he frequently masturbated while holding a knife and stabbing pornographic pictures of women.

At the age of 17, Joe married for the first time. The relationship produced ten children before his wife left him for another man in September 1956. One year later, Joe was hospitalized and diagnosed as a schizophrenic with an intense hostility toward women.

Despite his diagnosis, Joe managed to appear normal to others. He opened a shoe repair shop in Philadelphia and married for a second time in April 1958. Unbeknownst to anyone, Joe was a lifelong pyromaniac who enjoyed setting fires for both insurance money and the intense sexual pleasure that he derived from watching a building ablaze. Shortly after his second marriage, he set fire to the family home and collected a $1,600 insurance payment. Over the next decade, he set fire to the family's second home four times: twice in May 1963 and again in August 1965 and October 1967.

The Kallingers had six children, two of which were from Joe's unsuccessful first marriage. Considering his troubled upbringing, it should come as no surprise that Joe abused his children. In 1972, his daughter and two sons filed abuse charges against him after he had branded the girl's thigh with a hot iron for a minor transgression. Joe was convicted, but was released on probation after only several months behind bars.

By 1974, Joe's mental condition had worsened. He suffered auditory hallucinations and believed that an invisible, floating head named Charlie was commanding him to kill and castrate little boys. He told his 13-year-old son, Michael, about his "mission" and enlisted the boy's help. Eleven days later, the two murdered a youth named Jose Collazo and cut off his penis.

In May 1974, Joe took out a life insurance policy on his son, Joey Jr. Later that month, Joe killed Joey Jr., while Michael watched. On August 9^th of that year, the body of the boy was found by a work crew. Joe immediately tried to cash in the policy, but given the suspicious circumstances and his personal history, the insurance company did not issue a payout.

Just days after the death of Joey Jr., one of Joe's other sons sustained a severe head injury: he was the only other Kallinger child that Joe had taken a life insurance policy out on. The Philadelphia homicide squad found this very odd and tried to collect evidence against Joe. Their attempts were halted when Joe filed a harassment lawsuit against them.

In November 22, 1974, the father and son set off on a series of home burglaries, ending with the Romaine incident on January 8, 1975.

When Detective Roseman contacted the Philadelphia police for help with his investigation, they had plenty to tell him. A photograph of Joe was passed around to the other jurisdictions and all of the victims identified him as the man who had attacked them.

Joseph and Michael Kallinger were arrested on January 17, 1975. Two months later, the murder charges against Michael were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea on two counts of robbery. He was put on probation until his 25^th birthday in 1982.

Joe's first trial ended in a hung jury. He was tried again two months later and convicted of nine felonies and sentenced to 30-80 years in prison. In addition to this, he received a mandatory life sentence for the murder of Maria Fasching.

While in prison, Joe set several fires (on one occasion, he even set himself on fire) and slit another inmate's throat. He died of a seizure on March 26, 1996.