Jan 21, 2008 6:41 pm US/Eastern
Memorial In Boca Raton Mall Causes Controversy
Anyone With Information Please Call Palm Beach Crimestoppers at 1-800-458-TIPS or Boca Police at 561-338-1352.
$350,000 Reward Being Offered For Information That Leads To The Killer
BOCA RATON (CBS4) ―
A makeshift memorial to a mother and daughter found murdered in a Boca Raton mall parking lot is causing controversy.
Town Center mall officials took down the unauthorized memorial, which included a couple of 4-foot crosses.
The memorial was put up Sunday by family and friends of Nancy and Joey Bochicchio, who were found shot to death in the mall parking lot last month.
The victims' cousin, Jessica Jacobson, is angry.
"We went ahead and made a memorial for them, put in numerous hours and days putting this together for them so people would remember them," said Jacobson. "And also to be a little more careful of their surroundings when they are at Town Center Mall. They have not pulled down the crosses, we don't know where they are or what they done with them," said Jacobson.
Mall officials said they were never contacted about plans for a memorial, and that the display is not permitted.
On Jan. 10 one member of the Bochicchio family spoke out about a suit the family has filed against the mall and its parent company.
At a news conference held the law firm of Shiner-Sosen, PA in Boca Raton, attorneys representing Joann Nancy Bruno, sister of 47-year old Nancy Bochicchio, said the Town Center Mall and its owner, Simon Property Group, provided inadequate security and failed to protect Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, last month even after a similar attack there in August.
Attorney David Shiner said "negligent security" at the mall led to the killings.
Detectives have been reviewing mall surveillance tapes in hopes of catching the killer. They think this case might have some relationship to an armed robbery of a Broward County family who was kidnapped, carjacked and robbed at gunpoint in August.
The lawsuit, filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court this week, seeks unspecified damages. It claims mall managers and Simon Property Group acted "with reckless disregard of its duties."
Shiner added the priority is "to make sure this doesn't happen again." He would not say how much money the family is seeking.
The bodies were discovered in their SUV outside the Town Center mall on Dec. 13. They had been bound and shot to death.
No arrests have been made, but the city has offered a $350,000 reward.
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