Randi Gorenberg had finished shopping at the Boca Town Center mall about 1:15 p.m. and was walking to her car, her phone to her ear. She walked slowly as if speaking to someone, then stopped, put her phone in her purse and started walking briskly.
That is the last sighting, found on surveillance video, of the 52-year-old mother of two alive and well. About 40 minutes later and five miles away, a witness hears a gunshot and sees a woman being dumped bleeding from an Mercedes SUV onto a road in a county park. Gorenberg had been fatally shot in the left temple.
The March 2007 slaying of a pillar of the west Boca Jewish community wasn’t the only attack connected to the Boca mall that year. In August, another mother would be carjacked with her 2-year-old son. They survived. Then in December, Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey, were found slain in their idling SUV.
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The cases remain unsolved, but now a filmmaker is offering another possible person of interest: Peter Mangs, a Swedish serial killer. In the documentary, “Under the Radar,” which premiered Tuesday, July 30, on the streaming service Viaplay on Amazon Prime, filmmaker John Mork travels to South Florida to look at seven cases, including five linked to Palm Beach County, to see whether Mangs committed the crimes.
Mangs, a white supremacist in a Swedish prison for two murders and eight attempted murders, had told a psychologist that he committed two murders in Florida and that a song he wrote called “Under the Radar” offered clues to who he killed. Using Mangs’ diary and photos of him in South Florida, Mork along with other investigators put together possible evidence linking Mangs to the crimes then presented it to law enforcement.
The other cases linked to Palm Beach County were:
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Gorenberg bought a John Legend CD and a blouse at Old Navy
Gorenberg grew up in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. She married her husband, Stewart, in 1979. They moved to South Florida after he got his chiropratic degree.
Her son, Daniel, lived with his parents in 2007 in a 7,000-square-foot home west of Boca Raton. Her daughter, Sarie, was attending the University of Florida, intending to become a teacher.
Gorenberg had dropped by the mall March 23 and bought a John Legend CD as well as a blouse from Old Navy. When investigators found her car behind a Home Depot after her death, her $600 Kooba purse, black-and-white Puma sneakers and phone were missing.
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Jim Rathmann, who investigated the “Tiger King” and grew up in Boca Raton, helped Mork throughout Mork’s investigation. Rathmann found film of a white Chrysler 300 following Gorenberg into the mall parking lot. They also had a picture of Mangs and an diary entry about him test driving a white Chrysler 300 around the same time.
Mangs describes a July 2009 visit to Mizner Park in his diary, seeing the “nice cars owned by Jews.”
Peter Mangs’ father lives in Boca Raton
Mangs is responsible for a series of shootings from 2003 to 2010 in Malmö, a diverse city in southern Sweden. Most of his victims were immigrants. He is serving a life sentence for two killings, but he is suspected of more.
Mangs’ father, Rudolph, lives in Boca Raton. Mangs lived with him from 1996 to 1999. Mork believes Mangs was radicalized as a white supremacist during that time. Mangs visited South Florida in the 2000s. Rudolph was interviewed at his home in the film. He showed Mork a number of guns that he owns and said Peter was a good shot.
His father also said Mangs read “The Turner Diaries” while he lived in Boca. The book, written by neo-Nazi William Pierce, was a favorite of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. He said that he and his son have similar views on immigrants.
Mork also looked at the cases of two Jewish men killed in Broward County: Kobe Lankry at his home in February 2007 (a month before Gorenberg) and Vitaly Kardash at his car dealership in July 2009 (the same month Mangs visited Mizner Park).
The August attack at Boca mall of a mother and her toddler
One August afternoon, another mother and her 2-year-old son had been shopping at the Boca mall and returned to their Lincoln Navigator in the Nordstrom’s parking garage.
The woman strapped her son in his car seat then stowed her shopping bags in the back. She was sitting in the front seat, key in hand, when she got the fright of her life.
A man was sitting in the back seat next to her son pointing a gun at his head. The man was wearing a floppy hat and sunglasses.
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She tells him to take whatever he wants and begs him not to hurt them. He tells her to drive to an ATM. She withdraws $600.
When they return to the mall, he orders her into the back seat, binds her with cheap handcuffs and zip ties and affixes her neck to the headrest. He places blacked-out swim goggles over her eyes.
He threatens to kill her and her son if she reports the crime.
Yet he seems strangely kind, asking her if she wants a glass of water and bringing her her asthma inhaler.
When she reports it to police, the mother is able to describe him for a sketch.
When Mork shows it to a forensic artist in the film, he thinks Mangs is a match.
Then-Palm Beach County Sheriff Office Chief Deputy Michael Gauger said he was happy to review the information Mork gave them. Afterward, he said found he the resemblance in sketch “curious.” Gauger is now running for sheriff.
Christmas shopping trip ends horribly
Nancy Bochicchio picked up her daughter, Joey, from her second-grade classroom at St. Jude Catholic School in Boca Raton for a doctor’s appointment Dec. 12. Afterward, they decided to go Christmas shopping.
They headed to Boca Town Center. That evening Joey was scheduled to practice lines with a friend for a Christmas pageant the next day. She was going to be a reindeer.
They left the mall about 2:15 p.m, and made their way back to their 2007 Chrysler Aspen SUV. Within the hour, they were seen on a bank’s video withdrawing $500 from an ATM.
More: Boca Raton police release photos, seek tips on goggles used in 2007 mall murders of mother, daughter
The killer had Bochicchio drive back to the mall. He put Nancy Bochicchio in the back seat, tied her neck to the headrest and put blacked-out goggles on both of them. Then he shot them each point-blank in the head.
A security guard found the car idling around midnight. He called police to investigate.
Bochicchio was raised in the Bronx — a New York native who was fiercely protective of her child. The single mom had finalized her divorce a year earlier. “She lived for her daughter,” friends said.
Her ex-husband said in court papers that he and Nancy had been working to get back together as he underwent addiction treatment. Philip Hauser also was forming a bond with his daughter.
Between September 2007 and the time of her death, he said he and Nancy spoke on the phone almost every day. They had planned for him to travel from his home in Pennsylvania to stay in Nancy’s house for the holidays and to celebrate Joey’s birthday.
Nancy and Joey sent him a card. Joey wrote:
“To: Dad. I love you, your daughter Joey. We are together in our heart.”
Deaths of Kahlil Holmes and Christine Kaye
Kahlil Holmes’ life ended on a street outside his apartment in the 500 block of 22nd Street in West Palm Beach in July 2009. He’d been shot to death.
A witness saw Holmes being chased out of his apartment by two men. He was shot and died in the street. A truck that had dropped off one of the men behind Holmes’ apartment picked them up afterward and sped away.
Arrested and charged with first-degree murder were a man known to use the truck and a neighbor who was the one who said he saw the men chasing Holmes. Then charges against the two men were dropped. So the murder remains unsolved.
Donnie Murrell, a West Palm Beach defense attorney, represented one of the men who was charged. He told Mork that a witness saw a person wearing a large hat and sunglasses kill Holmes.
Mangs in photo on bridge near where Lake Park woman’s body was found
Christine Kaye of Lake Park had a drug addiction. She could sometimes be seen wandering the streets of Riviera Beach, her ex-husband said. She had had several brushes with the law, but they were all minor, none even close to violent.
Yet sadly, the 48-year-old met a violent end.
Her body was found on Oct. 27, 2009, in mangroves off the Jewfish Creek Bridge in Key Largo. It was wrapped in plastic and she had a pillow over her face.
She was never reported missing. Detectives used DNA to find her ex-husband.
Mork had a picture of Peter Mangs on that bridge around the same time as Kaye died. Mangs’ sister died of an overdose so he didn’t like people addicted to drugs, Mork said.
Kaye left behind a 23-year-old daughter.
The mysterious house in Boca Raton: Dog alerts on human remains
Mangs sent Mork another song. This one is based on the 1995 movie “Heat” called the “Empty Telephone.”
Robert De Niro says he’s going to kill someone and talks to what he calls an empty telephone.
Here’s what Mangs’ song says:
“I’m talking to the empty telephone
the girl on the other side is lying all alone
by a beach house in Boca Raton
You don’t get no better with an AK-47
Next to her little hand there is blood on the sand.”
Directed by Mangs’ letter, Mork travels east across the Spanish River Boulevard bridge and walks several hundred meters. Across the street is a lot overgrown by foliage. Mork plows into the plants and finds a wall. Beyond it is a house that has been burned out or partially demolished.
A K-9 that Mork hires alerts on human remains.
Police have not initiated any more investigations, according to the film.
Holly Baltz is the investigations editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: True Crime: Film looks at serial killer and Boca Raton mall murders
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