Mama's Boy: The True Story of a Serial Killer and His Mother

Sandy-haired and wiry at six feet tall, Napoletano seemed to attract tragedy. In 1984 his fifteen-year-old girlfriend was found dumped in Pennsylvania with her throat slashed. In 1985 his mother-in-law was shot dead on a Bronx street corner. And in 1990 his second wife, missing from their New Jersey home, was discovered crudely buried in Delaware. A rising mound of evidence pointed to young Napoletano, a streetwise auxiliary policeman, bigamist, and adulterer. To FBI profilers, he behaved like a sexually sadistic serial killer, undergoing sudden, dangerous mood shifts and imprisoning his victims in downward spirals of abuse. For years Napoletano eluded arrest, and he had his mother to thank most for his freedom. Carolyn Napoletano, a civilian employee of the New York City Police Department who routinely had access to confidential documents, didn't hesitate to coach a witness to lie, interfere with evidence, or supply her son with the alibis he needed. Finally, a young police detective in suburban Clifton, N.J., took on the challenge that the big-city cops and prosecutors had failed to meet. Nick Donato knew that if Eric Napoletano was not stopped, he would surely fall in love again. And if Eric fell in love again, another woman would die. Punctuated with chilling statements that Carolyn Napoletano made to the author, Mama's Boy reveals the inside story of the FBI task force that traced Eric from the East Coast to New Mexico with the aid of the first federal wiretap ever used in a serial killer case.