it s like a needle in a haystack. and look at the picture, it s crazy. you re on a roller coaster and everybody is scared to death and he s looking at you carrying on a conversation. just like normal. he doesn t realize he s on a roller coaster. i don t think anything rattled him. fortunately for the culottas, joe was about to go to prison for a conviction of assault against a former girlfriend, michele osborne. she lived only two blocks away from the culottas. but even while he was in jail, palczynski found a way to keep up the campaign of control and intimidation. the whole time he was in there, it was all kind of little games and threats and people still following you. i mean, it was on a daily basis. she would call me every day and say, this green car is following me again. she would go to work, go to college, there s the car. she d look out front, there s the car. we never knew who it was, but it was somebody he was manipulating from the jail. joe told stacy to never for
the warning signals were everywhere in his record. they were crying out, and no single person was able to either thought they had the capacity or the will or the wherewithal to deal with him. the culottas say the fear palczynski brought to their family may never go away. i have a lot of anger, because my family is not the same. it was very, very damaging what he did, left a lot of scars. it s just sad that he s done that to a lot of girls. i would imagine that all of them don t sleep well at night. stacy doesn t sleep well, and sometimes she doesn t sleep at all. it wasn t enough that he may cause physical harm to someone. what he was what was so much more important to him was causing lasting harm and controlling forever their lives. domestic violence is a notoriously difficult crime to prosecute.
joe palczynski remained at large for ten days. one step ahead of a statewide manhunt for the killer of four. in fact, he had escaped to virginia, but his obsession and anger with ex-girlfriend tracy whitehead would get the best of him. despite law enforcement predictions to the contrary, he came back to baltimore in the into the teeth of the manhunt in a brazen attempt to get tracy whitehead. on march 17th, 2000, a frantic 911 call comes into the baltimore county police department. palczynski was at the home of tracy s mother, lynn whitehead, for a final confrontation. i remember having a sick
there s a man lying over behind the apartments ma am, do you know the person who was shot? is somebody helping him? yeah, i think it s his wife or somebody. and he was still talking when he was laying there and he was saying, oh, my god, oh, my god while he was laying on the ground. i thought maybe it was possible he might still he might have made it, but he didn t. anyone who sees him or knows anything about him should call 911 immediately and let us know. palczynski left the scene of the murders with tracy and drove to a spot in the woods to hide out. there, tracy faced the psychotic fury of a spurned lover. he was like, just blaming me for everything. it s all your fault. why did you leave me? you know, just, he told me to lay on, you know, he told me to lay in the field, lay on my stomach. and i was like, no, you re going to kill me, and, i know you re going to kill me. i m not doing it. he was like, tracy, lay on your stomach now.
palczynski s mother, pat, had bailed him out of jail, and she could see joe was at the breaking point. i knew something bad was going to happen. i knew i thought he was going to kill himself. needing a sanctuary from her abusive live-in boyfriend, 22-year-old tracy whitehead had moved in with her friends, gloria and george shenk. they all knew that palczynski had a violent temper, but no one expected murder. four nights after moving in, tracy is watching television with the shenks in their family room. gloria shenk is on the phone talking to her son. and all of the sudden, here comes the sliding door. slammed it, and i looked back, and he was standing there all in black with two big guns wrapped around him, and he said, gloria, put the phone down and he said, tracy, you are going with me. almost immediately palczynski