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Murdered Newspaper Heiress's Daughter Kills Self Off Tappan Zee
By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 26, 2009
Modified Sep 26, 2009
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By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 26, 2009
Modified Sep 26, 2009
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Police are searching for the body of Annie Morrell Petrillo, who jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge on Thursday evening. Petrillo's mother, Anne Scripps Douglas, an heir to the Scripps newspaper fortune, was found bludgeoned on December 31, 1993 and later died from her injuries; the main suspect was Petrillo's stepfather, who killed himself by committing suicide off the Tappan Zee Bridge on New Year's Day 1994.
The Journal News says that witnesses called 911 when they saw Morell Petrillo jump. There are suicide hotline phones on the bridge, but she apparently did not use any. The Coast Guard and other authorities have had trouble with the search "because of the darkness and current." A note was left in her BMW SUV and police say it was a suicide.
Morell Petrillo was 22 when she arrived at her family's Bronxville home on December 31, 1993 and called the police because she was locked out. The cops discovered her mother, Anne Scripps Douglas, severely beaten with a hammer in Morell Petrillo's room. Morell Petrillo's uncle told the Post that the memory of her mother's murder had troubled her, "She's just always distraught, she's been having issues back and forth, as anybody would expect. Through her whole life, that's a bad memory."
Scripps Douglas, who sought court protection from abusive husband Scott Douglas was beating her, died a week after the attack. Douglas, was not found, but his BMW, with the motor running, was found on the Tappan Zee Bridge on January 1, 1994; his body washed up three months later, prompting Morell Petrillo to say, "The nightmare is over." The incident was also turned into a Lifetime movie.
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Anne Scripps Douglas
Annie Morell Petrillo
murder
suicide
tappan zee bridge
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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