LBI murder trial: 1.9 million reasons why she wanted Jack and Frenchy dead - prosecutor

TOMS RIVER - Why would Sherry Lee Heffernan drive to her father's house on Long Beach Island in something as obvious as a white Winnebago and park it out front for almost an hour while she went inside to brutally murder him and his girlfriend?

Heffernan's attorney, Steven Altman, suggested to an Ocean County jury that wouldn't make sense.

A prosecutor argued, however, that evidence collected by detectives investigating the double murder proves Heffernan was at the home of her father, John "Jack'' Enders in Surf City between 4:58 a.m. and 5:48 a.m. on Sept. 29, 2021, when Enders, 87, and his longtime girlfriend, Francoise "Frenchy" Pitoy, 75, were both shot in the jaw and repeatedly stabbed.

Enders was stabbed 51 times, MIchael Weatherstone, chief trial attorney for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, told the jury. Pitoy was stabbed 39 times.

Weatherstone said it was a crime of passion and greed.

"I submit to you she had 1.9 million-plus reasons why she wanted Jack and Frenchy dead,'' Weatherstone said of Heffernan to the jury.

Heffernan, 57, of Landenberg, Pennsylvania, mistakenly thought she was the sole beneficiary of her father's will and didn't know he changed it to cut her out of it and leave his entire estate to a grandson, Weatherstone told the jury.

Enders' six-bedroom waterfront home had no mortgage on it and was under contract to be sold for $1,935,000, Weatherstone said.

"She killed Jack and Frenchy out of greed,'' Weatherstone asserted in his summation at the conclusion of Heffernan's trial in the double murder.

"She killed them for $1.935 million,'' he said. "She wanted that house. She wanted that money.''

When detectives searched Heffernan's home days after the murders, they found her father's earlier will, leaving everything to her, on the dining room table, Weatherstone said.

"She didn't know she'd been cut out,'' Weatherstone said, adding that the grandson who was the new beneficiary didn't know that either.

Altman, in his summation, told the jury it couldn't find Heffernan guilty of the murders based on speculation or conjecture.

He said Heffernan's DNA was on doorknobs at her father's home because she had gone there on Sept. 27, 2021 - two days before prosecutors allege the murders occurred - to take pictures in the house and at the beach.

Why, if someone was planning to murder people, would they go to the site, take pictures and then hold onto the camera that contained the pictures, Altman asked.

"It's not logical,'' he said.

Altman noted Heffernan was pictured on her own surveillance system climbing a ladder to the roof of her garage to ensure the camera was working. He asked if that was "consistent with someone planning to drive to Long Beach Island to kill someone?''

The surveillance camera captured her leaving her property in the Winnebago before 1 a.m. on Sept. 29, 2021 and returning about 8 p.m. Prosecutors allege she drove to her father's house, committed the murders and drove home in that time frame.

Surveillance video tracked the Winnebago along the route to and from Enders' home, and Heffernan's cell phone was tracked along the same route, Weatherstone said.

Pitoy was stabbed 17 times while in bed and 22 more times after she made it out of the bedroom and down the stairs, where she was found dead in a fetal position in a pool of blood, the prosecutor told jurors.

Weatherstone argued that Heffernan made her father go downstairs and sit in a recliner, and then she covered his badly wounded body with articles of clothing.

Heffernan stepped over Pitoy and walked into the kitchen, where three prints of her right foot were found in blood on the floor, Weatherstone said.

"Her bloody footprint is on the floor because she walked though this blood,'' he said.

Altman, noting there was a shoe print in blood near the stairs, said Heffernan was barefoot. He suggested whoever committed the murders was wearing the shoes.

The defense attorney said Heffernan would have left the footprints in the kitchen when she was there days earlier, and the blood later dripped on the footprints.

Altman noted that investigators never had a blood-soaked glove found on the stairs near Pitoy's body tested for DNA and suggested that whoever was wearing that glove was the killer.

He questioned why someone careful enough to wear gloves at the crime scene would be walking around barefoot.

Weatherstone asserted a person pictured on a neighbor's surveillance video climbing a fence from Enders' North Seventh Street property onto the neighbor's property in the early morning of Sept. 29, 2021, was Heffernan leaving the murder scene. He said she left Pitoy's blood on the fence.

Altman reminded the jury that Heffernan's stepson and two of her good friends viewed that video and testified it wasn't her on it.

But Weatherstone said Heffernan changed into her father's oversized dark clothing and oversized shoes before leaving the crime scene, her head covered with a hood and her face cast downward.

Investigators never found the gun used in the killings. Weatherstone argued that Heffernan may have discarded that and her bloody clothing while she was driving around in eastern Pennsylvania before returning home after the killings. He noted that ammunition matching that found at the murder scene was found in the Winnebago and Heffernan's home in Landenberg.

Altman said detectives never bothered to search Heffernan's other vehicles or her several other properties to look for the gun.

Weatherstone reminded the jury that Heffernan talked about an alibi in a phone call to a friend from the Ocean County Jail. The alibi was that she was in Surf City taking pictures of the sun rising on the beach.

He noted there was a problem with that alibi - the pictures in her camera of the sunrise on the beach were all time-stamped Sept. 27, 2021, two days earlier.

"Her alleged alibi is nonsense,'' Weatherstone said. "The defendant was last down there on the 29th. She was there to murder Jack and Frenchy.''

Heffernan has been on trial for three weeks before Superior Court Judge Kimarie Rahill.

She declined to testify in her defense.

The jury is expected to begin its deliberations Wednesday.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Prosecutor in LBI double murder trial says daughter had $1.9M motive