'Mall Rapist' Goes Before Parole Board For Third Time

PEABODY, MA —Massachusetts parole board members questioned the sincerity of a man known as the Mall Rapist asked to be released during a hearing Thursday.

It was the third time Phillip Pizzo has been before the board. Pizzo has served 35 years of 11 concurrent life sentences after admitting to kidnapping seven women from Massachusetts shopping malls in the early 1980s, then raping and torturing them at his home.

The Salem News reported Friday that Pizzo became defensive at times during the two-hour hearing and that parole board members, who will issue their decision at a later date, questioned his sincerity. "You really do come off as mechanical and a little bit rehearsed," parole board member Gloriann Moroney said.

Pizzo pleaded guilty in November 1984 to attacks on women he kidnapped from the Meadow Glen Mall in Medford, the South Shore Shopping Plaza in Braintree, the Woburn Mall, and the Clover Leaf Marketplace in Natick. He later pleaded guilty to similar charges in Essex County stemming from incidents at the Northshore Mall in Peabody in December 1983 and January 1984.

Pizzo was last denied parole in 2015. According to court documents, Pizzo would accost women in their teens and early 20s at the shopping malls as the victims were about to get into their cars. Before he was caught, the high profile abductions caused panic across the state and left many women feeling unsafe to go to malls and other public areas.