FL FL - Joyce Malinka, 22, Jacksonville, 25 Oct 1976

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gooboo

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I still remember my mother's warning to my older sisters; teenagers at the time, "Please be careful... remember the Malinka girl?" to which they would sigh, roll their eyes and say "...oh Mom" as they left the house.
The Malinka girl lived one street over from us in our Arlingwood neighborhood, part of greater Arlington, a suburb of Jacksonville Florida. She was 16-19 years old I believe, I don't remember her exact age, I was just a kid then, 8-10 yrs old myself.
It was 1972-1974...Sorry again, it was so long ago.
One late afternoon/early evening she went to the mall, Regency Square, on an errand to return something to the store...and didn't come home. Her car was found at the mall. Whether she made it inside or not is one of the details that I cannot remember. A couple of (days?-weeks?) later she was found, lying in the white sand dunes that surrounded Regency Square in those days, she had been raped and murdered.
No one was ever arrested. The story of what happened to her wasn't in the newspapers for very long at all.
It is so unbelievebly sad...it's as if she never lived...as if this never happened to her.
The house that her parents lived in then is still listed under the name Malinka.
If anyone knows anything about this case...if there is a suspect...any time related details to clarify my poor recollections. Please post them in her memory
There were 2 somewhat similar cases, still unsolved, near Eglin air force base in 1973.
Like so many other victims that are listed here on this site or those that are not yet here, this girl deserves justice.
 
I've never heard of this, but I'll see if I can find out anything about it. I didn't live here then, but now I live in Jax about 10 min from the mall, so this hits close to home.
 
I didn't find anything about with Google or Yahoo, but maybe one day soon I can go to the library to look up old articles or the police station to find out more. Do you still live here?
 
I've been looking since the original post. No luck.
 
I didn't find anything in newslibrary.com using certain keywords but it might because the case is an older one.

From my searches it seems like sadly there's a lot of murders at malls in Florida. Of course, that's probably true everywhere. My mom/ grandmother used to always bring up the UMass student who was stabbed to death at the Hampshire Mall parking lot in Massachusetts in the late 1980s.
 
I found a blog or two from people with that name from Jacksonville, so there's a good chance the name is right. There's probably nothing online about it because it's old and hadn't been checked into for a long time.
 
Thank you so much for the replies. Malinka is the correct spelling. Her parent(s) are still listed on the same street behind my parents. Most of the kids in our neighborhood went to public school, but I believe she attended private schools...possibly Catholic school, because I checked the Terry Parker High School yearbooks, (our public HS for the neighborhood) beginning with the 1974 volume, her name doesn't appear there. It is possible that she had attended Terry Parker and already graduated, but I seem to remember that she was no more than 2 years older than my oldest sister, and she graduated from T.P. in 1976. That's the reason why I don't even have her first name, sadly. Yes I still live in Jacksonville. Thank you all again for the help...as I'm sure you all know by now Google can be either amazing or incredibly frustrating
 
Gooboo, do you have any idea about what time of year it was... maybe which season?
 
I emailed channel 4 news and the Sheriff's Office Cold Case unit. I can probably go to the library later this week to look through newspaper archives, but I thought I'd try them first to see if either one can give us the date or other details first.
 
I don't know if she would be listed in the Social Security Index at her age, but I tried. The only one I saw that might match was Joyce Ann Malinka, b. 19 Jun 1954 in San Bernandino, CA, d. 26 Oct 1976 in Duval Co., FL. Could this be the girl?
 
It's very possible..likely even, especially since there is only one Malinka in the telephone directory in a city of 800,000. While it is possible that there was another Malinka in Jacksonville then, it is most likely her, sadly. I had thought it happened a couple of years earlier and that she was a few years younger, but again, I was very young. We'll have to wait for JSO to return your email to know for sure. Thank you so very much birdie74
 
You're welcome. At least if I don't hear back from JSO, at least now we have a date to start checking in the newspaper archives instead of digging through years worth. I'll probably be able to go to the library Thursday unless they close eary for the 4th.
 
The JSO detective said that he believes they looked into the case a few years ago and that there was insufficient evidence for resubmission and testing, but he would have his guys pull the file to make sure. He thanked us for our interest and inquiry.

He didn't give any specifics, like her full name or the date, but I don't want to keep taking up his time. I'll try the October '76 newspapers on Thursday first, and if that's a different Malinka then I'll write him back.
 
OK, I'm impatient, so I'll go ahead and email him back to see if it was Joyce.
 
I'm wondering if JSO has entered the details into VICAP and if anything similar showed up. I know there is nothing to compel local jurisdictions to go through their old cases and enter each one into VICAP, and in some cases...probably many cases, there aren't enough details in the files to match up with other cases...the detectives have retired...many have died themselves or are too old to recall details with reliability, but we can always hope.
 
I misquoted the officer. He said they did look into, he just wasn't sure about the evidence. I'm not sure about VICAP.

A coworker of mine said she remembers the case, but she wasn't sure of the details either. My friend was just a little younger than her and lived close enough to walk to the mall all the time. I'm pretty sure this isn't related, but she thinks this is around the same time people were getting their fingers cut off around mall parking lots, too. I'd never heard of that, either, but how strange!

I lived here for 6 mo. in 1980 when I was 6, then moved back in '86, so I don't know much of what happened here before the mid-80s.
 
I asked my Mom if she remembered and at first she couldn't recall much more than the most general details, but when I mentioned that she was found in the dunes she said, "Oh yeah, I remember now...She didn't go to the mall to return something..she went to buy a terrarium, those were big in those days." ...she went on: "That's when I got involved in starting the 'Helping Hand' program, because right after she was killed there were 3 little girls that went missing on the Westside within the space of a very short time ..all under 12 years old and they were never seen again". "Everybody was up in arms over it". (The Helping Hand Program was started in Altamonte Springs at our elementary school before we moved here in 1972...Mom was in the PTA then. You filled out and submitted a form that the Sheriffs office provided and after they did a background check they gave you an 11"x14" placard that you put up prominently in your front window...a white background with a large, blue, open hand..it read "Helping Hand" and had a Sheriffs badge in the center of the palm. Community outreach Police officers, "Officer Friendly", then went around to the elementary schools telling kids that if someone tries to approach them or hurt/molest them..they could run to these 'safe houses' and someone would be there and would give them a safe place to wait while the police were called.) I had forgotten all about that. Mom was really involved in the PTA back then, she was even on the PTA Board at one point.
 
gooboo said:
I still remember my mother's warning to my older sisters; teenagers at the time, "Please be careful... remember the Malinka girl?" to which they would sigh, roll their eyes and say "...oh Mom" as they left the house.
The Malinka girl lived one street over from us in our Arlingwood neighborhood, part of greater Arlington, a suburb of Jacksonville Florida. She was 16-19 years old I believe, I don't remember her exact age, I was just a kid then, 8-10 yrs old myself.
It was 1972-1974...Sorry again, it was so long ago.
One late afternoon/early evening she went to the mall, Regency Square, on an errand to return something to the store...and didn't come home. Her car was found at the mall. Whether she made it inside or not is one of the details that I cannot remember. A couple of (days?-weeks?) later she was found, lying in the white sand dunes that surrounded Regency Square in those days, she had been raped and murdered.
No one was ever arrested. The story of what happened to her wasn't in the newspapers for very long at all.
It is so unbelievebly sad...it's as if she never lived...as if this never happened to her.
The house that her parents lived in then is still listed under the name Malinka.
If anyone knows anything about this case...if there is a suspect...any time related details to clarify my poor recollections. Please post them in her memory
There were 2 somewhat similar cases, still unsolved, near Eglin air force base in 1973.
Like so many other victims that are listed here on this site or those that are not yet here, this girl deserves justice.
Click to expand...


Hiya friend,
This case is soooo interesting, please keep us updated!
 
Hi

May I please ask you something?you said because right after she was killed there were 3 little girls that went missing on the Westside within the space of a very short time ..all under 12 years old and they were never seen again".
Are these little girls still missing or where they found?They were under 12?Do you know any more on them or the year it happened?

suzanne
 
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