13 Found Dead in Garage in Wayne, NJ (Update: Prosecutor says Death were Not Homicides)

BIZARRE …

24 year old Jorge Rodriguez and 25 year old Melissa Pereira have been missing since December 27, 2013. The couple was seen at Kmart buying candles the night they disappeared. The couple was last seen leaving her home in Wayne, New Jersey on December 27; however, never made it to the Cherry Valley Manor a bed-and-breakfast in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where they planned to spend New Year’s Eve. Sadly, their bodies were found Sunday inside a parked car in the garage behind the two-story apartment that Pereira and her mother shared on Lancaster Court more than three weeks after they were reported missing.

Melissa Pereira, 25, and Jorge Rodriguez, 24, of Garfield, were last seen at Pereira’s Wayne home on Friday, Dec. 27.

Angie Escobar, Rodriguez’s cousin, confirmed the deaths on Sunday evening.

“We don’t want to say anymore information at this point,” Escobar said.

The couple was found about 10:30 a.m. Passaic County Assistant Prosecutor Michael DeMarco said. Authorities are awaiting autopsy results to determine the cause and manner of death.

It was not immediately known how long the bodies were in the garage.

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The conclusion of this missing person case is as sad and grizzly as it is bizarre. The authorities did not immediately know the couples cause of death or how long they had been in the parked car in the woman’s garage. The police are saying that there is no reason for the public to be concerned, which would lead one to believe that this was a double suicide or a murder/suicide. Also, how is a couple missing for 3 weeks and no one check the apartment garage?

A seemingly loving couple from northern New Jersey was found dead in a garage one month after their disappearance was first reported. The bodies of Jorge Rodriguez, 24, and 25-year-old Melissa Pereira were discovered yesterday in a parked car in the woman’s garage, over three weeks since they were last seen buying candles for a New Year’s Eve getaway at a bed and breakfast. This was Pereira’s final tweet:

The medical examiner is conducting the autopsies, and local police in Wayne, where the bodies were found, have not provided any further details beyond the location of the grisly discovery, in the garage behind an apartment Pereira shared with her mother. But Passaic County Assistant Prosecutor Michael DeMarco told NJ.com there was “no reason for the public to be concerned.” Sources tell NorthJersey.com they were found in Rodriguez’s car.

UPDATE I: Deaths of missing Wayne couple were not homicides, prosecutor says.

Prosecutors do not believe the deaths of a missing couple whose bodies were found in a garage in Wayne on Sunday morning were the result of foul play, but investigators are still unsure how the couple died or when.

Prosecutors are still awaiting the results of an autopsy to determine how and when the couple died, but DeMarco said it did not appear they were victims of foul play.

“Detectives from the Wayne Police Department did not observe any outward signs that the deaths of Mr. Rodriguez of Ms. Pereira were as a result of a homicide,” he said in an e-mail. “Detectives could not estimate how long the bodies have been inside of the garage.”