Trends Reviews and Recaps

Man, those Jersey girls are tough, even when, or maybe especially when, they’re 48 years old.

The Philadelphia Inquirer today reports the latest news surrounding Jean Zelinsky, formerly of Ringoes, N.J., lately a resident of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital (“Community Care May be in the Offing,” by Marc Schogol):

It was a holiday season no one at the New Jersey Statehouse at the time will ever forget.

Politicians, police, and members of the media were partying and preparing to depart for family festivities on Friday, Dec. 22, 1978, when a car crashed into the entrance to the building in Trenton.

The woman driver then tossed a shopping bag containing the severed head of her 78-year-old mother -- the staff of an American flag impaled in the neck -- at a state trooper.

After shouting “Merry Christmas!” the woman tried to slash her own throat but was apprehended.

The murderer, Zelinsky, was acquitted at trial by reason of insanity (paranoid schizophrenia), and apparently soon will have supervised visits outside of “Trenton State.”