Born in Staten Island, New York in 1940 Rich was the product of a typical serial killing upbringing. Regularly beaten by his alcoholic father, at the age of five he torched the family home. For the rest of his childhood he was bounced from psychiatric hospitals to reformatories. A fast learner, by the time he was eight he developed a drinking and gambling problem. By nine, Rich received experimental shock therapy at New York's Bellevue Hospital.
It is not that surprising that Rich turned into a lethal rapist-murderer when he was an adult. He logged in his first kill at age 18 when he killed the proprietor of a convenience store in Bayonne, New Jersey during a holdup. After serving 17 years he was released on parole in 1975.
A free man, he shacked up with a 16-year-old girl. Soon he was arrested for rape and married his girl while in the Brooklyn House of Detention. Released again, he took up a job as a maintenance man and moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he hooked up with Dherran Fitzgerald, an old prison pal and career criminal.
On January 4, 1983, a friend of his wife fingered him to police after hearing about that the body of 18-year-old Anna Olesiewicz was found behind a restaurant in Asbury Park. Apparently Biegenwald showed his wife's friend a body hidden in his garage. On January 22 police arrested him and found pipe bombs, pistols, a machine gun, knockout drops, pot and a live puff adder snake.
Once in custody Fitzgerald started babbling about a bunch of dead girls buried in Biegenwald's mother's garden in Staten Island. Three corpses were unearthed and Rich was tied up to two other murders. Convicted of five murders he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Authorities believe he is responsible for at least two more: the murder of an ex-convict police informer and the murder-abduction of a 17-year-old girl. However, it is unknown the amount of women he slayed. Usually he would lure the women into his vehicle with the promise of pot and once he isolated them he would shoot or stab them. One of the girls he killed was the daughter of a mobster who, during his trial, put a $100,000 purse on his head.
Prosecutor John Kay said that he had no idea how many women or men Biegenwald killed but he was sure there were a few. One of the guards that befriended him in jail said Biegenwald told him he had killed close to 300 women in New York, Pensylvannia, New Jersey and Maryland. Although he's still alive, he is no longer listed as being on death row in New Jersey. We have no idea why he was removed, but hopefully they're not thinking about letting him go.