Update on Thomas Berry — Rapist and Killer
(“A Cinderella Story,” Forensic Files)
If you’re looking for a defendant who’s undeserving of sympathy and makes you thankful the U.S. has life sentences without parole, Thomas Jabin Berry is just the ticket.
As Forensic Files watchers will remember, Berry’s excuse for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl was that he thought she was 13.
Fortunately, that victim survived the attack. But Berry killed the next person he raped, an ultrasound technician from New Jersey named Janet Siclari.
Her story. For this week, I checked on Berry’s whereabouts today and also looked for additional biographical information on Janet Siclari.
So, let’s get started on a recap of Forensic Files episode “A Cinderella Story,” along with extra information drawn from internet research.
Janet Siclari came into the world on Dec. 30, 1957, and grew up in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, with three brothers.
Favorite getaway. She earned a certificate in radiology in 1979 and got the highest academic awards in her class. Janet moved to North Arlington and worked at General Hospital in Passaic.
For Janet, visiting North Carolina’s Outer Banks in the summer was a family tradition that started in her childhood.
In August 1993, the 35-year-old vacationed there with her brother Robert Siclari and two friends, Celeste Bethmann and Nancy Matt. They stayed at a rental cottage in Southern Shores for a week, then decided to spend an extra day in the area and checked into the Carolinian hotel in Nags Head.
Eerie feeling. Siclari, who was athletic but tiny at 92 pounds, disappeared after a night out at a comedy club followed by drinks and dancing at the Port O’Call Restaurant & Gaslight Saloon on Aug. 28. Robert was asleep when she came home but remembered waking up briefly and hearing her say she was going outside to smoke.
In the morning, Robert noticed his sister’s bed hadn’t been slept in and saw police on the beach outside his window, according to an account from the Bergen Record.
A local maintenance crew worker had found her body, dressed in a blue tank top, outside the hotel. Someone had stabbed her repeatedly, slit her throat, and left her to die.
Stormy circumstances. “Blood seeped in the white sand 25 feet in either direction,” according to a Bergen Record account from Feb. 2, 1999. Apparently, Janet had survived for a short time after the attack and tried to crawl back to the hotel.
The day after the murder, Hurricane Emily caused tens of thousands to flee the area temporarily, but police didn’t let it get in the way of their work.
A tantalizing suspect soon emerged in a burly bartender, Edward Read Powell, who had flirted with Janet and later admitted to police that he was sitting around eating pepperoni with a knife near the scene of the murder.
Hostile waitress. Although Forensic Files didn’t mention it, three additional prospective perpetrators came to light as well, according to “Murder in Paradise,” a 2013 episode of Nightmare Next Door.
There was Powell’s waitress girlfriend, who exchanged surly words with Janet’s brother when he sent his food back at her restaurant — and she’d seen Read socializing with Janet.
The third suspect, a cabana attendant who hit on Janet and reportedly made her a little uncomfortable, was also questioned by police, who discovered he had a past conviction for stabbing a relative.
Bring in the feds. Next, thanks to a tip from Janet’s mother, investigators checked out Janet’s ex-boyfriend, a New Jersey mechanic and biker club member. He had served time in prison as an accessory to the murder of a man from a rival gang.
But one by one, the four suspects fell away.
An autopsy revealed that Janet had been raped, so investigators ruled out the waitress as the killer. And none of the DNA samples collected from the male suspects matched the rapist’s genetic profile.
The FBI came in to help local authorities, but a year after the murder, they hadn’t found a single eyewitness despite interviewing 100 people in connection with the case, according to the Bergen Record. The area had a low stranger-on-stranger crime rate, so there weren’t a lot of usual-suspect types to haul in for questioning.
Funds offered. Robert Siclari, who owned an environmental consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia, put together a $20,000 reward for information that would help solve the crime.
“We lost Janet and we can’t bring her back,” Robert told the Virginian-Pilot. “But we don’t want something like this to happen to someone else.”
Still, the case turned cold.
Then, in 1997, something wonderful happened in the world of forensic science. CODIS — the combined DNA indexing system — was created so police across the U.S. could share genetic profiles of convicted felons.
Knife wielder. When authorities entered Janet Siclari’s rape kit sample in the database, they got a match with Thomas Jabin Berry. The roofer and commercial fisherman, who was 27 at the time of the murder, had undergone DNA testing after committing a parole violation.
Berry’s ex-girlfriend told police that he always carried a fishing knife and that a pair of shoes and socks found near Janet Siclari’s body belonged to him.
The findings about Berry, who lived in the North Carolina towns of Engelhard and Manteo, weren’t exactly a shock. His record included “indecent liberty with a child” involving the aforementioned 12-year-old girl.
Talk about a lowlife. During his on-camera interview with Forensic Files, Berry — who had three children by two different women — called his actions toward the girl “consensual.”
Apparently no one had informed him that children can’t consent.
The girl would later testify that Berry had lured her into the woods under the guise of helping him find a lost nephew. Then he raped her in a fort, according to court papers from North Carolina vs. Berry in 2001.
Crack defense. Berry got a 10-year suspended sentence for his crime against the 12-year-old girl.
Under police questioning for the attack on Janet Siclari, Berry said he had been smoking crack cocaine at the time and couldn’t remember whether he had raped and killed Janet, according to the court papers.
In his Forensic Files interview, Berry said that, if he did have sex with Janet, “it would have been consensual” and he never killed anybody. He also said he sometimes had sex with people he just met on the beach and that was how he met his wife.
Third victim. Doris Berry, the suspect’s mother, strenuously defended him, saying he was “not capable of committing murder” even “to save his own life.” Meanwhile, her son had a history of sex crimes dating back to when he himself was 12 years old, according to a Bergen Record account.
At the trial, a woman named Shelley Perry testified that Berry had tried to rape her after breaking into her house in 1992. She managed to escape and never pressed charges.
In 1999, a jury convicted Thomas Berry of the rape and first-degree murder of Janet Siclari.
Sympathy for the devil. At the sentencing hearing, Janet Siclari’s mother, Damy Siclari Daber, spoke of how the death had devastated the family and said that son Robert Siclari felt guilty. “I tell him it’s not his fault … It’s that maniac’s fault,” she said, as reported by the Virginian-Pilot on Jan. 28, 1999.
Meanwhile, Doris Berry portrayed her son as a victim — a sweet guy who was severely abused by his father and used to hide in the woods to escape him, the Virginian-Pilot reported.
The defense also attempted to win the jury members’ sympathy by showing them a childhood photo of Thomas Berry holding a fish he had caught.
Good prisoner. But in the end, the jury didn’t think his case held water.
Berry received two consecutive life sentences.
Today, Thomas Berry resides in Warren Correctional Institution in Manson, North Carolina. He lost a 2001 appeal and is not eligible for parole.
Berry is housed in medium security. Born on Jan. 4, 1966, he has a lot of years ahead of him, and all of them are highly likely to be spent behind razor wire.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
