Joseph "Joe Lupo" Rulli Part 1: A Marked Man
The Vanished Podcast
Wondery
4.5 • 15K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2025
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On April 20, 1971, 39-year-old Joseph Rulli, also known as Joe Lupo, mysteriously disappeared from Closter, New Jersey. That day, Joe was hosting a party when he stepped out briefly for an errand but never returned, prompting his wife to report him missing. Days later, Joe's car was discovered in Jersey City, riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood. Initially, investigators assumed Joe had been murdered. However, testing revealed a shocking twist: the blood inside the vehicle wasn't human; it was animal blood. This revelation only deepened the mystery: Had Joe staged his own death and disappeared, intentionally leaving behind a gruesome scene to mislead investigators? Or had someone else murdered him?
Joe Lupo had once been a promising boxer, a local hero with a bright future, but an illness altered the course of his life. When he vanished, he left behind a wife and a young son, also named Joe, who has spent decades determined to uncover the truth about his father’s disappearance. As he grew up, he combed through the memories of family members who were adults at the time, sifted through old newspaper articles, and meticulously examined archival materials in search of any clues that might finally shed light on what happened to his father that fateful day in April 1971.
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Joseph "Joe Lupo" Rulli, please contact the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit at (609) 882-2000 ext. 2554 or email [email protected]. You can also reach out to Joe directly at [email protected].
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My dad was having a go and away party for this guy at our restaurant, which was in Lodi, New Jersey. |
| 0:17.7 | This was a big night for my dad. My mom got there about six, and she noticed my father's |
| 0:23.9 | car wasn't in the parking lot. So she asked the bartender, she said, hey, where's Joe? He goes, |
| 0:29.0 | oh, he had to step out for a few minutes. He said he'd be back in a little bit. My mom says, |
| 0:32.3 | okay. She didn't think anything of it. Get start coming in little by little. The guy who the party is for comes in, and my father's |
| 0:39.9 | not there. And my mother, when she realized my father was not going to show up, she went into the |
| 0:46.2 | ladies' room with one of her friends, and she was crying. And her friend said, what's the matter? |
| 0:51.2 | And she says, I don't think I'm ever going to see my husband again. And she was right. |
| 0:54.9 | Missing that party was a telltale that he was gone. |
| 0:59.6 | It became like a hobby of mine to try to find out as much as I could about my father |
| 1:04.4 | and his disappearance, pretty much from the age of 18 until now, 40 years. |
| 1:10.1 | My dad, he's 87, to this day, doesn't believe his brother died in 1971. |
| 1:17.6 | There's just too many things that have happened, too many questions, things that don't make sense. |
| 1:23.6 | I think the big question is what happened in that car and was that his last day? |
| 1:32.1 | On April 20, 1971, 39-year-old Joseph Ruelly, better known as Joe Lupo, vanished from Closter, New Jersey. |
| 1:41.2 | That day, Joe was hosting a party when he stepped out for a quick errand. Yet he never |
| 1:45.7 | returned, and Joe was never seen or heard from again. Days later, his car was discovered in Jersey |
| 1:51.5 | City, riddled with bullets and stained with blood. The immediate assumption was that Joe had been |
| 1:56.7 | murdered. However, testing later revealed that the blood inside the vehicle wasn't human. It was animal |
| 2:02.5 | blood. The mystery deepened. Had Joe staged his own death and disappeared? Or had someone killed him, |
| 2:08.5 | leaving behind a grisly scene to confuse investigators? Joe Lupo had once been a promising boxer, |
| 2:14.7 | a local hero with a bright future. But a diagnosis of polio changed |
... |
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