ESSEX JUNCTION — As Vermont State Police were looking to find Joseph Ferlazzo to question him earlier this week about the disappearance of his wife, Pennsylvania law enforcement authorities contacted them about his stepmother’s cold-case death in that state, Vermont officials confirmed on Thursday.
Ferlazzo, 41, was located Tuesday by a Vermont State Police detective inside a convenience store in St. Albans. During subsequent questioning, he admitted to shooting and killing his wife, Emily Ferlazzo, 22, in a camper van in Bolton and then dismembering her body, police said in court filings.
He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder and is being held without bail at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
Capt. Scott Dunlap, head of the state police Major Crime Unit, said Thursday evening that before Joseph Ferlazzo was located Tuesday, Pennsylvania law enforcement authorities contacted Vermont State Police about him in regards to a years-old homicide in that state that remains unsolved.
That case, dating back to Oct. 25, 2009, is the stabbing death of Ferlazzo’s stepmother, Young Hee Lim-Ferlazzo, 39, in Upper Gwynedd Township, just outside Philadelphia.
Her murder remains an open case, Kate Delano, director of communications for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, said in an email Thursday afternoon to VTDigger.
“Montgomery County detectives are aware of the murder in Vermont, where the victim’s son is the defendant,” Delano said.
She said she couldn’t provide specifics of any ongoing investigation.
Dunlap, the Vermont State Police captain, said Thursday evening he couldn’t reveal the details of the conversation his agency had with police in Pennsylvania.
“We spoke with them early on, we exchanged information,” Dunlap said. “I can’t get into that, they have an active pending case. “
Dunlap also said he wouldn’t comment if Vermont State Police interrogated Joseph Ferlazzo about his stepmother’s slaying as they questioned him about his wife’s death.
“I can’t get into that,” Dunlap said.
According to news reports from 2009, Young Hee Lim-Ferlazzo was found dead with multiple stab wounds to her torso in the Upper Gwynedd Township apartment she shared with her husband, Joseph A. Ferlazzo Sr.
The elder Ferlazzo reported the death shortly before midnight, after he returned from grocery shopping and found his wife dead in their home, investigators told the Reading (Pennsylvania) Eagle. Police said Ferlazzo Sr. was cooperating with them, but no arrests had been made and no motive for the slaying was disclosed, the newspaper reported.
Joseph Ferlazzo Sr. owned and operated the Osaka Therapeutic Spa in Reading, Pennsylvania, investigators said. City police raided and shut down the spa in May 2009, during a prostitution investigation. Police said they arrested two sex workers at Osaka, according to the newspaper report. One of the women was a relative of Young Hee Lim-Ferlazzo, and was working as the spa’s manager, or madam, when it was raided, police told the newspaper.
Investigators said Joseph Ferlazzo Sr. claimed the business was a legitimate massage parlor, and he was not aware of any illegal activity there. Shortly after the raid, he went before the Reading Zoning Hearing Board in a failed attempt to regain his permit and license, so he could reopen the business. He told the board he was a former executive at Renbow International USA, a hair care business based in Reading.
In rejecting his request, board members said they found it hard to believe he didn’t know what was happening inside the business.
Police said they had not linked the Osaka raid and investigation into the killing.
Chittenden County ties
Authorities this week have identified Emily and Joseph Ferlazzo as New Hampshire residents, as they were most recently living in a converted van on Emily Ferlazzo’s parents property in Northfield, New Hampshire — some 20 minutes north of the state capital of Concord.
However, the couple recently had strong ties to northwestern Vermont, according to neighbors, colleagues and a police spokesperson.
Emily Ferlazzo was a licensed nursing assistant in Vermont, according to records kept by the Secretary of State’s Office. Her license was first issued in August 2020.
Joseph Ferlazzo Jr. is licensed as a body piercing and tattooist operator, according to the same database. His license was first issued in June 2011.
Adam Silverman, a spokesperson for Vermont State Police, said the couple lived in Essex Junction from 2020 through spring 2021. Joseph Ferlazzo “was back and forth between Vermont and New Hampshire” as a traveling tattoo artist who would come to Vermont to work, he said.
Several tattoo artists in Burlington identified Joseph Ferlazzo as an artist at Body Art Tattoo Studio in the city. A photo album titled “Joe Ferlazzo” on the business’s Facebook page appears to display his work.
A person who answered the phone at Body Art on Thursday declined to comment.
Neighbors from two households on Park Street in Essex Junction said the Ferlazzos lived in an apartment there as recently as June.
Renee Donna lives with her boyfriend, Griffin Paul-Moran, at the Park Street building where the Ferlazzos previously lived. Donna said she and Paul-Moran moved in early in June right as Joseph and Emily Ferlazzo were moving out.
Donna said her boyfriend saw the Ferlazzo couple moving their belongings into a camper, and that the couple’s entire moving process seemed very abrupt.
Paul-Moran spoke with the couple briefly, Donna said, and at the time it seemed like the couple “didn’t expect us to be moving in today.”
Seth Elkins, who lives next door at 82 Park St., said he remembers seeing Joseph Ferlazzo renovate the van that police say Ferlazzo later shot and killed his wife in.
Emily Ferlazzo also helped build the van, Elkins said.
“As soon as he moved in, he bought a bus and he stripped it,” Elkins said. “And then he spent the whole year building a mobile home out of the bus.”
Elkins said he often saw the couple acting friendly toward each other outside the house, though one or two times he noticed “very small bruising” on Emily Ferlazzo.
Joseph Ferlazzo was extremely quiet and always seemed to keep to himself, Elkins said, noting he has a couple friends who got tattoos from Ferlazzo.
“He was unbelievably shut out,” Elkins said. “If you didn’t get a tattoo from him, that was it. I didn’t get a word from him.”
Shaun Robinson and Tom Kearney contributed reporting.
Clarification: Young Hee Lim-Ferlazzo was Joseph Ferlazzo Jr.’s stepmother.
