Differing Views of Cranford Homicide Suspect

Friends and neighbors struggling to understand Pamela Schmidt's death in the basement of a Greaves Place home describe her boyfriend, Bill Parisio, as a nice but troubled young man who began to act erratically after he was charged with a 2009 DUI incident. 

According to court officials, Parisio, who has been charged with first-degree homicide, is scheduled to be arraigned before state Superior Court Judge Joan Robinson Gross in Elizabeth on either Friday or Monday. An exact date is due to be announced later this week. Parisio is currently being held in the Union County Jail on $400,000 bail. 

Schmidt's body was found Sunday afternoon. Police and members of the Union County Prosecutor's office said Schmidt was dead at the scene, the victim of trauma.

According to a boyhood friend of Parisio, he and Schmidt began dating when they were still in high school. On Pariosi's Facebook page, he says that he would be graduating from Rutgers this spring.

Schmidt was a student in a five-year human-resources management program at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Schmidt, who was living in Warren, was interning at Amicus Therapeutics in Cranford. She belonged to the Psi Chi Psychology National Honor Society, and would have earned bachelor's degree in May and a master's next year.

Leigh Neigeborn, Associate Dean of Student Services for the School of Arts and Sciences, confirmed Tuesday that Schmidt will posthumously receive her bachelor's degree from Rutgers. 

Florence Mucci, a West Holly Street resident who has known the Parisio family for 14 years, said Tuesday that she was shocked to see police cars pull up to their Greaves Place house. "[I thought], it can't be Billy. Not Billy."

She said the 23-year-old Parisio was always a pleasant, neighborly young man to her and her husband. 

"He was a fine boy, always really nice to us. Always. I can't say anything bad about him," she said. She added that her grandson, now 22, used to walk up Greaves Place to play with Parisio when both attended elementary school. Ever since, whenever Parisio passed by their house, he smiled and waved. 

"He would say, 'Hello Mrs. Mucci, how are you?' " she said. 

Mucci, however, did say that Parisio was struggling with bipolar disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis often characterized by extreme mood swings, from joy to extended depression and feelings of sadness and anxiety, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Some of Parisio's friends, who requested anonymity because of the pending charges, said that Parisio recently returned to Cranford after a stint at a substance-abuse facility. 

A woman answering the door of the Parisio's home refused to any questions about William, Schmidt or anything surrounding the incident.

In July, 2009, Parisio was arrested on drunken-driving charges after hitting a parked car in the lot of a Garwood convenience store.  When Garwood police officers responded to a call from a store employee at around 8 a.m., Parisio was inside the store. An officer determined Parisio was the driver and took him to the police station, where he failed a breath test.

One friend of Parisio, who's known him since they were in middle school together, said, “He was a smart guy, a little carefree. He had a lot of ambition but it was a false ambition.

“When I heard the rumor [about the murder], I wasn’t too shocked," the friend said. "The way that he had been recently he had been a little off.”

He said Parisio changed after the DUI incident. “Ever since then, he was spotty. You wouldn’t see him out all the time. When you did he’d make off-color comments. He was on the Howard Stern radio thing and that got to him,  on what he could say. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the past year.”

Parisio's boyhood friend said that while  he never saw any evidence that Parisio had a substance-abuse problem, it would have explained changes he saw in him.

“He was high on himself, but it seemed that he was high on something else too.”

Warren residents have expressed shock and sadness at the news of the .

Many in Warren knew and remembered her through her years in Warren schools before she graduated from Watchung Hills Regional High School in 2007. Warren Middle School teacher Bev MacGorman said Schmidt was a member of the babysitting and cooking clubs in middle school.

"When I first came back to teaching, she was one of the first students I spent time with," MacGorman said Tuesday. "I'm so heartsick. She used to stay after the clubs and talk."

Others expressed their sadness for the family's loss, including Warren Townsip Board of Education President Gregory Przybylski, who expressed the board's sympathies at Monday's meeting.

Maryrose Mullen contributed to this story.