Sally DAngelo, now in her early 70s, has lived a life of quiet advocacy. After the trial, she divorced her husband, Mark, not due to blame, but because she could no longer tolerate the loneliness of his business travel. She moved to a smaller, fortress-like condo in a secured building in Princeton.
She never returned to teaching. Instead, she wrote a manual for home invasion survivors that remains in use by victims’ advocacy groups. Titled "The Lock on the Inside," it focuses not on physical home defense, but on psychological rebuilding. In a rare interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2019, she said: "Everyone asks me about the masks. Everyone asks about the zip ties. They never ask about the next morning. Waking up in a hotel room, realizing that a place you loved is now a crime scene. That is the real invasion. It doesn’t end when the police arrive."
Even after physical injuries healed, Sally experienced post‑traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms: intrusive flashbacks, hypervigilance, and sleep disturbances. A clinical assessment, conducted three months post‑incident, yielded a Clinician‑Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS‑5) score of 31, indicating moderate PTSD (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). sally dangelo home invasion
Key coping strategies that proved effective:
The trial in early 2000 was a media sensation in the Northeast, though it remained obscure nationally. The prosecution argued that this was not a robbery attempt gone wrong, but a "rehearsed terror campaign." Prosecutors introduced evidence that Rizzo had drawn a crude map of the DAngelo house found in his bedroom, with notes on "target’s sleeping location." Sally DAngelo, now in her early 70s, has
Sally DAngelo’s victim impact statement became the stuff of legal lore. She stood in the Camden County courtroom and turned to face Rizzo, who had shown no emotion for weeks. She said: "You wanted to see me afraid. You wanted to see the moment my home stopped being a home and became a prison. But here is the secret you did not learn: Fear is a room. And I have just walked out. You are the one who will spend your life locked in that room."
Rizzo was sentenced to 45 years to life. Jenkins, who took a plea deal for a reduced sentence of 18 years, was released in 2018. She never returned to teaching
To understand the gravity of the home invasion, one must first understand the victim. In 1998, Sally DAngelo was not a celebrity or a public figure; she was the archetypal "everywoman." A 45-year-old high school mathematics teacher and mother of two teenagers, Sally lived with her husband, Mark, in a modest but well-maintained Colonial-style home on a tree-lined street in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Neighbors described the DAngelos as "quiet" and "meticulous." Sally was known for her rigid routines: she graded papers at the kitchen table every Tuesday, walked the family’s golden retriever at 6:00 AM sharp, and never missed a PTA meeting. This predictability, which her family saw as reliability, would later be identified by investigators as the very vulnerability the invaders exploited.
At the time of the incident, Mark DAngelo was a regional sales manager who traveled frequently, typically leaving on Monday mornings and returning on Thursday evenings. This schedule was an open secret in the neighborhood, noted by local delivery drivers and, ultimately, by the perpetrators.
The ripple effects of the Sally DAngelo home invasion are still felt today. In the years following the case: