Sherry Lee Heffernan, pictured in the inset, murdered her father, John “Jack” Enders, and his girlfriend, Francoise “Frenchy” Pitoy, at this home in Surf City, New Jersey (Mug shot: Ocean County Jail; screenshot: WPVI)
“I am being framed,” Sherry Lee Heffernan, then 55, said while being led out of court in October 2021. Authorities had just charged her in Ocean County, New Jersey, with murdering her father, John “Jack” Enders, 87, and his longtime live-in girlfriend, Francoise “Frenchy” Pitoy, 75.
But now, more than two years later, a grand jury has convicted her of carrying out the stabbing and shooting deaths. Authorities said she was upset over her father kicking her off his will and not letting Heffernan, a real estate agent, sell his house.
Prosecutors said that an RV belonging to Heffernan, now 57, was seen on surveillance footage driving down the Long Beach Island Bridge on the early morning of Sept. 29, 2021. Then, she went on foot toward her father’s home. With an orange bag and clothes “too large” for her, she hopped a backyard fence, and later that day, drove her RV back over the same bridge as before.
Cops discovered the couple stabbed multiple times and shot in their faces after Pitoy’s daughter called in a welfare check. Police found Pitoy and Enders dead, with her on the staircase and him in a reclining chair. Officers said they found blood in several locations in the house, bloody footprints, a rubber glove discarded on the stairs, and blood on a fence. Enders had also sustained blunt force trauma.
“It is with a heavy heart that we acknowledge the sudden passing of Surf City Women’s Auxiliary member ‘Frenchie’ Pitoy,” the Surf City Volunteer Fire Company said in an Oct. 5, 2021, post to Facebook. “Frenchie was an active and much loved member of our organization. Our hearts are broken as we remember the light, love and laughter that Frenchie brought to us. Continue to keep us and her family in your thoughts and prayers as we navigate this very difficult time.”
Pitoy and Enders were together for 19 years, neighbor John Gofus told Philadelphia ABC affiliate WPVI.
“They were great together,” he said. “She could care less what he had or if he didn’t have. They were meant for each other.”
Cops said that Heffernan got disgruntled after her father did not let her sell his home. The residence was put on sale for $1.9 million. On top of that, Enders cut her and an estranged daughter out of his living will the previous month, a friend said in the police account.
Heffernan’s son reportedly told cops in an Oct. 4, 2021, interview that his mother left home the previous week to visit her father. He allegedly described this as a “midnight dash.”
The trial lasted almost four weeks, prosecutors said. Jurors convicted Heffernan of two counts each of murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon.
Heffernan faces life in prison at her sentencing, set for May 10.
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