Lisa Rizzi
When she was 13, Lisa Rizzi started learning about genetics in school. It was about that same time that she started questioning her family history. “I was very, you know, confused and intrigued — so I started questioning it,” she told Dateline. “I always wondered why I didn’t look like [my family]. My mother was German. I just didn’t — I didn’t feel the connection.”
Curious, she brought it up with her parents. That’s when she learned she was adopted. “They told us, me and my sister,” Lisa said. “I have a sister, too, that was also adopted.”
It wasn’t until the ‘90s, however, when Lisa was in her mid-20’s, that she began searching for her biological family. Her search proved to be much harder than she thought, though, without access to legal assistance. “I didn’t know where to begin because I didn’t have much to go by,” she told Dateline. The one thing she did have was a letter she retrieved from her adoption agency written by her biological mother, which Lisa got when she was in her mid-20s. It had both of her parents’ names — Anthony and Janice — but the agency had blacked out their surnames. Unable to research further without more information, Lisa stopped looking — until 2017.
Six years ago, Lisa used AncestryDNA and learned she had a half-brother on her birth father’s side. They started messaging on the platform and eventually made plans to meet. “Then it was on from there,” she told Dateline. “I met them — my family — like, a couple months after that.”
Lisa’s search would take her from Colorado, where she grew up, to New Jersey — where she met her younger half-brother and half-sister, as well as her biological father, Anthony Maltese. After getting to know them, she eventually decided to move to New Jersey permanently. “I wasn’t married. I said, ‘Why not?’” she told Dateline. “So I can get to know my real father before his time, you know, is up.”
Lisa’s adoptive mother had already died when she decided to move to New Jersey. A few months after making the move, Lisa’s adoptive father passed away. “My real father said, ‘Wow, that’s like God telling you, you know, this was time,’” she told Dateline. “I said, ‘Yeah, it’s like I left one family and jumped into another.’”
Still lingering, though, was the question of Lisa’s biological mother. “My dad actually never knew I existed,” she said. “My mother never told him that she was pregnant.”
Lisa knew her mother’s first name, Janice, from the letter given to her by her adoption agency. She told Dateline that, after she met with her biological father, the two of them looked through an old high school yearbook to find her mother’s last name: Sancomb. Lisa’s birth father told her that he and Janice had been in a relationship for 3-5 months before graduating from high school, when Janice broke it off with him without giving him a good reason.
Learning her birth mother’s last name, coupled with independent research and the help of a friend, led Lisa to Janice’s first husband, John Prastio.
They first spoke on Halloween night 2017. “He was aware of me,” Lisa told Dateline. “My mother spoke to him and said that she had a daughter.” John told Lisa that Janice had given birth to her at 19 without her birth father’s knowledge and gave her up for adoption.
And then he told her something she never imagined. Her mother, Janice Donohue, had disappeared in 1983 and was likely murdered.
Now, 40 years after Janice’s disappearance, Lisa is hoping to find her mother — and get answers.
Janice Donohue
Dateline spoke with Detective Sergeant Kevin Beyrer of the Suffolk County Police Department about the case. He said 36-year-old Janice Donohue was last seen at her Brentwood, New York home, on December 16, 1983. Beyrer told Dateline that the department first learned about Janice’s disappearance when her ex-husband, John Prastio, called them on January 2, 1984. “He was alarmed because his ex-wife, Janice, hadn’t called their two children for Christmas,” Beyrer said. “He [felt] her current husband might have harmed her.”
Janice’s husband, Richard Donohue, reported his wife missing three days later, on January 5, 1984. “[Janice] did leave a note saying that she was going to see her kids up in Berne, New York, and if anything happened to her or her car, it would be the fault of her husband, Richard,” Beyrer told Dateline. “So that did make him a prime suspect.” Beyrer said that Janice had given the note to a friend, who turned it over to the police department after Janice went missing.
The exact timeline of Janice’s disappearance remains a mystery to the Suffolk County PD. “Richard claims he last saw her on the 16th” of December, 1983. “We know she missed a job interview on the 19th,” Beyrer said. He added that, according to Richard, the couple’s 4-year-old son was at the house unattended when he got home on December 16 and told him, “Mommy left.”
The detective also told Dateline that Suffolk County PD suspects Richard Donohue had something to do with Janice’s disappearance because “it was an abusive relationship.” Beyrer said authorities believe Janice was looking to leave her husband at the time of her disappearance.
Richard Donohue died in 2000.
Detective Sergeant Beyrer told Dateline that since Janice has never been found, it is difficult to determine exactly what happened to her. “The tough thing with cases like this one, with adults, is the argument that, uh, whether she was killed and that’s why she’s missing or whether she’s missing — she went missing voluntarily and somehow died,” he said. “If this turns out to be a criminal case, [Richard] would be the main suspect.”
When Lisa Rizzi learned that officials believed her birth mother was likely the victim of a homicide, she became even more determined to find answers. “I have a hard time processing it but I do, you know, pray — that’s why I keep doing what I’m doing — that I’m gonna have some peace for her,” Lisa said. “That’s what I want.”
In 2019, Lisa called the Suffolk County PD and requested that they search the Donohues’ former property for Janice’s body. Detective Sergeant Beyrer told Dateline that the department searched the property after Janice was initially reported missing in 1984, but went back with more advanced technology after Lisa called them four years ago.
“[The department used] ground penetrating radar through the backyard to look for any disturbances in the ground, potentially where she may have been buried,” the detective said. Cadaver dogs were also deployed on the property, but didn’t find anything. There have been no additional searches since 2019, but Det. Sgt. Beyrer told Dateline that Janice’s name was added into additional missing persons databases not long after that search four years ago. “As far as any other searches, there’s really — there’s really no leads where we can search,” he told Dateline.
Another reason for that is because, according to Det. Sgt. Beyrer, authorities suspect that Janice’s body was not buried, but burned.
“Richard worked at Kennedy Airport and did have access to a pretty large incinerator,” Beyrer said. “The theory was always that she was put into that incinerator.” It is, however, just a theory, as no physical evidence was ever recovered in Janice’s case. “You know, we can never prove that either way, unfortunately, from all those years, uh — all those years back.”
Lisa Rizzi told Dateline that she thinks someone has information that could help solve the case. “Somebody had to have known something,” she told Dateline. “That’s what I believe.”
She and Janice’s family just want answers these four decades later. “They would love to have closure. They would love if we found her remains,” Lisa told Dateline. “That’s all they wanted — to give her peace.”
One thing that already gives Lisa some measure of peace and a sense of connection to the mother she never knew, was something her half-brother John told her. John is one of Janice and first husband John Prastio’s children. He said Lisa reminded him of their mother. “He told me that our mother was, like, a very giving, wonderful person. She was kind, friendly,” Lisa said. “She was just a great woman, I was told.”
Anyone with information about Janice’s case is asked to call the Suffolk County PD Homicide Squad directly at 631-852-6392. If you would like to report a tip anonymously, you can call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS.
