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Apr 26, 2023

Neal Jacobson's murdered family gets gravestones in Palm Beach Gardens

More than 13 years after the murders of Franki Jacobson and her twin sons, Eric

More than 13 years after the murders of Franki Jacobson and her twin sons, Eric and Joshua, an anonymous donor stepped up to pay for a gravestone for the Wellington mother and children who seemed destined to languish for eternity in a single, unmarked grave.

In the muggy morning air of the otherwise silent cemetery, Rabbi Daniel Krimsky of Temple B’nai Jacob of Wellington performed the tombstone unveiling ceremony on May 31 at IJ Morris at the Star of David Cemetery of the Palm Beaches in Palm Beach Gardens.

"This act today is so profound to me that, from reading a newspaper article, someone, maybe a few people, stepped forward to give so selflessly because they felt this was right," Krimsky said.

It was a day that might never have come had it not been for a Palm Beach Post reader so moved by the story of the Jacobson family murders that she and her husband wrote a $3,000 check to cover the cost of a tombstone. The only condition, she said, was that their identity remain anonymous.

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"To do something for someone that's deceased is the only true act of kindness that is 100 percent," Krimsky said, explaining that, in Judaism, anonymity is the highest of the eight levels of charitable giving. "What can they do for you now? Nothing. It's the closest thing to a perfect act of kindness and love that we can experience in this lifetime."

The donors never knew the Jacobsons. Neither did Krimsky, who took over as rabbi at the family's synagogue more than decade after Neal Jacobson — Franki's husband and the boys’ father — shot them to death hours before the boys’ seventh birthday party.

Krimsky did not know how smart Eric was, how funny Joshua could be or how much Franki adored being a mother. The boys attended Binks Forest Elementary School in Wellington. But they're gone and all that matters now is that caring people came together and gave of themselves to right a terrible wrong, the rabbi said.

And so it was done. On a damp and cloudy Wednesday, in front of one family friend, two cemetery workers and two journalists, Rabbi Krimsky gently removed the white veils from each footstone, offering Franki, Eric and Joshua their final blessings in both Hebrew and English.

"May their memories inspire us to live justly and kindly, may their souls be at peace and may they be bound up in the bond of eternal light," Krimsky prayed.

Dr. Mel Kohan, whose family was dear friends with the Jacobsons and who enlisted Krimsky to conduct the unveiling ceremony, teared up as the rabbi spoke.

"Emotionally, it's always very hard: sadness, some anger," he said. "But, from a sense of obligation and happiness, I’m able to partake in something in a positive way for the family that received such devastating actions. It's a combination — sweet and bitter."

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And there were others who helped make the day happen. When cemetery workers went to order the gravestone, they discovered there was not one gravesite, as initially thought, but three separate graves. The cemetery, which had donated the plots in 2010, donated the additional $4,500 needed for Franki, Eric and Joshua to have individual footstones.

"Any time a Jewish family is in need, we’re always here to help," said Jonathan Weis, general manager at Star of David. "Putting families over profit is so important because of the faith."

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Weis, along with Greg Mirante, the sales manager at the cemetery, never knew the Jacobsons, but both attended the unveiling.

"For the kids and the wife to be properly laid to rest with memorialization and a rabbi present, I think it's the right thing to do," Mirante said.

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The Palm Beach Post spent about two years examining the events leading up to and following the Jan. 23, 2010, killings at the Jacobson home, trying to figure out what might have caused what appeared to be a loving, well-respected family man to commit such a heinous crime.

Amid the reporting, in a series of exclusive interviews, The Post spoke with Neal Jacobson, who pleaded guilty and is now serving three life sentences in a maximum-security prison.

Jacobson told The Post what he was thinking when he shot to death his family. He also talked about his rapid downward spiral in the weeks leading up to the murders after doctors at a walk-in clinic prescribed him antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication.

More than a decade after the killings, the pain still lingers in the hearts of those who knew and loved the family.

Grief can be difficult to process, and Krimsky said that readers or family friends still troubled by the killings can help ease their pain and elevate the family's souls, as well as their own, by performing acts of kindness in honor of Franki, Eric and Joshua. This can be something big, such as donating to a charity in their memory, or something small, such as performing a "mitzvah," or good deed, on their behalf.

"It could just be smiling at someone today on purpose so that they feel a little better," Krimsky said. "It could be telling someone you love them or buying coffee for the person behind you. When we do it in their memory, we believe it elevates their soul — it's almost like two good deeds in one."