Irving Flax, a 58-year-old Fair Lawn businessman, left home on the morning of January 23, 1989, intending to drive to work. He never reached his car. John Martini and Martini’s girlfriend and accomplice, Theresa Afdahl, seized him in his driveway, forced him into his own vehicle, and drove away in a kidnapping-for-ransom plot. Martini called Irving’s wife, Marilyn, demanding $100,000 and later reducing the demand to $25,000. Under FBI direction, Marilyn delivered the money that evening while agents surveilled the drop, but the kidnappers slipped away and Irving did not return home.

The next morning Irving’s body was found in his car in the Garden State Plaza parking lot in Paramus; he had been shot three times in the back of the head at very close range. Investigators later determined Martini killed him so he could not be identified. By January 25, 1989, Martini and Afdahl had been captured and charged in the kidnapping and murder. Does anyone have information about Irving’s last hours or recall unusual activity in Fair Lawn that day?