When Stephanie Parze’s father discovered his daughter was missing, he immediately had one suspect – her ex-boyfriend.
“I didn’t like this guy from the day I met him,” Ed Parze told Fox News Digital. “I never saw eye to eye with this guy. He was always at my side. I even told my daughter, ‘I don’t like him. You have to be careful with him.’ He was weird. I got the impression from day one. … I just said, ‘This is him.'”
The case of the New Jersey-based makeup artist is being investigated in Investigation Discovery’s (ID) true-crime series, “Deadly Influence.” It exposes the dark side of social media, and exposes the dark reality of toxic online communities.
Stephanie Parze was a New Jersey-based social media influencer and makeup artist. (investigation Discovery)
“I’m speaking out because we need to spread awareness so this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Ed said. “This also keeps Stephanie alive.”
Ed described his daughter as a 4-foot-11-inch “firecracker” who had a passion for art. His followers on social media increased.
“I didn’t realise she had such an influence on social media until the incident happened,” Ed admitted. “I knew she was doing some work on social media and putting up some artwork. She was always sending me something and I thought it was amazing. But I didn’t realise how long it took her to build up such a following so quickly.”
Ed Parze, Stephanie Parze’s father, speaks out in the i-D true-crime series “Deadly Influence.” (investigation Discovery)
Ed said Parze met John Ozbilgen, a New Jersey stockbroker who worked in Staten Island, on an online dating site. The two chatted on social media before meeting in person.
“It happened really fast,” Ed recalled.
But the relationship was tumultuous. According to the series, Parze accused Ozbilgen of assault. She wanted to end the relationship.
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According to the series, Stephanie Parze met John Ozbiljan on a dating site. (investigation Discovery)
Ed said he initially tried to warn his daughter about getting into a relationship with 29-year-old Ozbilgen.
“She would say, ‘Give him a chance, he’s shy. Once you get to know him, you’ll like him,'” Ed said. “What do you say to that? You have my 25-year-old independent, strong daughter. She knows what she’s doing. You’d hope you’d be proven wrong. But I still had that gut feeling. And then my gut feeling was proven right.”
Perze was last seen on October 30, 2019. She left her parents’ home after spending the night with relatives. She then went back to her late grandmother’s house, but did not show up for her nanny job the next day. Her car and phone were found at the home, but there were no signs of forced entry.
According to the series, Stephanie Parze was murdered on October 31, 2019. (investigation Discovery)
“Stephanie only lived six minutes from here,” Ed said. “She would always call and text when she was home. But when 25 minutes went by and we didn’t hear anything, we immediately knew something was wrong.”
Perze’s mother called her daughter anxiously but got no answer. Ed hoped her daughter, exhausted from the evening’s festivities, would put her phone on silent and go to sleep. But still, she felt uneasy.
“If you blew up her phone, she would call you right away,” Ed said. “We went to sleep that night not knowing what happened. The next morning, we still hadn’t gotten that phone call. Then we went home. … We couldn’t find her at all. Nobody had seen her. And that’s when the search began.”
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The Perze family held a rally at Freehold Township High School to continue the “Bring Steph Home” campaign. Many volunteers joined in the search for her. (Picture)
Parze’s family organized a search party to find the influencer. More than 100 volunteers, many of them online followers, helped.
“I went on Facebook every night and started putting posts on there,” Ed said. “More and more people came forward to help. It touched my heart. … I didn’t realize how far these posts had reached people. … A lot of people recognized Stephanie because of her face and how she was online all the time.”
The investigators had their eyes on Ozbilgen. An interesting person. According to the series, they discovered she had sent 10 angry, unanswered text messages to Perje the night before she disappeared.
Stephanie Parze’s ex-boyfriend John Ozbiljan arrives at state Superior Court on Nov. 19, 2019, in Freehold. (Thomas P. Costello/Asbury Park Press/Imagen)
On Nov. 8, 2019, Ozbilgen was arrested and charged with third-degree endangering the welfare of a child – possession of child pornography, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. The photos were found on his phone by authorities investigating Parze’s disappearance. He remained in custody until Nov. 19, when he was released.
Özbilgen committed suicide on November 22, 2019. Although he was never charged with Parze’s disappearance, he left a note that suggests he was responsible for her murder.
Ed said he received an anonymous phone call that day. All he heard was, “He’s dead. He hanged himself.” The mysterious caller hung up.
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Ed Parze said he “went crazy” after learning that John Ozbiljan, a suspect in the disappearance of his daughter, Stephanie Parze, died by suicide. (Picture)
“I went crazy,” Ed said. “I lost my temper. I was punching the walls. I was throwing stuff. I was screaming. I was going crazy because, in my mind, he’s the only person who knows where she is. I got in my car. I went to her house, which was only three minutes away.
“A detective met me there and took me out of there. … But I protested. I said, ‘I have to find out. Is this true? Was there anything left behind? Is there a note? … Somebody has to know something.’ (The detective) said, ‘Yes, it’s true. He’s gone. He hanged himself, but we can’t tell you anything else.'”
Tributes to Stephanie Parze outside her family home. (Picture)
“There were two notes,” Ed said. “But still no one knew where he was. We’ll keep looking until we find him.”
In a note to his parents, Ozbiljan said that “enough is enough for him and he cannot serve a life sentence” and that what his parents had heard in the news was “true except for the child pornography charges.” Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramicchioni. Ozbiljan also wrote that he had “dug a deep hole for himself” and “this was the only option.”
Investigators near the location in Old Bridge where Stephanie Parze’s body was found. (Picture)
In January 2020, two teenagers walking south along Route 9 found human remains in Old Bridge. Authorities confirmed it was Stephanie. According to reports, due to the state of decomposition, authorities were unable to determine how Parze was killed.
Ed’s work wasn’t over after Stephanie’s funeral. On his daughter’s birthday that year, he Stephanie Nicole Parze FoundationIt aims to “provide education, intervention, and support to families and individuals struggling with domestic violence, sexual abuse, and the disappearance of loved ones.”
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Stephanie Parze’s casket is carried from St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Freehold on Jan. 31, 2020. (Picture)
“We want to save lives and prevent this from happening to other people,” Ed said. “Our membership has grown from six to 128. Right now, we cover the entire state of New Jersey. … We have about 13 different programs we offer to the public … from self-defense classes to alarm systems. We’re trying to pass legislation for Stephanie’s Law, which would establish a publicly accessible domestic violence registry.”
Ed Parze founded the Stephanie Nicole Parze Foundation to keep his late daughter’s legacy alive. (investigation Discovery)
Today, Ed hopes Parze’s story will encourage other parents to be as careful as possible with their children.
Ed said, “I always tell the students, ‘Love is blind.'” “It’s an old saying, but there’s truth in it. You don’t realize what’s happening to you because you’re blind to it. You don’t realize you’re being manipulated. You don’t realize the person is controlling you, and that they’re isolating you from your friends and family. But your friends will see it. Your siblings will see it. Your parents will know it.
“Love is blind,” Stephanie Parze’s father, Ed, told Fox News Digital. (investigation Discovery)
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“If you’re going through something, don’t hide it from your loved ones,” Ed said. “Tell someone what’s going on in your life, especially if you’ve broken up with someone. Make sure you tell someone you’ve broken up with someone because you don’t know what’s going on in the other person’s mind at that moment. The most dangerous part is during a breakup. That’s when people are at their most vulnerable. That’s when you’ve broken up with someone. That’s when most of the murders happen.”
“Deadly Influence” airs July 1 at 9 p.m. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
