Two men accused in farm murders
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Two 20-year-old men committed the murders of four young men who disappeared in the suburbs of Philadelphia last week, authorities charged on Friday, claiming that the suspects lured the victims to a remote farm with the promise of drug deals, shot them, ran one over with a backhoe and tried to burn three of the bodies in a “pig roaster.”
The initial suspect, Cosmo DiNardo, was arrested days ago on lesser charges and confessed to the killings Thursday, according to one of his lawyers. Police complaints filed against the defendants on Friday said that DiNardo told investigators he had an accomplice, Sean M. Kratz, who was identified in the complaints as DiNardo’s cousin. By Friday morning, Kratz was also in custody.
Prosecutors charged DiNardo, who knew the victims, with all four murders and Kratz with three of them, and both men face a host of related charges. Officials did not offer any motive for the killings.
“I’m not really sure if we could ever answer that question,” Matthew D. Weintraub, the Bucks County district attorney, said at a news conference.
The arrest of Kratz, who has a history of burglary, theft and related arrests, widened the scope of an already sprawling case that has involved a large-scale hunt for the victims, searches of multiple properties and excavations on the farm in Solebury Township owned by DiNardo’s parents. That excavation yielded the remains of four bodies that Weintraub said had been identified as the missing men: Jimi Taro Patrick, 19; Dean Finocchiaro, 19; Thomas Meo, 21; and Mark Sturgis, 22.
DiNardo, who lives in Bensalem, Pa., confessed in exchange for prosecutors agreeing not to seek the death penalty, one of his lawyers told reporters. He has been described by prosecutors, his own lawyers and the police as mentally ill.
The Bensalem Police Department had frequent dealings with DiNardo, according to the department’s director, Frederick Harran, but he would not elaborate. Local youths said DiNardo was known to sell drugs and guns.
The complaints against the two men state that Kratz admitted he intended to rob some of the victims, and to being present for three of the killings, but not to taking part in any of them.
“There was an attempt to burn the bodies, to deface them, to obliterate them, but I don’t believe it was successful,” Weintraub said.
Both suspects said that they returned to the farm on July 8, the complaints say, where DiNardo used the backhoe to dig a hole, and then put the three partially burned bodies into it.
It was that same day that investigators began to focus on the farm, after detecting a signal there from Finocchiaro’s cellphone.