Police: Acquisto’s motive was money
TIVERTON – One of Woonsocket’s most notorious criminals murdered an 81-year-old Massachusetts man in a cemetery here earlier this month in a dispute over a “substantial sum” of money he had borrowed from a church where they both worshipped, police have concluded.
Police Chief Thomas Blakey said Edward C. Acquisto, 80, had borrowed the money from the Mayflower Congregational Church in Kingston, Mass., in 2011. Acquisto reneged on an agreement to repay the money.
Acquisto arranged to meet with fellow church member John A. Cloud, a Kingston resident, in the Pocasset Hill Cemetery on the night of June 13 to discuss the situation. At that time the two octogenarians got in an argument during which Acquisto is believed to have shot Cloud twice with a .22-caliber handgun, fatally wounding him.
Acquisto was later shot to death after trading gunfire with several Tiverton and Fall River police officers who chased his car into a residential area near the cemetery.
Blakey declined to say how much money Acquisto borrowed from the Mayflower Church, but he said police have no idea what he did with the funds.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, I have no idea,” said Blakey.
Acquisto spent most of his life in Woonsocket and was frequently in trouble with the law before he was sentenced to life in prison in 1979 following a conviction for raping a 39-year-old woman in a Blackstone Street apartment.
Within a year, he was convicted of a separate charge of manslaughter that had been hanging over his head before the rape conviction. He was sentenced to 10 more years at the Adult Correctional Institutions.
The manslaughter charges stemmed from the beating death of a 59-year-old bartender inside the former White Eagle Cafe on River Street, a crime that also occurred in 1979. During his trial, witnesses testified the beating happened after the bartender, John Teja, refused to serve Acquisto liquor after last call.
Acquisto was also charged with attempted murder in the 1977 beating of a Cumberland man who lapsed into a years-long coma after the attack. As Acquisto languished in prison, the state eventually withdrew those charges for lack of a timely prosecution.
The victim in that case, Donald Shepherd, never regained consciousness and died in 1989. Upon Shepherd’s death, prosecutors visited the question of whether they should bring
murder charges against Acquisto.
They concluded that the prevailing law of the day barred them from doing so because the death occurred too long after the attack. At the time, state law held no one could be prosecuted for murder if the death occurred more than one year and one day
after the victim suffered the injuries that allegedly caused it.
Despite repeated appearances before the parole board, Acquisto remained in prison until May 1995, when he was finally released.
But freedom didn’t last for Acquisto.
Not long after he was released, his parole was revoked for drinking and he was returned to the ACI. He was deemed a parole violator a second time for shoplifting in 1998.
He served five more years at the ACI before he was set free again in May 2003, at which point he reportedly resettled in Tiverton.
Various published accounts say Acquisto appeared to have taken up religion at some point. He was known to frequent Pocasset Hill Cemetery as a place to pray and read from a Bible he took with him.
Unlike Acquisto, Cloud had no criminal record, according to Blakey. By all accounts, Cloud appeared to be man of high moral character who wasn’t looking for trouble.
“John A. Cloud of Kingston died unexpectedly on June 13th steadfast in his belief of the good in people,” the first line in his obituary reads.
A U.S. Army veteran and a graduate of Tufts University, Cloud left behind a wife and three children, among others.