A BIZARRE, TRAGIC SPREE FINALLY ENDS
How police apprehended Peter Manfredonia, the UConn student suspected in two killings
Nearly 24 hours after breaking into a home in eastern Connecticut — hiding from police seeking to question him about a violent killing with a samurai sword — Peter Manfredonia grabbed food, guns and car keys and told his hostage it was all “gonna end in a shootout or a death row thing,” according to a law enforcement source.
The 6-foot-3 University of Connecticut finance and engineering student allegedly stole the man’s vehicle and fled. By the time he was caught in the woods behind a truck stop in western Maryland, more than 300 miles from the bloody murder scene in rural Willington, he had killed a former Newtown High School classmate, kidnapped that man’s girlfriend and stolen at least two cars, police said.
Manfredonia, 23, eluded a multistate manhunt for six days. When police finally caught up with him at the Pilot Travel Center in Hagerstown, Md., just after 9 p.m. Wednesday, he did not surrender, an official said, but also did not fight when officers rushed him and ordered him to the ground.
“Everyone was on the parking lot of the Pilot when the suspect came out from between two trucks and acted like he was going into the store,” Washington County Sheriff Doug Mullendore told The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown.
“We had been searching for him in that area and basically had reconvened at the Pilot,” Mullendore said. ”That’s when he came out. I guess he didn’t realize there were so many cops there, because everybody was in plain clothes and plain cars.”
Manfredonia is expected to face murder, home invasion and kidnapping charges. He waived extradition during a brief court hearing Thursday in Hagerstown and is expected to appear back in a
Connecticut court as soon as this week.
The arrest ended a bizarre and tragic crime spree that played out across four states, commanded the attention of at least 10 law enforcement agencies and cost two men their lives.
Violence ‘out of nowhere’
Manfredonia grew up in Sandy Hook, on the same street as school shooter Adam Lanza. Manfredonia’s mother taught science at Newtown High School; both mother and son were at the high school on Dec. 14, 2012, the day Lanza shot 20 children and six educators. (Manfredonia later raised about $2,000 for Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit formed after the shootings that supports programs and policies addressing the human toll of gun violence.)
Manfredonia played football and was a track athlete in high school before enrolling at UConn in 2015. He was a finance and mechanical engineer major and worked at Ted’s Restaurant and Bar, a Storrs hangout popular with UConn students.
The family’s attorney said Manfredonia had “mental health issues” and had seen several therapists but that the violent acts he is accused of “came out of nowhere.”
Police say his spree started around 9 a.m. May 22 when he parked his motorcycle on Mirtl Road, a winding country lane in tiny Willington, and started walking down the street. He was armed with a samurai sword or machete. Investigators have not said why they believe Manfredonia was there, but sources said he knew someone from UConn who lived on the street.
As he walked toward her house, a neighborly 62ye a r- o l d wo o d wo r ke r named Ted DeMers noticed the tall, young stranger and asked if he needed help. DeMers, a Mirtl Road resident, offered to give
Manfredonia a lift on his four-wheeler to where Manfredonia had left his motorcycle.
It was a fatal mistake. There was a violent confrontation, and DeMers was killed. A second neighbor, an 80-year-old man, was badly injured after he went to DeMers’ aid.
“On a bright Friday morning in May, Ted was doing something he had done a million times before and would have done a million times more if not for a simple and cruel twist of fate — he simply offered a hand to a stranger in need,” DeMers’ family wrote in his obituary. “For this good deed, his life was taken from him and his earthly presence from all of us.
Police responded to the crime scene within minutes, but Manfredonia had already slipped away. Police do not know where he went, but believe he spent the night in the woods or in a garage somewhere in Willington.
At 11:26 a.m. Saturday, state police took to social media and put out an alert for Manfredonia, along with his photo. By then, investigators theorize he had already made his way into the Willington home, where he was holding the 73-year-occupant hostage not far from the murder scene.
Manfredonia did not harm the man, police said, but he did steal guns and food from him, along with the man’s pickup truck.
On Sunday, another killing
At some point very early last Sunday morning, Manfredonia set out from the Willington area and headed west to Derby, where he knew Nicholas Eisele, a young man who grew up with him in Newtown.
When he was almost at Eisele’s home in Derby, Manfredonia crashed the pickup near Osborndale State Park. He left the pickup and continued on foot to Eisele’s home on Roosevelt Drive, where he killed him, shooting the 23-year-old man in the head several times, according to a police account.
Eisele loved animals and had a passion for art and design. “Most of all, Nick is remembered by his awesome sense of humor, his gratitude, and his heart of gold,” his obituary says.
Local police found the truck around 7 a.m. Sunday and discovered it was registered to an individual in Willington who lived near the homicide scene from Friday. A massive manhunt in Derby quickly unfolded, with aviation support, K9 teams, drones, a tactical team as well as negotiators and detectives.
At 11 a.m., police discovered Eisele, deceased, after a 911 call requesting a wellbeing check.
Manfredonia, however, was long gone and on his way west to New Jersey.
Police suspect a heavilyarmed Manfredonia kidnapped Eisele’s girlfriend and stole her car, a black Volkswagon Jetta. The uninjured woman and the car were found Sunday afternoon at a truck stop along I-80 in New Jersey, about 7 miles from the Pennsylvania state line.
An Uber escape
Meanwhile, Manfredonia had used a ride-hailing app to make his way to a Walmart in East Stroudsburg, Pa., according to the Pennsylvania State Police.
“After conducting interviews and viewing security footage, it was learned that the suspect was last seen walking behind the Walmart onto a set of train tracks carrying a duffel bag,” states a timeline released by police. They released a photo of him that had been captured by a security camera, with a strongly worded warning: “DO NOT APPROACH, ARMED & DANGEROUS — CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY!”
From Sunday night to his apprehension Wednesday night in Maryland, there were sporadic sightings. At 9 p.m. Sunday, Pennsylvania State Police issued an alert that a Hyundai Santa Fe had been stolen. At 11 p.m. Monday, a firefighter in Duryea, Pa., reported seeing Manfredonia sitting on a picnic table near the fire department, but a search for him turned up empty.
Investigators tracking Manfredonia had help from security cameras and his ride-hailing apps. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania State Police warned Uber and Lyft drivers that Manfredonia “may attempt to solicit ride-sharing services, possibly through third-party means, to flee the area.”
Red shoes and the US Marshals
Sometime on Tuesday morning, Manfredonia made a fateful mistake: He stood in the checkout line at at Sheetz convenience store in Chambersburg, Pa., wearing a pair of red sneakers. Police, converging on the area as they closed in on Manfredonia, obtained surveillance video of the transaction.
They soon found the Hyundai Santa Fe, stolen Sunday night, nearby.
Manfredonia stayed on the move, once again using a ride service to cross the state line into Maryland, taking an Uber to Hagerstown. Acting on a tip, Hagerstown police combed through surveillance video in the city. They were able to track where Manfredonia had been dropped off on Tuesday night and interview the Uber driver.
As he hid somewhere in Hagerstown on Tuesday night, his fifth night on the run, Manfredonia would not have known that a special group within the U.S. Marshals was silently tracking him. When law enforcement searches for a fugitive, they invariably turn to the marshals service, which has a reputation as being the best at tracking cellphones and finding people.
It is unclear how Manfredonia was ordering rides — he didn’t have his cellphone and sources said a phone he found in the Derby woman’s car was inactivated. The Marshals have the ability to track not only cellphones but also credit cards and bank accounts since Manfredonia would have had to pay for the rides.
Another day passed as law enforcement, including Connecticut State Police Detective Michael Zella, descended upon the Hagerstown area.
By Wednesday night, the marshals believed that Manfredonia was in the area of the truck stop, and the searches started in that area with no success at first.
It was the red sneakers that ultimately gave Manfredonia away.
As police were re-gathering after another fruitless search at about 9 p.m. Wednesday evening, Zella saw a tall man standing about 20 feet away wearing a blue T-shirt, a black bandana and red sneakers.
“As they were talking about his height, 6-3, 6-4, one of the team members turned and approximately 20 feet away from them was a gentleman who was 6-foot-4,” said Lt. Michael Pendleton, commander of the Central District Major Crime Squad.
The man matched the surveillance photo of Manfredonia, too, Pendleton said.
“Immediately Det. Zella and the team went over to Mr. Manfredonia with their guns drawn and told him to get on the ground,” Pendleton said. “At that point, he went to the ground. He did not resist and absolutely no force was used to effect the arrest.”
Nearby a duffel bag contained a gun police believe was used in the Derby homicide. It’s unclear if Manfredonia was aware the cops were looking for him before he stepped out between the two trucks.
The manhunt ended, not in a shootout as Manfredonia had boasted to his hostage four days earlier, but with him lying in the grass near a Maryland truck stop with his hands cuffed behind his back by a state police detective who tracked him from rural eastern Connecticut.