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Thread: Sean Kratz and Cosmo DiNardo Sentenced to LWOP in 2017 PA Multiple Murders

  1. #21
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Edited:

    Jury selection begins in Solebury murder trial

    By Chris Ullery
    The Intelligencer

    Up to 18 jurors are expected to be assigned to the trial of Sean Kratz, 22, for his alleged role in the murder of four men in Solebury two years ago. His cousin, Cosmo DiNardo, is already serving four life sentences in the case. Kratz faces the death penalty if convicted.

    Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a Philadelphia man who authorities allege killed a man and helped his cousin in the murder of two others on a Solebury farm two years ago.

    Sean Kratz, 22, of Philadelphia, if convicted faces the death penalty in the brutal killings, while his cousin, who took a plea deal last year, is serving multiple life sentences for the slayings.

    The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and defense attorneys can’t comment on the trial due to a long-existing gag order in the case that garnered international headlines, but court documents show up to 18 jurors are expected to be selected over the next two weeks.

    Opening arguments, however, are not expected to begin until Nov. 6. Officials expect it to take a week, according to court documents.

    https://www.theintell.com/news/20190...y-murder-trial
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #22
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    On video, Kratz blames cousin Cosmo DiNardo for Bucks County farm murders, calls him ‘sick monster’

    By Laurie Mason Schroeder
    Morning Call

    In a high-pitched voice that cracked frequently as he spoke, Sean Kratz told two Bucks County detectives that his cousin Cosmo DiNardo was the lone gunman in the murders of four young men on a Solebury farm two summers ago.

    “He’s a sick monster,” Kratz said during a July 13, 2017, interview at a Philadelphia police precinct. “He’s taking people to this farm and they’re not coming back.”

    Kratz, who was picked up by police after DiNardo, 22, of Bensalem confessed to the killings and implicated Kratz, doubled down on his assertion that he had nothing to do with the murders as the detectives pressed him harder.

    In a video of the interview played for the jury deciding Kratz’s capital murder case in Doylestown on Thursday, the 22-year-old Philadelphia man claimed that he stayed in DiNardo’s pickup truck while his cousin was shooting three of the men, and implored him to stop.

    “I said to [DiNardo], ‘Yo, why are doing this? Your family has money.’ I don’t know if he didn’t take his medicines. He was just raging,” Kratz said.

    Kratz told the detectives that he was afraid to call police after watching DiNardo burn the victims’ bodies and bury them with a backhoe.

    “'If you say anything, I’m going to kill you next,'” Kratz claimed DiNardo told him.

    Kratz’s words in the hourslong video, which jurors will watch more of Friday, corroborated his attorney’s argument that Kratz’s only crime was watching DiNardo carry out the murders and not seeking help.

    Deputy District Attorney Kate Kohler countered that Kratz lied throughout the interview, and that he omitted that he shot one of the victims in the head and helped his cousin dispose of the bodies.

    Kratz is charged with first-degree, abuse of a corpse and other crimes in the slayings of Dean Finocchiaro, 19, of Middletown Township, Tom Meo, 21, of Plumstead Township, and Mark Sturgis, 22, of Pennsburg.

    DiNardo pleaded guilty in 2018 to killing the men, as well Jimi Patrick, 19, of Newtown Township. He is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders.

    Jurors began the day viewing gruesome crime scene photos of the bodies that were pulled out of a 14-foot ditch on the DiNardo family’s farm near Peddler’s Village after a massive search involving dozens of law enforcement agencies.

    As the victims’ families wept in the courtroom, forensic pathologist Dr. Ian Hood pointed out bullet holes and scorch marks on the bodies. Prosecutors say the cousins killed the victims, then doused their bodies with gasoline and set them ablaze before using a backhoe to dig the pit that would become their grave.

    Prosecutors called several witnesses Thursday morning who said they saw Kratz after the July 7 killings. Jordyn Breitenbach, a friend of DiNardo’s brother, testified that Kratz was walking and acting normally when he arrived with DiNardo at the family’s Bensalem home that night.

    James Cartagena, an employee of DiNardo’s father, said he saw Kratz operating a high-powered pressure washer as he cleaned DiNardo’s pickup truck the next morning.

    Their testimony countered defense attorney A. Charles Peruto Jr.'s argument that Kratz could not have participated in the killings because he was walking with crutches and was deathly afraid of DiNardo. Peruto told the jury earlier in the trial that DiNardo threatened to kill Kratz’s family, and then him, if he went to police.

    It was also revealed in court that DiNardo’s father, Antonio, came to the farm in the midst of the killings, but reversed his vehicle almost immediately after entering the property because he had his mistress in the car and did not want to run into his son. The woman, who testified Thursday, said she and the elder DiNardo did not see anything suspicious.

    Kratz last year rejected a plea deal to third-degree murder that would have landed him in prison for 59 to 118 years but allowed him to avoid the death penalty. He is being held in Bucks County jail without bail.

    Peruto told jurors when the trial began that Kratz will take the stand. That could happen Friday.

    https://www.mcall.com/news/pennsylva...l5e-story.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #23
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    In video, Sean Kratz comes clean about Bucks County killings; Cosmo DiNardo defies subpoena to testify

    By Laurie Mason Schroeder
    Morning Call

    During a four-hour interrogation by Bucks County detectives after the murders, Sean Kratz stuck to his story: He didn’t kill any of the four young men whose bodies were found on his cousin Cosmo DiNardo’s Solebury Township farm in July 2017, and he didn’t hide the murder weapon.

    Nine months later, the 22-year-old Philadelphia man changed his tune.

    In the second of two video recorded interviews viewed Friday by the Bucks County jury deciding capital murder charges against Kratz, his voice cracked with emotion as he described how, at DiNardo’s urging, he fatally shot 19-year Dean Finocchiaro.

    “Dean walked out first,” Kratz said, describing the barn DiNardo had lured Finocchiaro into with the promise of selling him a quarter-pound of marijuana. “Cosmo was to my left. He gave me like a hand gesture, like a gun.”

    Kratz, who was speaking to detectives in hopes of reaching a plea deal to avoid the death penalty in April 2018, continued.

    “I was hesitant,” he said in a shaky voice. “I pulled the gun out, closed my eyes and aimed it in the air and fired a shot.”

    A bullet hit Finocchiaro in the head. He dropped to the floor of the barn, Kratz told the detectives. That’s when DiNardo pulled the gun out of Kratz’s hand, he said, and unloaded another shot into the teen’s head.

    Kratz said he was shaking after the shooting and stumbled out of the barn, “spitting up” the contents of his stomach. DiNardo, Kratz said, was laughing.

    “Relax,” he told Kratz, wrapping an arm around his neck while still holding the .357 Magnum. “You never seen a dead body before?”

    Kratz went on to describe watching his cousin kill two more men who came to the farm to buy marijuana about an hour later, then acting as lookout while DiNardo burned the victims’ bodies in a pig roaster and used a backhoe to bury them in a 14-foot pit.

    Kratz’s words in the video, which brought some members of the victims’ families to tears in the courtroom, was an abrupt change from his first statement to detectives shortly after the men’s bodies were discovered. In that four-hour video, played over two days of the trial, Kratz stuck to his story that he didn’t participate in the killings and blamed the entire crime on his “psychopath” cousin.

    Craig Penglase, Kratz's former court-appointed lawyer, was present during the second interview. He was later removed from the case after leaking recordings of DiNardo’s confession to a Philadelphia television station.

    Kratz’s current attorney, A. Charles Peruto Jr., told jurors that Penglase coerced the confession from Kratz to curry favor with the district attorney’s office.

    Kratz is charged with homicide, conspiracy, abuse of a corpse and other crimes in the deaths of Finocchiaro, of Middletown Township, Tom Meo, 21, of Plumstead Township, and Mark Sturgis, 22, of Pennsburg. DiNardo previously pleaded guilty to killing the men with Kratz, and shooting 19-year-old Jimi Patrick of Newtown Township earlier in the week. He is serving four consecutive life sentences.

    It was revealed Friday that DiNardo would not be testifying, as Peruto promised the jury he would. Chief County Detective Martin McDonough testified that prosecutors sent a subpoena to the state prison near Wilkes-Barre where DiNardo has been held since last year, demanding he appear at trial.

    DiNardo said no.

    “We were advised that he wasn’t going to get on the bus and he didn’t want to testify against his cousin,” McDonough told the jury.

    When an incredulous Peruto asked why DiNardo wasn’t being forced “kicking and screaming” to appear in court, the detective said he could not say why prison officials would not make an inmate comply with a subpoena.

    McDonough reminded Peruto that he can call DiNardo as a witness. It was unclear Friday if that will happen.

    On Friday morning, the jury watched video of detectives interrogating Kratz at a Philadelphia police station six days after the men disappeared. Kratz was picked up by police after DiNardo confessed and implicated him.

    As McDonough and county detective David Kemmerer pressed Kratz on the details of the slayings and pointed out inconsistencies in his story, he tested their patience by whining about his sore muscles from sitting in a chair for hours.

    “We’ve been digging holes all week,” a frustrated McDonough told him.

    The detectives were among hundreds of law enforcement officers who had been searching the farm for nearly a week after the men went missing.

    It wasn’t until the detectives brought in Kratz’s mother, Vanessa Amodei, that he started to cooperate.

    “Save yourself,” Amodei told her son, the video showed. “Because [DiNardo will] bury you like he did those four boys.”

    She implored her son to tell detectives everything.

    “There’s four boys that are gone,” Amodei said. “They have sick families. They deserve to know what happened.”

    After speaking to his mother, Kratz took detectives to his aunt’s Upper Dublin Township home and showed them where the murder weapon was hidden.

    DiNardo was sweating and excited during the “massacre,” Kratz told the detectives, and grabbed Kratz’s face and kissed him several times.

    “They say in Italian, it’s the kiss of death,” Kratz said, explaining why he was afraid of DiNardo.

    The trial resumes Tuesday in Doylestown.

    https://www.mcall.com/news/pennsylva...czm-story.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #24
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mastro Titta's Avatar
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    Sean Kratz Found Guilty Of First-Degree Murder, Voluntary Manslaughter In Deaths Of 3 Men On Bucks County Farm

    By CBS News

    DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (CBS) — Sean Kratz has been found guilty of first-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of three men on a Bucks County farm. The jury deliberated for 18 hours over three days before handing down the verdict.

    The jury convicted Kratz of first- and second-degree murder in the death of 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro and voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of 21-year-old Thomas Meo and 22-year-old Mark Sturgis. They were killed on a Solebury Township farm in 2017.

    He was also convicted on robbery, conspiracy and abuse of corpse charges.

    Cuffs were placed on Kratz immediately after the first count of first-degree murder was read. He then looked down and never looked up again.

    Kratz’s family left the courtroom silently following the verdict.

    Leading up to the verdict, the jury asked the judge several questions, including if Kratz can be convicted on multiple counts of murder; the differences between first-degree and second-degree murder; to rewatch Kratz’s confession tape; and if a person can be held liable for an accomplice’s actions.

    Authorities say the three men were lured to the farm to buy marijuana, but instead, Kratz and his cousin, Cosmo DiNardo, shot them dead, stuffed their bodies into a pig roaster and tried to set them on fire.

    During closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury the three victims would still be alive if not for Kratz. Defense attorney Charles Peruto called Kratz an idiot but said he was scared of DiNardo.

    DiNardo was expected to testify against Kratz but he never did. In another surprise, Peruto said at the start of the trial Kratz would take the stand, but that didn’t happen either.

    DiNardo previously confessed to four murders and will spend the rest of his life in prison.

    Kratz initially pleaded guilty to third-degree murder but later withdrew that plea before the trial started.

    Jurors will be back Monday at 9 a.m. for the penalty phase of the trial. Kratz could face the death penalty.

    https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/20...cosmo-dinardo/
    Last edited by Mastro Titta; 11-16-2019 at 04:08 AM.

  5. #25
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Should I pop in for this? I live about 5 mins away from the courthouse.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  6. #26
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    Kratz receives life sentence after DA drops death penalty

    Sean Kratz was sentenced Monday morning to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Dean Finocchiaro.

    By Christopher Dornblaser
    Bucks County Courier Times

    Sean Kratz has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 19-year-old Dean Finocchiaro, after the Bucks County District Attorney’s office announced plans it would not seek the death penalty.

    Kratz also was sentenced to roughly 30 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter of Tom Meo and Mark Sturgis, robbery and abuse of corpse charges.

    As Kratz stood before him shackled and wearing an orange jumpsuit, Bucks County Judge Jeffrey Finley challenged Kratz’s defense that he was under the duress of his cousin, Cosmo DiNardo, when he committed his crimes.

    “Nothing I say today will bring healing to these individuals. That’s impossible for me to do,” Finley said.

    “You could have removed yourself from this senseless tragedy. I think of the time you drove to Solebury. You held the gun at your side. You had the opportunity to lift that gun, turn it on Cosmo and demand he stop that car and for you to step out. You could have picked up the phone out of your pocket and dial 911. You had the ability to control what happened. You had the source of death in your hand.

    “You claim you were acting out of fear for yourself or your family when you held that gun in your hand. Cosmo DiNardo had no power or control over you at the time.”

    Finley then told Kratz he had an opportunity to stop the slayings at the barn where Meo and Sturgis were killed.

    “Did you turn gun on on (Cosmo) or walk away? Instead you shot Dean Finocchiaro in the head and then you took the instrument of death and handed it over to a person that you told all of us you feared. You gave him the instrument of death which he then turned on Tom Meo and Mark Sturgis. You could have prevented each of those three senseless murders. ”

    After 18 hours of deliberation over three days, jurors on Friday found Kratz had conspired with DiNardo to rob and kill Finocchiaro at a farm in Solebury owned by the DiNardo family. The jury also found Kratz guilty of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of Mark Sturgis, 22, of Pennsburg, Montgomery County, and Tom Meo, 21, of Plumstead.

    “I am awed by the grace demonstrated by the Finocchiaro family in helping me to make this difficult decision to not pursue the death penalty against the defendant,” Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said in a statement. “But I am reminded, that we do this not for the defendant’s benefit, but for our own. It is the right thing to do, and now this criminal saga is over. I hope that the families of Jimi Patrick, Dean Finocchiaro, Tom Meo, and Mark Sturgis can take solace that both DiNardo and Kratz will die in prison for what they did to their boys.”

    DiNardo, 22, pleaded guilty last year to his role in the grisly scheme and is serving four consecutive life sentences for the killings, including that of 19-year-old Newtown Township man Jimi Taro Patrick.

    In addition to the murder and manslaughter charges, Kratz also was found guilty of robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery and murder of Finocchiaro; abuse of corpse; possession of a weapon; possessing an instrument of crime; and receiving stolen property.

    https://www.buckscountycouriertimes....-death-penalty
    Last edited by Steven; 11-18-2019 at 01:20 PM.

  7. #27
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Kratz should've taken the deal, 57 years and possible parole after 30? Who wouldn't take that?

    Thank you DA for not wasting our counties time on this pretend death sentence.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  8. #28
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Opinion:

    Mullane: Denying Sean Kratz the death penalty status he craved

    It would have been satisfying to see the punk who lied, smirked, and chatted through his murder trial get the lethal squirt

    By JD Mullane

    The Intelligencer

    Sean Kratz didn't get death. Pity.

    It would have been satisfying to see the punk who lied, smirked, and chatted through his murder trial get the lethal squirt.

    Opposed as I am to the death penalty (it occasionally kills poor souls railroaded for crimes they didn’t commit), I would have lost no sleep knowing that the rat-like Kratz had vanished from the face of the earth. The way he and his cousin, Cosmo DiNardo, vanished those four young men on a remote Solebury farm in the summer of 2017.

    No sleep lost, no way. Mocking justice, he pleaded not guilty. But, really, there’s no question that Kratz, 22, put a .357 revolver to the head of unsuspecting Dean Finocchiaro and blew him away. Dean went down in an instant, a lake of blood spilling from him.

    Then DiNardo, Kratz’s psycho cousin, stepped up and delivered a coup de grace shot to Dean, of Middletown, who was just 19 years old.

    Photos of the aftermath sicken any normal human. But not Sean Kratz. He looked at his bloody handiwork on a huge courtroom screen like he was viewing someone’s vacation photos, with detached but polite boredom. You knew he was guilty right then. You just knew. And from then on, everything that happened at his trial was courtroom theatrics in his defense.

    No, if he’d gotten death I’d think of Kratz — the dirt bag Kratz, not the trimmed, laundered version in court — and then I’d roll over and drift off, knowing our world is a bit cleaner without him here to hound and haunt and taunt the victims’ families. Which, by the way, I have no doubt he will do from his prison cell, appealing his life sentence for the rest of his time.

    He will do it out of spite. He wanted death. He knows that even though the death penalty is legal in Pennsylvania we don’t use it. The last guy the commonwealth croaked was in 1999. A few years ago when Gov. Tom Wolf took office, he put a hold on state executions, preserving the lives the dark denizens of death row, a nightmarish bunch, if you know their stories. Knowing he wouldn’t die, he wanted the status of being a dead man walking.

    We know this, because DA Matt Weintraub and his staff has heard the recorded prison phone calls Kratz made between his arrest and trial.

    The DA paraphrased Kratz;s conversations, saying, “I hope I get the death penalty,” because then “I’ll get the federal defenders and then I’ll be notorious and people will know who I am and I’ll go in a blaze of glory and I’ll never be put to death anyway.”

    DA Weintraub, who has tried two death penalty cases and is not opposed to using it, said when the jury found Kratz guilty of voluntary homicide and not first degree murder in the killings of two of the victims, Thomas Meo and Mark Sturgis, it removed the “aggravating” circumstances required for a jury to impose death.

    Still, Kratz’s desire for a death penalty conviction also played a big role in withdrawing the prosecution’s request for capital punishment.

    “If I am going to forego the death penalty, it gives me great satisfaction to do it in a case that took away a victory from somebody who wished they could have it for their own perverse reasons,” said Weintraub said.

    He said the state’s recent decision to end solitary for those on death, and placing them in the general population, gives them prison prestige.

    “They become cause célèbres,” he said.

    It was the grisliest thrill-kill in living memory for Bucks County, and worthy of the death penalty.

    In July 2017, the men were lured to the Upper Bucks farm, owned by DiNardo’s wealthy parents, allegedly to buy weed. Jimi Patrick, 19, of Newtown, was the first shot and killed by DiNardo. Finocchiaro, Meo and Sturgis followed two days later, each shot, killed, and burned in pig roaster created from the 55-gallon drum, and buried in a hole dug to 14 feet by DiNardo, using a backhoe.

    DiNardo plead guilty to all four murders, and will die in prison.

    Kratz confessed to killing Dean Finocchiaro, then lied and blamed DiNardo, saying he was pressured to plead by his lawyer. They jury didn’t buy it. He was sentenced to life, no parole, and no bragging rights.

    So he’s notorious, all right, just not the way he thinks he is.

    He’s Notorious kRATz.

    https://www.theintell.com/opinion/20...atus-he-craved
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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