April 02, 2022
A man was arrested and charged last week with the murder of four male acquaintances between the ages of 19 – 22.
The man in question, 20 year old Cosmo DiNardo, murdered the four young men and buried them on his family’s farm in Pennsylvania.
He told authorities that he lured the victims there under the assumption that he would sell them weed and then proceeded to pick them off one by one and dispose of them. His cousin, Sean M. Kratz, also partook in the killings and was charged for his involvement in the multiple murders.
The DiNardo family farm has been described in various news reports as a sprawling 90 acre property in a rural part of Bucks County. DiNardo’s parents both run successful businesses, one of which their son briefly worked for after dropping out of college. According to his friends, he traded it all in in favor of selling drugs and weapons.
Many people who knew him described his aggressive pursuit of women through various social networking websites while others remember comments he had made about wanting to kill people, with some even referring to him as outright “crazy”.
It seems that DiNardo did have an underlying violent streak; a violent streak that was only magnified after a vehicular accident that he was involved in, which apparently left him stranded in the woods for several hours with a brain injury. In an article in the NY times a friend of DiNardo’s stated that he believes that the killer became much more violent following the crash and that this change came as a result of the head injury.
*DiNardo affidavit: source
DiNardo was said to have sent strange snapchat messages to various friends in a group. The snaps apparently featured guns. The 20 year-old killer didn’t legally own any of the firearms in his possession and was actually unable to register a gun in his own name due to a history of mental health issues.
*DiNardo snapchat screenshot source
I did see a still of an affidavit for Cosmo DiNardo referencing at least one occasion where he was involuntarily committed to an institution, however I can find no further information pertaining as to why and when.
Newtown resident Jimmi Taro Patrick, who was only 19 years old, was shot dead on DiNardo’s family property when attempting to buy weed on July 5th 2017.
Patrick was the first of the four to be murdered and buried six feet down in a grave that DiNardo had dug using a backhoe.
His grandfather reported him missing the following day.
Two days later 19 year-old Middletown township resident, Dean Finocchiaro, would later be dealt the same tragic fate.
This time Kratz was involved and the plan was supposedly to rob the victim out in the woods. Kratz had a criminal history of robbery and so far it is unclear if he knew DiNardo was going to murder Finocchiaro or not. According to the court documents, Kratz was the one to shoot Finocchiaro while his back was turned. DiNardo claimed to have only shot Finocchiaro after he was dead.
A CNN article from July 15th reports that both men blamed each other for the homicide. The victim’s body was put into (from what I gather) a metal tank that DiNardo referred to as “the pig roaster”.
Two friends, 21 year-old Thomas Meo and 22 year-old Mark Sturgis, also fell victim to Cosmo DiNardo’s violent tendencies when they too were gunned down on the property
Sturgis is thought to have died of a fatal gunshot would. However, it is believed that Meo did not die in the same manner and was crushed when DiNardo plowed over his body with the backhoe.
DiNardo then burned the young men’s bodies in “the pig roaster”; probably in order to render them completely unrecognizable, before burying what was left of their remains in a 12 foot deep grave.
DiNardo came under suspicion for his involvement with the missing men when he attempted to make a quick $500 selling Thomas Meo’s 1996 Nissan Maxima. He avoided the death penalty by turning in his cousin as an accomplice and revealing the location of Patrick’s remains (which was a fair distance from the other gravesite.)
You can read the court records HERE.
According to claims made by DiNardo, the four men were not his first victims. He alleges that he murdered a man and woman when he was just 15 years old and said the crimes took place in Philadelphia. Authorities are investigating the claims, although they seem to be skeptical of the information.
Patch.com references a report from NBC10 that talks about DiNardo’s confession to killing a woman in the basement of a house. It does not mention motive or method. Apparently Cosmo provided a nickname for the male victim but (as I write this) there have been no further updates.
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