After 4 Suburban Lives Are Lost, 2 Cousins Are Charged in Pennsylvania Killings
Mr. DiNardo has been described by prosecutors, his own lawyers
and the police as mentally ill — last summer, he was sent involuntarily to a mental hospital — and another young man who socialized with him and two of the victims said Mr. DiNardo had talked about killing people and having people killed.
Mr. DiNardo wrapped the body in a blue tarp and used the backhoe to put it into a metal tank he called “the pig roaster,”
which Mr. Weintraub, the district attorney, described as “an old oil tank that had been converted into a cooker.”
Both suspects said Mr. DiNardo had arranged another meeting that night to sell marijuana to Mr. Meo, who showed up with his friend, Mr. Sturgis.
The location was so remote, the district attorney said,
that if Mr. DiNardo had not told police exactly where the body was, “I don’t know if we would ever have found it.”
On July 7, two days later, both suspects told investigators, they drove to Mr. Finocchiaro’s home in Middletown,
ostensibly to sell him four ounces of marijuana, but decided on the way to rob him instead.
Police complaints filed against the defendants on Friday said Mr. DiNardo told investigators
that he had an accomplice, Sean M. Kratz, identified in the complaints as his cousin.
The complaints said that Mr. DiNardo ran out of ammunition and, to make sure Mr. Meo was dead, he drove over him with the backhoe.
There, the complaints said, Mr. Patrick admitted that he had only $800, and Mr. DiNardo offered to sell him a shotgun instead.
