Between July 5 and July 7, 2017, four young men were reported missing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. All were subsequently found murdered. The victims were Dean A. Finocchiaro, age 19; Thomas C. Meo, age 21; Jimi T. Patrick, age 19; and Mark R. Sturgis, age 22. The murders are suspected to have been carried out by Cosmo DiNardo and Sean Michael Kratz, both age 20 at the times of the murder. The four victims were murdered in three separate incidents, each after DiNardo arranged to sell them marijuana.
Murder victims
The disappearances began on July 5, 2017, with Patrick being the first of the men to vanish. Two days later, on July 7, Meo, Finocchiaro, and Sturgis were also reported missing. Each of the four men was reported to be murdered the same day he went missing.
Dean A. Finocchiaro was last seen around 6:30 PM on July 7 being picked up by an unidentified person, possibly DiNardo or Kratz. His remains were found on July 12, 2017 in a common grave on a Solebury Township farm, along with the remains of Mark Sturgis and Thomas Meo. Finocchiaro's body was the first to be identified. Finocchiaro and DiNardo had a good relationship, with DiNardo saying that they were like cousins. As with Patrick, Finocchiaro had agreed to buy marijuana from DiNardo. This was the first murder in which Kratz was involved; the two men both repeatedly shot Finocchiaro. His body was placed in a metal oil tank that had been converted to a pork roaster.
Mark R. Sturgis went to meet his friend Thomas C. Meo at around 6:00 PM on July 7. Both men worked for Sturgis' father's construction company. The two did not show up for work and calls to their cellphones went directly to voice mail. DiNardo met with Sturgis and Meo at a church to sell Meo marijuana. Meo and Sturgis were both shot as they exited their truck. When he ran out of ammunition, DiNardo drove over the still-alive Meo with a backhoe, then placed both bodies in a metal tank that also held Finocchiaro's body. DiNardo attempted unsuccessfully to burn the bodies using gasoline. He used the backhoe to bury the tank containing the three bodies.
DiNardo, a drug dealer, confessed to killing the four men; he said he did so because he felt cheated or threatened during drug transactions. The only motive disclosed by investigators was that DiNardo said he wanted to set the victims up when they came to the farm to buy marijuana.
Investigation
On the afternoon of July 8, authorities tracked Finocchiaro's cell phone to a farm in the Solebury Township owned by DiNardo's parents, Antonio and Sandra DiNardo, who also own a cement and construction company. While being investigated for the four July 2017Pennsylvania murders, DiNardo also claimed to be responsible for at least two other killings in the previous five years in Philadelphia. Investigators have yet to verify these claims.
Arrests
Second cousins Cosmo DiNardo and Sean Michael Kratz, both age 20, were charged in the murders. On July 10, DiNardo was arrested for an unrelated weapons charge. He was not allowed to own a firearm due to his schizophrenia; nevertheless, at least one of the firearms used by the perpetrators belonged to DiNardo's mother. Despite 30 run-ins with local police, DiNardo, the son of a wealthy businessman, had for unexplained reasons never been convicted of a crime. DiNardo was later released after his father posted 10% of the $1 million bail. On July 12, DiNardo was arrested and charged for stealing and attempting to sell a car that belonged to Thomas Meo for $500. Suspicion was also raised by the fact that Meo left his insulin in the car, something his family said would have been unusual for him to do. His bail was set at $5 million. The next day, DiNardo confessed to the murder of the four men. In exchange for his confession, prosecutors stated that they would not seek the death penalty. The day after his confession, DiNardo was charged with four counts of criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, and 12 other charges. On July 14, Sean Michael Kratz was also charged with three counts of criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, abuse of a corpse, and two other charges. Unlike DiNardo, Kratz had a criminal history of burglary, conspiracy, criminal trespassing, theft, receiving stolen property, and criminal mischief. On May 16, 2018, DiNardo pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. On July 31, 2018, the newspaper outlet philly.com reported Kratz denied his chance at a plea deal and that his trial is expected to begin in 2019. On November 15, 2019, Kratz was convicted of first- and second-degree murder in the death of Dean Finocchiaro and voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of Tom Meo and Mark Sturgis and was later sentenced to life in prison.
