Bucks County District Attorney’s Office(SOLEBURY, Pa.) — The uncle of one of the four Pennsylvania young men killed said he has no qualms with accused killer Cosmo DiNardo, 20, spending his life in jail instead of receiving the death penalty.
“I’m OK with that,” Craig Patrick, the uncle of Jimi Tar Patrick, 19, told ABC Philadelphia affiliate WPVI-TV from his home in Seattle. “I don’t believe in the death penalty. I’d rather see him sit in prison for the next 60 years.”
In exchange for DiNardo’s confession, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said prosecutors will not seek the death penalty.
Uncle of Bucks Co. murder victim reacts to arrests https://t.co/Jiy9fSU60H pic.twitter.com/SB4NdfCent
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DiNardo is accused of killing Jimi Patrick on July 5, and burying him in a single grave on a sprawling farm owned by the DiNardo family.
DiNardo and his cousin Sean Kratz were both charged with criminal homicide in the July 7 deaths of Dean Finocchiaro, 19; Thomas Meo, 21; and Mark Sturgis, 22.
According to court documents, DiNardo told detectives he had agreed to sell Patrick 4 pounds of marijuana for $8,000. DiNardo said he picked up Patrick at the man’s home in Newtown on July 5 and drove him to the DiNardo family’s property in Solebury Township.
DiNardo told investigators Jimi Patrick only had $800, so he instead agreed to sell the man a shotgun for that amount. They then walked to a remote part of the property where DiNardo said he fatally shot Patrick with a .22-caliber rifle. DiNardo said he then drove a backhoe that was on the property to where Patrick lay, dug a hole no more than 6 feet deep and buried his body, according to the court documents.
The uncle, Craig Patrick, told WPVI-TV that he doesn’t believe the killing was merely the result of a drug deal gone bad.
“Four people? I mean, this is something he thought about,” Patrick said. “He dug a hole, he spent the time to burn the bodies, and he spent the time to cover it up.”
He continued, “This is a methodically plotted out, calculated chain of events. This isn’t something that happened because a drug deal went south.”
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