Cosmo DiNardo was born on January 21st, 1997, in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, to Sandra and Tony DiNardo, a couple who ran concrete construction, snow removal, and real estate businesses. Cosmo was the oldest of four children and grew up with money. He attended Holy Ghost Preparatory School, a private Catholic prep school, and in 2005, the family bought a farm in Solebury Township, about twenty miles away. Sandra described Cosmo as a model son, dependable, hardworking, and a good student.
He was a devout Christian, always wearing a cross, carrying a Bible, and decorating his room with crucifixes and statues of saints. During junior high, he was the captain of his football team, the Bucks County Bears, but his playing career ended after a neck injury and several concussions. In 2015, Cosmo graduated and received a scholarship to Arcadia University to study biology. He dropped out after one semester, and his plans to become a Navy SEAL also fell through.
According to Sandra, Cosmo’s mental health began falling apart in 2015 after a breakup. He met a girl named Sarah at a concert and harassed her aggressively on social media. Neighbors and family saw him as polite and helpful, someone who would grab groceries from your hands and carry them to your car. But Sandra was desperate, taking him to at least ten different psychiatrists and psychologists over the years.
Sandra began to wonder if something supernatural was going on. She claimed she’d heard screams in the basement for years, and at first, Tony called her delusional—until he started hearing them, too. After an accident, Sandra took Cosmo to morning mass, and it was around this time that he told her he was hearing voices, voices telling him to hurt people. Sandra asked the local priest, Father Charles Ravert, to perform a spiritual cleansing on the house.
The priest started in the basement, said he felt something was wrong, and was so affected that he ran outside and threw up on the lawn. Cosmo was put on heavy antidepressants, which caused him to gain around a hundred pounds. He was still erratic and violent. In July of 2016, Sandra drove him to Abington Memorial Hospital to get him to commit himself.
During the drive, Cosmo bit her arm and punched her, giving her a black eye. Despite being on crutches, he got out of the car in the middle of traffic and tried to force his way into a stranger’s car, yelling that his mother was kidnapping him. Police took him to the hospital, where he stated he believed his mother was a Russian spy and that his cast was bugged. Doctors diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia.
Over the following months, Cosmo became more violent. He stayed at Belmont Behavioral Hospital for three weeks, where he attacked nurses multiple times and threw a wheelchair at a technician, requiring restraints. In October 2016, he showed up uninvited to a Holy Ghost Prep Open House and was banned from campus. He was angry with his father for sleeping with other women.
According to his psychologist, Jeffrey Wyckoff, Cosmo talked about his father’s infidelities and said he had hit the car of a woman who was with him with a baseball bat. In November 2016, a psychiatrist named Christian Kohler began treating Cosmo. In their first session, he wrote, “Cosmo hunted after his dad with an AR-15 but decided not to kill him. ” In December, Cosmo attacked his father while he was driving.
According to Sandra, Cosmo beat his dad up in the truck, and her husband hit him in the head with a brick. The cops were called, and Cosmo was hospitalized again. His medical reports noted he had a plan and intent to commit suicide along with fleeting thoughts of homicide. During his stay, he told doctors, “If I had a gun, I’d kill them all.
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Eventually, most of his friends cut him out. In December 2016, he posted, “It’s official. I have no friends. ” His medications helped with violence but wrecked his body, causing him to randomly tremble and foam at the mouth.
On December 19th, Dr. Wyckoff noted Cosmo was telling stories about selling drugs, cutting someone’s head off with a chainsaw, and feeding him to an alligator. The psychologist wrote, “It’s hard to say whether Cosmo really believes these stories as he claims. ”
The same day, Sandra drove Cosmo to Dr.
Kohler’s office. Cosmo punched his mother, kicked an elevator, and made the receptionist extremely uncomfortable by leaning towards the glass partition and licking it. When Dr. Kohler threatened to end the session, Sandra slammed her hands on the table and said, “Doctor, I can’t go home with him.
He’s going to kill me. I’m not leaving unless you help me. ”
The next morning, Cosmo seemed better. He woke up and said peacefully, “Good morning, Mama.
How are you today? ” Sandra believed her prayers had worked, calling it a Christmas miracle. It didn’t last. In February 2017, someone called the police after seeing Cosmo get into the family Cadillac with a shotgun.
An officer pulled him over and found the weapon. Because Cosmo had been involuntarily committed, carrying it was a felony. He was arrested, but a judge dismissed the charge due to faulty paperwork. That summer, one of Cosmo’s relatives, Vanessa Amato, reached out to Sandra.
Vanessa understood, because her own son, Sean Kratz, was struggling too. Unlike Cosmo, Sean had a serious criminal record, including threatening to kill his own sister and being under investigation for attempted murder. Sandra didn’t know any of this. In early July, Vanessa texted Sandra, suggesting the two sons would be good for each other.
Sandra replied, “True. We just need to make sure they don’t get in trouble together because Cosmo has no more sense of fear or what’s right or wrong. ”
On July 5th, Cosmo offered to sell nineteen-year-old Jimmy Patrick four pounds of weed for $8,000. Jimmy had also gone to Holy Ghost Prep, was raised by his grandmother, and had just finished his freshman year at Loyola University on a full scholarship.
That afternoon, he told his grandmother he was going out to eat and would be back soon. Cosmo picked Jimmy up and took him to the family farm. Jimmy only brought $800, so Cosmo offered to sell him a shotgun instead. He took Jimmy to a remote part of the farm and shot him in the head, killing him instantly.
Cosmo claimed self-defense, saying he had spotted a Glock in Jimmy’s backpack. He later explained, “I didn’t want the kid’s $800. The guy would have shot me if I went to meet up with him and didn’t have the money. ”
For killing Jimmy, Cosmo used a backhoe to dig a six-foot hole and buried him there.
Later that same day, Sandra drove Cosmo to see Dr. Kohler again. In the waiting room, Cosmo Googled “soup maker cartel” on his iPad. Dr.
Kohler, unaware that Cosmo had just killed a man, wrote that he was no clear risk to self or others and recommended Cosmo discontinue all of his medication. A day later, on July 7th, Cosmo picked up his cousin Sean in his silver Ford pickup. He bought gas cans and filled them with gas. The plan was the same setup: a weed deal.
First was nineteen-year-old Dean Finocchiaro, a cook at an ice cream company who bought and sold drugs. On July 7th, Cosmo and Sean drove to Dean’s parents’ house, offering him a quarter pound of weed for $700. They drove him to the farm and took him to a barn. Once inside, Sean shot Dean in the head with a handgun Cosmo had given him—his mother’s gun.
After Shawn fired, Cosmo took the gun and shot Dean again while he was face down on the floor. Cosmo later said, “This was a robbery. Shawn was going to rob him in the woods by himself and kill him. He didn’t.
We come back into the barn… when I went to turn, I just hear a bunch of shots go off. Dean goes down. I took the gun from Shawn, and I shoot Dean…
He was dead. His head was split the hell open. ”
Cosmo wrapped Dean’s body in a blue tarp and dumped him in an old oil tank the family called the pig roaster. Cosmo told Sean two more kids were coming.
Those two were twenty-one-year-old Thomas Mayo and his best friend, twenty-two-year-old Mark Sturgis, who worked at a construction company owned by Mark’s dad. Cosmo met them at a church in Peddler’s Village, and they followed him to the farm. Once there, Cosmo said, “They keep saying something’s not all right. So, when they turn their backs on me, I shoot Tom in the back, drop him.
Mark’s like, ‘What the—’ He was such a big kid, I unloaded the gun on him. So, he’s paralyzed. He goes, ‘I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.
’ I grabbed the backhoe… he sees that coming, just shuts up, and I just run him over. ”
He used the backhoe to load Tom and Mark into the pig roaster with Dean. Then he poured gas over the bodies and set them on fire.
As the bodies burned, he and Sean went to Steve’s Prince of Steaks. Both ordered Philly cheesesteaks, but Cosmo said he didn’t eat because his stomach was upset. He later said, “I just did something so gruesome. I didn’t have the appetite.
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Later that evening, Sean went to Cosmo’s house and both seemed in good spirits. Sandra texted Sean’s mom, saying they had been out quadding and sounded like they had fun. The next day, July 8th, when Mark and Tom didn’t show up for work, Mark’s dad got worried. Cosmo dug a twelve-and-a-half-foot grave with a backhoe and dumped all three bodies inside.
Sean hid the murder weapons at his aunt’s house. Tom’s mom reported him missing, telling police he was diabetic and would never go anywhere without his diabetes kit. Tom’s friend group created a Snapchat thread called “Tom, where you at? ” Cosmo was in that chat.
When someone asked if he was worried about Dean, he replied, “I mean, I know the kid, but yeah, I feel bad for his parents. He’s a pill-popping junkie who had two DUIs. He probably just jumped parole or probation. ”
On July 9th, detectives found Tom’s vehicle near the farm and Mark’s Nissan about two miles away.
A friend had tipped off police, saying Cosmo had offered to sell him a Nissan Maxima for $500 the day before. Police brought Cosmo in for interrogation. He denied being in the area, claiming he had gone fishing, but detectives knew he was involved—Dean’s cell phone had pinged at the farm. They held him on the February gun charge, setting his bail at $1 million.
Days later, Cosmo was released on 10% of his bail, but was brought back when his charges were upgraded and bail increased to $5 million. As detectives combed the farm, hundreds of volunteers and FBI agents searched. On July 12th, detectives uncovered the three victims from the makeshift grave. One local resident said, “It seemed like a horror film or something just unraveling before our eyes.
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On July 13th, Cosmo admitted to the killings, including Jimmy Patrick, and told detectives where Jimmy was buried. He struck a plea deal, sparing him the death penalty. He was charged with four counts of criminal homicide, conspiracy, abuse of a corpse, and twelve other charges. Sean, meanwhile, tried to play innocent.
His mother, Vanessa, urged him to tell the truth, and after forty minutes, he agreed, leading detectives to the murder weapons. On May 16th, 2018, Cosmo pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. Sean rejected a plea deal and pled not guilty. He was convicted and sentenced to life without parole for Dean’s murder, plus consecutive terms for the other charges.
The victims’ families filed wrongful death lawsuits against Cosmo’s parents, arguing they should have cut off his access to guns and equipment given his history. Sandra also sued Dr. Kohler and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, alleging that his negligent care allowed Cosmo to go off his meds and ultimately kill four people. Cosmo tried to join the lawsuit seeking compensation, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shut it down, holding that a convicted murderer cannot collect civil damages from his own crimes.
Cosmo is still in prison today. At some point after sentencing, he went off his medication again, became manic, and got into a fight with his cellmate. When officers forced their way into his cell, he had a broken nose, an injured jaw, and another probable concussion. In July 2017, Cosmo confessed to two additional murders from years earlier, but as of nearly nine years later, no proof of those additional murders has ever surfaced.
Jimmy Patrick was laid to rest at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church Cemetery. Friends and family said goodbye to Dean on July 22nd, 2017. Mark Sturgis’ funeral services were held in Bensalem, and Thomas Mayo was laid to rest in Bensalem.
What doesn’t get enough attention is the fact that a veteran neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Christian Kohler, cleared Cosmo and ordered him to stop his psych meds. Cosmo’s first involuntary commitment was in July 2016, and his psych history was well documented. He had attacked staff, shown clear ideation towards others, and threatened people.
By the time Dr. Kohler assessed him in November 2016, all this information was available. Despite Cosmo’s documented non-compliance and violent episodes, Dr. Kohler considered his bipolar disorder in remission and reduced his medications multiple times.
In July 2017, just hours after Cosmo murdered Jimmy Patrick, Dr. Kohler recommended he discontinue all medication. A day later, Cosmo murdered three more people. The lawsuit against Dr.
Kohler labeled him an “active participant” in the murders. A huge barrier to the family’s case was the rule that a convicted felon cannot benefit from civil damages. The journal article discussing the case noted that holding Dr. Kohler liable could have a chilling effect on psychiatrists treating patients who express homicidal ideation, potentially causing defensive medicine.
The court leaned on the no felony conviction rule. Something more could have been done by those with the knowledge and ability to make a difference. However, the photos of these four young murder victims remain—and someone had the chance to prevent what happened.
