Cosmo DiNardo, Sean Kratz Appear In Court After Pennsylvania Murders

The man accused of killing four young Pennsylvania men in July appeared in court Thursday for the first time since admitting to the murders. Cosmo DiNardo, 20, appeared via video chat from jail to waive his preliminary hearing.

DiNardo was charged with four counts of homicide in the deaths of Jimi Taro Patrick, 19, Dean Finocchiaro, 19, Tom Meo, 21, and Mark Sturgis, 22. Authorities located the bodies of all four men buried on an expansive property belonging to DiNardo’s parents days after they were reported missing. DiNardo appeared in court Thursday by way of video chat next to his attorney, Michael Parlow, dressed in his orange prison jumpsuit.

“I have no questions, your honor,” DiNardo told Judge Maggie Snow.

“My lawyer explained it to me and that’s what I want to do,” he said of waiving his preliminary hearing.

Prosecutors said DiNardo confessed to killing the four young men in July. In exchange for a guilty plea, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub agreed not to seek the death penalty in the case.

DiNardo’s cousin, Sean Kratz, was also charged in the deaths of three of the men. Kratz, also 20, was expected to appear at a separate hearing later in the day Thursday. A lawyer for Kratz said that while he admitted to being there for three of the murders, he did not admit to committing any of them.

The families of the victims appeared in court Thursday for the hearing. An attorney for the Finocchiaro family called the hearing “short and bitter.”

“The Finochiarros have been doing terribly,” said Tom Kline, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “All inexplicable, all tragic, all unnecessary. They’re committed to seeing that Mr. DiNardo spends the rest of his life in jail.”

Prosecutors said they still hadn’t discerned a motive in the case and said it was unclear whether they ever would. Some sources revealed the killings were the result of marijuana deals gone wrong and that DiNardo had felt “cheated or threatened” during the deals, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutors said DiNardo suffered from schizophrenia, while an acquaintance told reporters something was “off” about the young man since he was involved in an ATV accident a few months prior to the killings. A friend told the Philadelphia Inquirer in July that DiNardo had bragged of killing in the past.

“He’s told me and my friends, ‘Yeah, I’ve killed people before, I just haven’t been caught,’” the friend, who asked not to be named, told the Inquirer. “We literally were just like, ‘Yeah, all right Cosmo, sure you did.’ No one actually thinks someone’s capable of this.”