Small Town Murder - Bloody Pizza Murders - Franklin, New Jersey

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

This week, in Franklin, New Jersey, two people who've been brutally killed are found, face down in the street, with 2 large pizzas sitting nearby. This somehow leads to a bad seed of a person, who was raised by a criminal in a terrible household, and had a dream of joining the mafia, even drawing up a price list for future jobs. This young menace, and his moronic accomplices attempt to pull off a crime spree, but end up just looking like remorseless monsters!!   Along the way, we find out that it's hard to get a late night pizza delivered to a rural area, that stores full of dangerous weapons should always have alarms on the windows, and that maybe you shouldn't write songs about murder, if you're planning to actually murder people!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Check us out on VIDEO Wednesday and Friday evenings on Netflix! www.netflix.com/smalltownmurder Donate at patreon.com/crimeinsports or at paypal.com and use our email: [e-mail] Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay, Choochoo! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely wild and crazy New Jersey edition

of Small Town Murder Express. New Jersey, the Florida of the North, everybody. And here it is, we have a very crazy one for you today. Before we get started, though, definitely do me a favor. Head over to shut up and give me murder.com and get all your tickets for live shows, get all your merchandise,

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You can binge on those, almost 400 of them, actually. Then immediately, after that, every other week, you get two new episodes, one crime and sports, one small town murder. This week, which you're going to get for crime and sports,

we're going to talk about the Christian Power Team, which were these guys that were just roided to shit, jacked up, huge lunatics, that would go on the religious channel and, like, bend rebars and tear phone books and then scream about, thank you, Jesus, thank you. Give me the power. Oh, boy, and there's some scandal that goes on after. It's a lot of fun.

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Now, that said, I think it's time, everybody. What do you say? Let's all sit back here. We've got to clear the lungs here. Let's get going. Here we go. Arms to the sky. And let's all shout.

Shut up. up and give me murder. Yes. Let's do this, everybody. We are going on a trip here. Let's go to New Jersey. Here's the excitement and ripple through the crowd here. Franklin, New Jersey.

Now, this is also called Franklin Borough, New Jersey. Where's that at? Either way. It is in northwestern New Jersey in Sussex County up there. It's about an hour and 15 to New York City, and most of that is traffic, because the distance is not that far. about two hours and 15 minutes to Philly, if you go the other way, and then an hour and 10 minutes to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, our last New Jersey episode, episode 659. We remember that one.

Well, suitcases full of murder, that was called. Yeah. That was disturbing. Yeah. This is in Sussex County, like I said, area code 973 population 4904. Wow. So not too big here. 4,904.

That's it. Pretty small. Wow. That's it. Median household income here, this isn't very expensive either, which is strange because it is very commutable to New York City. Certainly commutable. Yeah. The median household income here is 76,7,7,7,000, but not much. Median home cost here, 207,500 bucks, which is well below. How did they pull that off? I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. I don't know, you know, commutable to New York City and $200,000 home seems. Is there a nuclear waste? Has to be. Well, it's New Jersey.

It's all. I mean, it's all, it's all New Jersey. Let's be honest. But New Jersey is an expensive place. There's a lot of very expensive towns in New Jersey. Nickname of this town, the, I bet you I could give you seven million guesses and you'd never guess it because I was like, what? The fluorescent mineral capital of the world. Okay.

Is it fluorescent because there's nuclear fallout? What's going on? That's probably it. Well, part of it is we're just going to do a drop of history because we have a pretty lengthy story here. All right. Basically, this town is located on a rich ore body containing more than 150 minerals, many of them fluorescent, and 25 of which are found nowhere else on Earth except for northwestern New Jersey. Wow. Like neon and shit like that?

Yeah, wild fluorescent minerals that are only found here. Nowhere else on the planet. You can go to Thailand and dig forever and you never find shit. But here in northern New Jersey, they have that and decent pizza. That's all they have. Reviews of this town, here it is. It has 3.3 stars on Nitch. So, again, he wouldn't go to a Chinese restaurant with 3.3 stars on anything.

So here we go. Here is five stars. Crime is mostly low here, to my knowledge. Unfortunately. That I'm aware of. That I'm aware. I mean, I don't see everything. I like who someone does that.

And they're like, listen, I'm not, I don't know everything. You know what I mean? I didn't see that one. To my knowledge. Unfortunately, a legal drug usage sale is prevalent here. Yeah, it's called America. You're in. You find me a town where there's not a prevalent drug use that's outside of Utah.

And I will... You know what? It's pretty high there, too. Oh, it is. I'm just saying they might hide it better. Yeah. Probably just not in like the rural areas. I would think it's more in the rural areas.

In America, that's how it is. Rural Utah, I just see like Colorado City, Arizona, shit like that. Yeah. Or that. It's either, yeah, FLDS or that. But I mean, like, you go to small towns in Arizona. They are meth dens, all of them. Every single one of them is a meth den.

It's the only way the place goes. The police force and justice system are doing their best to remove drug-related crime. Other than that, the police are good at what they do, and there is a strong sense of safety here. Okay. Here's three stars. Franklin is a typical small town. Very quiet. It does not have many employment opportunities.

You're an hour and ten minutes from one of the biggest cities in the world. down. It has a couple of supermarkets and a Walmart. Okay, that's not great. The town is famous for the Franklin Mineral Museum, which is worth a visit. Yeah, also all those minerals. All those minerals. And finally, one star. I grew up in Franklin. It's pretty, however, it doesn't have many employment opportunities. Also, it isn't a diverse area. I personally found it difficult. I recently moved back to the area. However, there is now less for children to do than when I lived here 20 years ago. The school is mediocre. My children are bored living here.

Every kid is bored living anywhere. That's your fault. You could take a kid and move them to Cinderella's castle in Disneyland. In three months, they'd be like, it's boring here. It would never even, anywhere you move them, they're bored. You got a Walmart. It's got a toy aisle. You can keep them occupied.

There you go. Like any other small town people, go do your time spinning those aisles, my band. That's it. I have found it hard to find employment and a nice place to live. I've decided that it was not a place that I wanted my children to grow up. It is still not at all diverse and my children also find it difficult to fit in. I will say it is a nice place to visit, but I don't recommend living here, which for a one-star review, that's pretty mild, honestly. The whole thing is, I don't know, it's all right. It's a little boring. Things to do

here, here we go. The Mineral Museum, like you said. Yeah. Got to do it. They have days at the mineral museum where anyone can come and dig for minerals for $75. You pay $75 and they give you a little shovel in a bag probably and you go out there and do whatever you want. Go find some shit. Where are you digging? Just a wild field? I have no idea.

Wild mineral field. I have no clue. And I don't know what you're getting. Is this of any value or is it just, I don't know what you're doing. But that sounds fun. I mean, I'll dig around for some shiny rocks. That sounds fun. What the hell?

It's fun for the kids, probably. There's also the Franklin Day Festival. And that is, they say their motto here is bringing the community together. Right. Oh, yeah. We have a couple of bands playing there. Swing Sabrosso is coming. Sure.

Oh, yeah. Since its inception in 2000, it's generated a growing number of loyal fans throughout the tri-state area and abroad. Is that right? They even get outside of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, into the wilds of Pennsylvania. Yeah. you know, New Hampshire, Maryland even. These three states, we may be in Philadelphia before you know it. Yeah, I like this, though.

Swing Soing Sobroso was formed by Ray Rodriguez, who struggled with cancer and lost his battle in April of 2016. Jesus Christ! What the fuck are we doing? You're trying to, this is supposed to be an upbeat. In the other paragraph, they're talking about how this is upbeat, like, Latin swing shit, and it's fun. And, like, you know, and then also. Our founder's dead. During his long battle, he turned over the band to Eddie Munez, who has been with the band from the beginning and was a friend for many years.

So, you know, don't be mad at Eddie. It's fine. They also say they've completed their third CD. Yeah. Oh, they got those still. Oh, boy, yeah. And then there's full-blown. Yeah. Full-blown.

Full-blown what? I was going to say, you could put a lot of things on there. That's the first one I thought of, obviously, full-blown. Did the founder of this die of AIDS? What the fuck? They're a vibrant New York-based live band rooted in funk, soul, and urban classics. Yeah. So they just play, you know, covers, full-blown covers here.

Their performances often featured in venues like Cutting Room, NYC, Oakley Kitchen, Kumo 27. Who cares? Okay. There's also concerts at the pond. Yeah. They'll have some concerts, and you know where they are? Where's that? At the pond?

The pond. Yeah. We got the Glenn Roberts band. Yeah. Okay, there's also the Miss Franklin pageant that night, so that's fun. Then there's Unhinged, who plays classic rock, hard rock, alt rock. Then there's the Franklin Band. I wonder sing songs about the town.

And then Mile 39 band will be there as well. So those are on different weeks. Very vague sounding everything. Everything very vague. Not a lot of descriptions, just that's it here. Okay, concerts begin at six, by the way. get your asses in there. Perfect.

Long chairs and shit. All right. That said, let's talk about some murder. What do you say, everybody? Let's get into this because this is heavy for an express. Okay, let's talk about a young man first. Well, not a young man anymore, but a young man in the story. Joseph, or I'm sorry, Thomas Joseph Koscovich.

T.J. Koskovich. T-J. Goes by Tommy. Tommy K. I'm sorry, K-O-S-K-O-V-I-C-H. Now, keep in mind that name, Koscovich, because it doesn't sound very Italian, does it?

No, but it does sound familiar, doesn't it? Eh, Koscovich. It sounds like they own like a, it's like a sausage company or something. They make like, you know, sweet sausages in the Midwest.

It sounds like a Chicago sausage outlet, you know. Now, old Tommy Kay here, born May 6th, 1978. He is raised, well, we'll just let what a psychologist said later on kind of sum up his childhood

here. He was raised in a home, plagued by, and I quote, infidelity, violence, substance abuse, gambling, criminal behavior,

and suicide attempts. Wow. Nice household he's got there. His parents are Stephen Koscovich and Victoria Koscovich, but they won't really raise him the whole time.

No? Well, they're busy gambling and cheating on each other. No, no, that's grandma who does that. These two are different.

Stephen has multiple kids, and, by the way do I tell you about Stephen, in Victoria, by the way. We'll get to them in a second. But Steve has multiple kids and told Tommy when he was young, seven, eight years old, and he'll admit to this later.

He told him, I love you the least of my three children, which is hilarious. The fact that, it's fine, everybody, let's face it, we say, I love all my kids equal. Bullshit. You got a pecking order like everybody else does. We all do. And they change from time to time. Oh, yeah, someone's, you're jockeying for a position over here. I would never tell them where they are in the pecking order.

That's no one should. Don't tell them that. If they get arrested and it costs me money, they know where they stay. Oh, they're in third place now. You just went from first to third like you're in Mario Kart and you just went out. When you cost me money, you hit a banana. I'm sorry. That's sorry, bro.

I don't know what to tell you. But he told him that. I mean, to feel the need to sit a child down and make sure he knows that you love him the least is that's wild, the thought. Yeah, it's one thing to know and feel it, but to sit him down and tell him. It's wild. In between, you know, episodes of... Hello, number three. Wawa, wabsy, you're doing this.

Yeah. Now, his parents... Glad you're learning to count today because you're number three. Yeah. One, a two, a three. Now, on top of that, Stephen's judgment is terrible anyway. The father, that's a terrible judgment,

but he... That's not the original sin by any stretch of the imagination. Okay. Stephen and Victoria, Tommy, mom and dad are step siblings. So right there. What in the fuck? Back away from the mic.

I don't even know what to say about that. Who the fuck marries their step sister? This isn't a porn hub. What are you doing? Somebody's done it. They're not the only ones. But that's the first ones I've heard of. There's no blood relation, but it's just not done.

You just don't marry your step siblings. That's just fucking weird. I mean. That's disgusting. Wow. That is the next step of porn. No, oh no, it's on the home page. No, no, no, but that's the next step, actually marrying them.

There's no forms that I married my step-sister. Like, they don't come in in a tux and a wedding gown and then start going at it. You know what I mean? Like, this is like, hey, mom's out for the afternoon. Yeah, it's the next taboo on the homepage. It's got to be. That's the next one. So, I mean, raised in the same house, I mean, it's gross.

It's just gross. Stephen leaves the family when Tommy's about 10 years old. Yeah. So really, he left. two families. He doubled up there. He loved a lot. Okay. Now, Victoria, a couple years later,

she just takes off to go live with a boyfriend and leaves Tommy 12, 13 years old just with the grandma. With her grandma, with her mom, I believe. So parents abandon him completely. Gone. They don't care. And, you know, probably better. If the dad tells you, I love you

the least. Probably better. He's not around. So he basically both parents just kind of shit him off there and, you know, send him off to the grandparents. Oh, by the way, he's got some interesting issues. Number one, he feels that his toy soldiers and trees and things of that nature are sentient and can feel things. Like his toy soldiers. Do they talk to him? No, that's another level of whatever.

But he just thinks that they're that. And also, he says this for years. that from the age six on, he heard what he called whispers, hearing voices of from a, quote, evil false prophet. Yeah, it's almost like you shouldn't fuck your step-siblings. It's weird, yeah. I mean, not that that's going to have any genetic faces on it, but it's going to make a weird kid. I'm sorry, genetics aside, it's going to make a fucking weird kid.

It's just weird. They're going to find out how you met. Yeah. How did you meet, Mommy? dad well when I was eight and she was six her dad brought her over and oh boy was I intrigued I'll tell you what her dad married my mom wait I met her at a wedding our parents wedding so they send her to live with Bertha Lippincott believe that is Thomas's mom dad's mom Bertha is an addict according to everything here an addict she abuses

prescription painkillers at the time. Apparently, according to, you know, other sort, I don't know for sure, but according to everybody's sources, she was an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, I also hear. Birth. Birth and attempted suicide on multiple occasions. All those things were just Bertha? That's just the grandma. God damn.

Which to me, that's like, you know, my parents could have been a little whatever, you know, But grandparents were always like the safe spot. Yeah, they'd send me to the grandma's house and, you know, I knew everything was fine. You know, that was so to have grandma be insane. And my grandmother was insane, but in a loving way. She wasn't like this. She was just from Italy and this is a safe pocket. This is, yeah, this is a safe place.

And it's described as a house that's filthy, chaotic, and overcrowded. And when I say filthy, we hear from his uncle later who says he slept in abandoned buildings in Harlem in the 80s, and he felt way more clean than being in this house. Because it was cleaner than this house. It was clean. Yeah, he said the rats, better, everything was better. No, we're talking, police come from time to time, not a lot of food in the house. Laundry's not getting done. No supervision.

Kind of run wild. It's not good. Oh, boy. I live like one of the wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia. Now, at the house, he's got an uncle named Leonard Koscovich, Uncle Lenny. Now, Uncle Lenny is basically in the couple years when he's got formidable years here, Tommy, from like 13, 14, 15. These are the only years that Lenny is not in prison in his adult life. Is that right?

And he's spending him being the male role model for this child. Yeah, which is obviously not good. Lenny himself describes himself as a quote menace to society. Nice. An addict and a career criminal, spent his whole life in prison. He, this is Uncle Lenny, said that he taught Tommy how to be like him. Oh, no. He gave him drugs.

He gave him pills. He gave him all sorts of shit. They said that basically, they said, he was, Tommy was smoking cigarettes by age eight. which is too my grandfather told me he started smoking when he was nine yeah and I was like holy shit but that was like in the 30s and like his father's an immigrant and they were like you know he dropped out of school at 12 to cut hair like my grandfather like it was a different time yeah depression was going on and shit I was smoking cigarettes on and off from 10 till 10 10 10 I was smoking but I didn't have a habit eight is crazy that's insane to have a habit.

Eight is... It's insane to not be afraid of being burned by one when you're eight. Eight? Eight is a very small child. That's, you know, what is that, third grade? That's... Yeah, that's third grade. You still have, like, cartoon character backpacks.

You can't be having a pack of Newports in there. That's crazy. Hey, get me my cools out of there. Open up Dora's mouth and get me my cools out, would you? Like, that's insane. I had a whole ass habit when I was 16, though, that I was supporting on my own because I had a job. Well, yeah, 16 is... A lot of kids smoking 16.

But eight is a whole different deal. He was drinking beer by 12 or 13, which I've heard worse in Wisconsin. That's considered a late bloomer. Yeah, that is a late bloomer. That's waiting to retirement. Yeah, weed, hard liquor, pills, LSD, everything. He's into prescriptions a lot, opioids and barbiturates. He likes a drug called Fioreset.

F-I-O-R-I-C-E-T, which is acetamethin, caffeine, a barbiturate, also all mixed in. It's for migraines, apparently. Sounds like fucking serp. You know what I mean? Now, they're pills. Oh. They're pills that you take for migraine. So he would also steal Bertha's pills out of her purse, and him and his uncle would get high.

They said basically later on psychologists will say that Tommy pretty much is emotionally arrested. at about 11 years old. That's about where he... That's not good. Where he goes. He wants life in the fast lane, little Tommy. This is the thing. This is what little Tommy wants.

At some point, in the midst of this childhood, he starts telling people that he can't wait to grow up and kill people because he wants to join the mafia. It's not the army, first of all. You don't really join.

You can have to... There's no draft. He wants to be a mafia hitman. Okay. You don't have one very specific qualification for being the mafia number one. That's one. They're not going to trust you very much. That's number one.

You're already in the hole. Yeah, you can't just show up and be like, who do I got a kill to be in the club, guys? That doesn't work. He thinks that killing someone, if he kills someone, then he can go to the mafia and be like, look, I killed this guy. And they'll be like, oh, well, yeah, you're a private now and they give him a little uniform, you know, a little suit with like no stripes on it, you know? Right. They got a guy that yells at him to do push-ups. Yeah, well, you know, no, it's eat that pasta and you got to keep eating it.

There's like, there's different things. Yeah, stuff that canola. Yeah, more meatballs. Yeah, more meat, get that meatball. Let's go. Come on. Make it a ball. Say, Gabba ghoul.

Gabba, all right. Come on. Drop the O off the prosciutto. Let's go. He also would like to be a Navy SEAL. So he's got very high aspirations. He wants to be a Mafia hitman Navy SEAL. Yeah.

Which sounds. like what a 13-year-old would say. That's what a kid in seventh grade would say. I'm going to be a mafia hitman and a Navy SEAL. Oh, okay, great. And then an astronaut and a movie star. And, you know, so he's got a buddy who's not quite as fucked up, but, you know, he's pushing it. Jason Arthur Vreeland, V-R-E-E-Land, okay?

Born September 5th, 1979. His parents are, he's got a dad name, Arthur. we'll talk about here. His dad is described as violent and abusive. So clearly we bond over that. That's going to be our talking points. We're not sure if he knows his ranking among the children, though. That's one thing.

We don't know if he knows that. And they moved constantly. Yeah. They have to move all the time, different towns, and basically every time Jason getting a new school, he'd get picked on because that's New Jersey. And I did the same. I moved a lot when I was a kid,

went to a shitload of different schools in New York. What year is this? try to fuck with you. This is, he was born in 79. Yeah. So 80s, our age, basically, these guys. So that's what you got. He got picked on and you better be, you know, you know, funny or quick to punch or something.

Or just take it and fucking move along. That's what you're going to be. Yeah. So now, Jason's got an incident that happened that he describes as the bus incident. He said, quote, I got pulled off a school bus by a bully. The bus driver didn't care. The bully opened the door, pulled me out and started to beat the living hell out of me. Yeah.

He said the driver didn't care. And so he didn't trust adults after that. He gets a broken arm and he said the driver watched the whole thing happen. Broke bones. Jesus. Hey, you know what? It's none of my business. You're in Jersey's a very none of my business state.

You know, hey, I don't know what the hell's going on. It's between the two of yous. I don't know. I don't know who did what. I don't want to get on the wrong side of this. My problem over here right now. Age 14, he's using drugs. He said, quote, I really acted out in school so I would fit in.

The other kid saw me as the kid who would do crazy things and take a ton of drugs, which is another way to not get picked on if you're the crazy guy. And it seemed every time I moved and went to another school and being the new kid, I was picked on. The only kids who didn't seem to pick on me were the druggies. Now, drugies are very accepting. They're very passive, folks. That crowd is very accepting in high school. They really are because they're the outcast.

That's why they're doing drugs when they're 16. Also, because what we're doing is illegal. Yes. If you're doing it too, we're both criminals. You probably got a similar background. You know, a lot of the jocks might come from a different background. Sure. They'd see that you're different and they pick on you.

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And then he meets Tommy, who's kind of a crazy guy and he's a year older than him. And it kind of sees him as kind of a protector, but almost kind of a guy. guy he can have a, you know, some sort of kinship with. A little worse for the wear, so he's a little tougher. He can handle things. Yeah, exactly. Like, you go to his grandma's house. You're like, whoa, this place is, fuck. Makes my house like a little house on the prairie here. They say you were number three. Is that right? Number three, eh? So he, Jason really latches on to Tommy and, um, you know, and Tommy's, he's full of shit and he's charismatic. And a lot of times, kids who are looking for something will gravitate toward kids like that.

He's talking about guns all the time, Tommy, talking about killing. He talks about the mafia. He's got a car, a really shitty beat-to-crap Chevy Cavalier with a fucked-up muffler that's insanely loud that you can hear from a half mile away and a broken headlight. So he's got a fucked up loud, padiddle cavalier. Not good. Not good. There's also a guy named Michael Conklin, C-O-N-K-L-L-I-N who's 19 years old is another one of Tommy's friends. but he doesn't figure too much into this story,

but we'll talk about him. April 8th, 1997. Tommy proposes to Michael Conklin, let's break into adventure sports, which is a hunting and fishing store, like a Cabellas or something, you know. But, you know, small, you know, just one-off family-old. Small bass pro, yeah.

It's on Route 23 in Franklin Borough. Mm-hmm. sells camping, gear, fishing rods, guns, things of that nature. You know, outdoorsy shit. Now, Tommy had been in the store and scouted it out, even picked out which guns he wants in there. Really? So Conklin agrees to help. They get into Tommy's Blue Chevy Cavalier.

They drive past the Franklin Borough Police Station to see if any cops are milling about. And if they are, they're going to hear us because my muffler's fucked up. Yeah, they're probably going to pull me over. No cops around. So Conklin drops Koscovich off at the store. Well, Tommy gets dropped off at the store. Koskovich, or I'm sorry, Conklin parks the car to nearby apartment complex and waits. Apparently, Tommy takes a baseball bat and smashes the front window of the store in.

So much for subtlety. No alarm. Oh, yeah, that's one way to know. If you hear the glass, then it's one thing. If not, it's fine. No subtlety here whatsoever. They're not picking locks or anything. You tell me, a place that sells guns has a window that you can bash through and no alarm goes off?

No, U-W-U goes off. That'll come up later. Don't worry. Well done, guys. He takes three handguns, a 40-calibre, a 22-caliber revolver, and a 45 also. Big ones? Big ones. Yeah, except for the 22, but whatever.

Two big ones, though. Two big ones. After about 20 minutes, he's back at the car, and they're driving away. They drive to a laundromat where Tommy stashes the three guns under the hood of his car, changes his pants, and then they go back to Conklin's house, and Tommy crashes out there the next night. The next morning, Tommy's showing the guns off. He gives Conklin the 40-Cal, and he keeps the 22 and 45 for himself. Really?

Puts them in a duffel bag and leaves. Now, the original plan was to sell the guns, or at least some of them, to be able to buy cocaine, to be able to flip the cocaine for profit. So they want to start a Coke business with these guns, okay? Yeah, you got to get that seed money, James. And at the same time, and this is an odd thing. We've seen, you know, any kind of, I've seen it in real life too, but I mean, you can watch any movie you want or TV show and someone's starting drug dealing and stuff. It's a pretty, you know, it's an involved endeavor.

You got to get into it all. You got to know. They also have a side thing they want to do since they have a gun or two now. They want to also, this is Tommy's idea. They want to rob pizza delivery drivers, which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard because I delivered plenty of pizza. Every time you go back into the store, you drop your fucking money off for the most part. Or you might keep it. But what do you got $80 on you?

You don't have thousands of dollars. You can't run around with 100 pizzas in your car. By the time you get to the last one, they'll be like, I'm not eating that. No, exactly. Nor have my bang for it. One place I'd keep the money at the end of the night. You'd cash out like a waiter, basically. but it still was like, would I have $120 on me?

Like, it wasn't like worth killing a person over. It's silly. So Conklin asks him the question. He says, why? Why? You want to sell cocaine. That's one thing. He makes some money or whatever.

Why do you want to rob pizza delivery people? That sounds stupid. Great question. There's a better people to rob than that. Yeah. Out of all these kids, he's the only one that went, Why? Why?

Everyone went, huh? I don't know. Like that old Mr. The motherfucker's got a point. Remember the old Mr. show sketch where they were going to blow up the moon? Yeah. They were going to blow up the moon and they had a monkey who was going to press the

detonation button and the monkey did sign language and the monkey asked why and they all went. And then they went and got a new monkey that didn't have no sign language. That's what they did. That was the solution. So Tommy said, quote, they're easy targets. I just want to kill someone for the thrill of it. Okay. So now you're not robbing people.

Well, you rob them too. Yeah, but that's not the point of it. That's not the point. And the mafia really wants you to rob pizza delivery men. That's how you get into the mafia. That's double A, triple A. It's the minor. When you bring your resume, if there's a zero next to pizza delivery men killed, you're not getting hired.

You're not getting hired. They're like, how many pizza guys are you off? I'm not seeing any on here. I don't know what the, you know, go back and, you know, kind of work that resume a little more. Go dig some holes, man. Come back in a couple of years. So for the next week and a half, they put them. murder plan together of they're going to try to basically just let's rob a pizza guy and kill him just

for the time. Wow. Okay. So April 18th, 1997, Tommy tells his friend Christine Slater, a young lady here, a teenage girl in the friend group, he's hanging out with Christine. And he tells her basically everything. He says, I'm going to order a pizza. I'm going to have it delivered to a remote address. And I'm going to kill this delivery person.

And she said, why? Why? Why? Yeah. Yep, that's exactly what she said. Why? Pray tell. And he said, well, because I want to join the mafia.

Duh. And you join by killing someone, which is, again, not how that works. They're going to hear about it. I'm not even going to have to go find them. It'll get through the grapevine. A guy in a suit will come knock on my door. Just a guy in a track suit will come and, hey, come here, is eating a sandwich. You know, the guy.

She doesn't call the cops or anything like that because she thinks. thinks it's Tommy running his mouth. He thinks he's going to get in the mafia for killing a pizza guy. He's just an idiot. Who cares? Because this is a dumb thing to think. Yeah. And I've heard people say,

kids when I was a teenager, say, dumber shit than that, and you just ignore them and nothing ever happens. That's the way it works. Now, he tells Michael Conklin as well. Conklin said,

I don't want any part of that. Oh. He's the Y guy. He was like, I don't see a point to this. I'm not getting involved in this. He also tells a kid named Jason Kelly. It's a long story,

but Jason Kelly, the Kelly family, Robert and April, are his parents. Tommy helped them out while a member of the family had cancer. And Tommy, like, did things for the family and fucking mowed the lawn. And, like, it was a real big help to these people while somebody in their family had cancer. So he tells a Spanish music band? That I'm not sure about. So he tells, 2016, he lasted till. So he tells Jason about this, too.

and he asks Jason, can you get me some 45 caliber bullets? He, hey, you were just in the shop. Didn't get those. He got the guns, but forgot to get any bullets for them. What the fuck? So Jason Kelly, not Jason Reelan, Jason Kelly, gives him the bullets. Well, he's got him on hand. He asked him for him.

So then the next day, Saturday, April 19, 1997, they're at Tommy's house, Tommy's grandma's house. He spends part of the day with his girlfriend. Kimberly Prestige. At 8 p.m. Tommy is over at Conklin's house. Now, Mike Conklin's house, the Y guy. Conklin's mother, Florence, sees Tommy,

said that he seemed anxious at that point. About 9.30, Jason Vreeland and Tommy, they're at Tommy's house, and the two of them, they get all dressed up to leave the house. Tommy straps on the 45-cali-cali-cali-scemi-auto across his chest underneath his shirt. Vreeland puts the 22.

two-caliber revolver and in his chest under his shirt. So they take a phone book because that's the time he needed a phone book. And then they go to Dunkin' Donuts with a phone book, okay? Which all the teenage kids do you? Grab a phone book, you go to Dunkin' Donuts, it's a party, remember? He doesn't know the phone number to the pizza joints? Well, there's a thing here. Yeah.

They copy down a list of phone numbers of local pizza places on a piece of paper. Okay, so go through the list. Yeah. Yeah, they'll see where they are. Yeah. They get change. They even bum some change off Kimberly, Tommy's girlfriend. She gives them some change so they can make calls.

11.30 p.m. now. now. Let's fast forward two hours. That was 9.30. At 11.30, they end up back with Kimberly. She tells them, she says later on that Tommy and Jason came back around 1130 and they were wrecked and falling all over the place, quote, unquote. She said that earlier in the day, Jason had Vreeland had nothing in his wallet. Now we had a $5 bill. And the next day, he's got about $170.70.

And she doesn't know where it came from. So let's find out where it came from. At 9.30, they're at Dunkin' Donuts. About 9.50, or they were heading to Dunkin' Donuts. About 9.50, they're driving in the Cavalier. They have their pizza place numbers. They drive the Blue Cavalier out to Scott Road in Franklin Borough. It's a middle of nowhere country road, basically.

they pick an address, they're looking for addresses on the street. Right. They pick 196 Scott Road, which is an abandoned house. All right. And nobody lives there, and the house has got some distance between them. There are houses there on the street, but they're not, you know, right on top of each other. But this house is empty and dark. So they drove past it, got the address of it, and then went to Dunkin' Donuts.

From 10 p.m. to 10.06, they're on the Duncan Donuts pay phone making phone calls. here. We find out at 10 o'clock. They called one pizzeria. So they call pizzeria number one. Yes. They refuse to go to Scott Road. It's too far out there and they don't know where it is. So they're like, we're not fucking going where we don't know. We're not sending a guy to be vulnerable out in the middle of nowhere. No. No. It's too far. That's it. Pizza, they call 10.01, pizzeria number two, they're not delivered. They don't deliver to that area. 10.02, pizzeria number three. They don't deliver to Scott Road out there too far. because every pizza place has a radius of where they deliver.

Yeah, they got a window. Yeah. Now, I worked for small, you know, family-owned pizza places. It's not like dominoes where it's a hard window or something like that. At a small town place, they're like, eh, it's all right, fine. Yeah, take the order. I remember asking the owner, will we deliver here? And he goes, eh, and see how busy they are.

And they're like, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, what the hell? Like, I've done that before. 1003, they called Tony's Pizza and Pasta in Hardeeston, New Jersey. How many Tony's Pizza and Pasta are there? There's three miles of my house, three Tonys. So they pick up the phone and they ask, is Jeremy Giordano working tonight? And the guy on the phone says, yeah, Jeremy's here.

And then they hang up the phone. Okay. Because they know a guy who works at one of these pizza places who does deliveries. Okay. They call pizzeria number four. They say it's too far out, not doing it. They call pizzeria number five. the kid answering the phone says he'll do the order, but then the owner, the boss says, no, Scott

Rhodes too far, so they cancel the order midway. Then they call back to Tony's pizza and pasta. Yeah. And they said, will you deliver out there? And they said, yes. And so they place an order for two large cheese pies, okay? Two large cheese pizzas. It's $16.50, which I love 90s northeast pizza prices.

That's like exactly. 825 is like exactly what they were. the place I worked at the time. So that's pretty funny. Going to 196 Scott Road. At 10.30 p.m., the kids are back at Scott Road, Tommy and Jason. They parked the cavalier in a way that they can, basically they backed into the driveway of this house.

They load the guns, 22 caliber for Vreeland, 45 for Tommy, and they stand out on the curb of the house and jackets waiting for the pizza. 1035 p.m. here. Jeremy Giardano, by the way, who's 22 years old. And the guy they know. They know the guy. He gets the order. He's been delivering pies for a while at Tony's. From all I can understand, he sounds like a real nice kid this Jeremy, too. Everybody says, oh, sweet kid.

He's been a delivery driver, so he knows all these roads. Believe me, I delivered pizzas when I was a teenager. I knew every fucking road in the delivery area, every little tiny road, which was great because there's a lot of little places to go smoke weed and places like that. Good to know. Side pockets. Sure. You know how it is.

So he knew. Every shortcut. He knew everything. Now, the owner of the pizza place is Giorgio Gallera, G-A-L-L-A-R-A. Goes by George, because, you know, it's easier. He's 25, and he owns the pizza place at 25. Wow. He bought the pizza place when he was 21. He'd been working there since he was 13. Yeah. Parking cars. Parking cars out front. So, yeah, I guess when the owners wanted to retire, he said, I'll take over. So he did. Well, George, you got it. That's nice. Little Georgie. Little Georgio. So George has a girlfriend named Laura who's waiting in the parking lot for him. They have a four-year-old daughter as well, who's also in the parking lot out there waiting for Georgie to get off work.

George, George to get off work, they have a camping trip plan for the morning. They already have the car loaded. They're all ready to go. Now, George, though, being a decent guy and a guy who owns a pizza place and gives a shit about his employees, actually, says, something doesn't feel right about this. I don't like it. It's out in the middle of nowhere. It's late.

It's just a weird call. The hang-up. They call back two minutes later. Very East Coast and Italian to have some... I don't like this. And he says, he doesn't say don't go, he goes, I'm coming with you. How's that?

We'll go together. Me and you together, okay? So they hop in Jeremy's 95 Pontiac Grand Am, which is a great car for back then. A Grand Dame. If I was in 97, in 1997, if I had a 95 grand, never mind what it is, it's two years old. Every car I had at that point was 15, 10 years old. It was a piece of shit.

Yeah. The seats in these were so comfortable. They were that like plush, like plush velvet. Valore. There was such, such, yeah, great fucking seat. And puffy is shit. They're nice. So they drive out 1045 to Scott Road.

And basically, they get up to. the house. Jeremy's driving. George is in the passenger seat. Car pulls up to the curb with the passenger side facing the boys on the curb there. So it's on their right, on the car's right. Now, they ask, they say 1650. George is the guy in the passenger seat. He says 1650. So Tommy looks at Jason and says, you got money? And Jason says, yeah. And then Tommy goes, oh no, never mind, I got the money and reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out the 45,

and empties the clip into the car. Oh my God? Empties the clip. Seven shots. Bang, blah, blah, bang, as he could. Jason then fires the 22 into the car as well. They're just opening fire on this car. Like there's Sunny Corleone in the fucking car

at the toll booth. Wow. So two of the bullets from the 45 enter the right side of Jeremy Giordano's neck and exit out the left side. Oh. The medical examiner later will say those bullets kill Jeremy pretty much instantly. It's over.

Yeah. Two more 45 caliber rounds hit Jeremy in the left knee. Both bullets will be recovered later. Now, Giorgio Golaura in the passenger seat, five bullets on him, five wounds. A graze across the bridge of his nose. Two wounds to his right elbow. One large caliber wound to the right side of the face. That's the fucking 45.

And then the fatal shot, though, is a 22 caliber bullet that enters the best. back of his head. Really? Yes. So one came from the 22. One deadly bullet came from the 45. Then Jeremy's foot comes off the break because they were still in drive and the grand dam starts rolling.

Right. And gets kind of stuck in a muddy, brushy area there. Engines still running. We don't know. So Tommy and Jason run to the car, open the passenger door. They grabbed Georgi O'Galera by the jacket and pull them face down onto the ground. Right. Because they got nothing out of their.

so far. So far, it's just a ridiculous murder. The pizzas are on the ground, by the way, because they handed the pizzas out to him. So then goes over to the driver's side, does the same to Jeremy. And then they didn't know it was Jeremy until now. Yeah. Jason, when he pulls him out, he yells, that's Jeremy. That's Jeremy. We shot fucking Jeremy. Didn't want to shoot Jeremy. That's why they were not fucking didn't want to do that to begin with. Now, Tommy doesn't know either person and doesn't give a shit. Doesn't care. So that's how we know that Jason was making the calls because he knew about Jeremy and Tommy doesn't know Jeremy.

So Tommy starts rifling their pockets basically for cash. Just crazy. They climb into the Grand Dam, search the interior, the glove box, get a few more bucks. They get a wallet off of a small amount of cash in the wallet and Georgi O'Gallara. Two pizzas on the ground next to the bodies. They don't even take the pizzas. Talk about disrespect. A waste.

It's two good decent. That's good pizza. North New Jersey pizzas on the car. I find that offensive. It's like obviously the murder's offensive. It's terrible. And it's obviously the overriding main horrible thing. But on a side note, this hurts me.

This hurts my heart. I don't like seeing pizza waste. It's really. But the war on pizza in this country is alive and well. It's got to stop now. This is just a brutal waste of two pizzas that were very edible, I'm sure of it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Fucking delicious, I bet.

Yeah. So Jason tries to back the grand am out of the mud, but it's stuck in the mud. Yeah. So Tommy says, forget the car. They're going to steal the car, too. They said, forget the car. They run back to the cavalier. As they're running, Tommy says, I can't believe we did this.

I can't believe we did this. And then Jason says, I love you, man. And then they hug in the middle of the street. Quick, quick bro hug before we hop in for our murder getaway. Just a quick one. Yeah. I love you, man. man.

So that's what they do. Then they get in the Cavalier, drive away. By 11 p.m., they stopped at the Presbyterian church where they got out, walked to the front door, and made the sign of the cross,

and left. Okay. Now they think they're the fucking boondock saints. That's what I mean. This is ridiculous. He doesn't know. That's what a mob hitman would do, right?

Yeah. Got to go out. Okay. Yeah, as long as you ask forgiveness. What do you think they did next, Jimmy? They go burn a saint, James? Is that what they did?

They had their own ceremony. Did they take that phone book and look up the mob? They went bowling. As you do, right? I mean, I love bowling, but. So on the way home, they ditched evidence too. Jason had been wearing black gloves and had a blood-stained shirt. He threw the shirt in a stream as they drive past,

which will later be recovered, by the way, along with receipts from Tony's pizza, the bill for it, the guest check thing, and also Galera's identification card and driver's license and all that kind of shit. Now, Tommy takes off his khakis with blood all over them while he's driving and puts on a clean pair of white jeans.

Who the fuck wore white jeans in 1997? What a dork. That's how wild. Why does he have those? I'm going to tell you, no teenagers wore white jeans in 1997. Not males. You'd get a pick. Oh, yeah, women wear whatever they want as long as their ass looks great.

We would have got picked on unmercifully for that in the Northeast. White jeans. Your friends would run by you and drag their shoe on your fucking thigh. Yeah. Kids would kick you right in the ass. Oh, yeah, my shoes on your ass all day. You can't have that. So they put the stuff the khakis in a gym bag.

They get back to Tommy's house. They stuff both guns and the bloody khakis in a gym bag and hide the gym bag under a pane of glass outside the house. Just leave it there. Yeah. Okay. Then they go bowling. I don't know if this is an alibi. We don't know if this is like an alibi.

We don't know what they do. I think Tommy, not bad, about a 175. He's pretty good. I'll tell you what. So then they go home and they fall asleep on Tommy's couch. Now, Kimberly was in there at some point and said they were wrecked and all over the place at 1130.

Okay. So were they drinking? What were they doing? That's what we're trying to figure out what happened after that. I don't know if they were just pretending. Like, hey, we went out and got wrecked. And that was our thing, not murdered people. Sunday, April 20th, 1997 comes along the next day.

And the Pontiac Grand Am is still stuck in the mud. Yeah. Still sitting there. There's a 911 call pretty early. And a patrolman, an officer pulls up, finds the Grand Dam, the muddy, you know, in a muddy patch. Both doors ajar. Two adult males face down in the grass. Large amount of blood both inside and outside the car and two pizzas sitting there.

Now, after eating a couple of slices, of course. You know, you got to process the scene. See how it's, that's part of the report. Was it any good? You know, people are going to know. The report had a lot of grease on it. It's the thing, greasy sauce stains. So they find six spent 45 caliber shells recovered on the road in front of the abandoned house.

Two more spent 45 casings recovered from the front passenger seat of the Grand Am. two large caliber bullets in the left knee, a 22 caliber bullet in the back of the head. Yeah, so this is crazy. Now, the investigation, Tony's Pizza and pasta gets a phone call from the police the next morning. And they said, yes, two pizzas went out around 1030 the night before to 196 Scott Road. Because the owner was going to be away that weekend, so I'm sure he's got a manager opening up. You know what I mean? They said, yes, Jeremy Giordano was doing driving.

Yes, Georgi O'Galara, the owner went with. with him. They never came back. We didn't know what happened. Then they talked to the girlfriend, Georgio's girlfriend, who waited in the parking lot. She waited for a long, long, fucking time. She tells them about that. At the same time, this is becoming news around town, and Christine Slater hears about it. The friend that they told about it, who blew it off. So she calls the goddamn cops right away. She says she called the cops. She's like, I know who did it. She said, my friend Tommy told me two days ago he was going to do this,

because he wanted to join the mafia and he wanted to kill a pizza delivery person and steal the car. And then what you do is you give the car as a tribute to the mob boss and then he lets you in. Here's a 95 grandam and he goes, you're my son now.

And then you burn a saint. In five years, when it's out of warranty, you will call it a 95 goddamn. Because every two weeks, this thing's going to give you problems. It's going to be a fucking problem. So he said he wants to do that.

He said he told me how he was going to do it and this is exactly what I heard happened. Wow. So this is not. good. Now, number one, she heard about it ahead of time and didn't say anything. So this could be a crime in her for her. But

they don't really care because she's a teenager and she said, I didn't think he was going to fucking actually doing it. He talks all the time. He's been saying this for years. Then they get a second tip, though. Stephen Madden's, a guy who lives on Scott Road, and Saturday evening before 10 p.m., he

sees a blue Chevy Cavalier with a loud muffler drive past his house. Very distinct car. Maybe 15, 20 minutes later, he sees the same car drive past again, loud muffler. Two other Scott Road residents saw and heard the same car. One headlight out loud muffler. So, yeah, so they talk about it. He calls the police.

So now they have the guy putting them at the scene. They have the friend saying that she, you know, told them to. They said they were going to do it. And we've got two people that saw his dumb fucking car. Stupid car. Idiot. So April 21st, 1997, the next morning, we're talking middle of the night, not even morning, 2.30 and 5.30 in the morning. They arrest both of these idiots. At their homes asleep. Oh, yep. They pull Tommy out of his bed at his grandma's house. They read him his rights like seven times, by the way, at the scene in the car, at the station, before they interrogate him. I mean, he gets his rights read a lot, by the way. When they search him, they find just his person, a pouch containing 26 pills.

later identified as Fiora set. Twelve marijuana seeds just loose in his pocket. Who the hell keeps seeds in their pocket? He kept this. Like he's going to grow? Just loosey-goosey in your pocket. You're not going to grow that. Throw them away.

Five, ten-dollar bills. Big haul from this robbery here. They take him to the police guard. He signs the Miranda sheet. They do an inventory search. They do all that. He signs a waiver twice, by the way. Miranda waiver. Then he sits down and for 46 minutes tells the cops every goddamn thing in the

world, Tommy does. Just tells them everything. Confesses to the murder. Not a good mafia audition here, guy. He thinks when he gets out, he's got a career now. He walks them through the planning. Then he tells them, well, I burglarized adventure sports 11 days ago. That's how I got the gun. So then they close that case. They know what happened to that. He says we went to the pay phone. Goes through the entire thing, basically. Word by word, step by step. Everything that we told. Everything I told you before came from his and Jason's own mouths. He told them how he premeditated a cold-blooded murder that turned out to be too fortuitously. Yep.

And a robbery. And he even told about how they hugged in the street. It's not good. Even admitted, I love you, man. And then he said, yeah, he took some drugs yesterday, but he's of clear enough mind to figure it out today to talk to them. He's fine. He said the police weren't coercing him. or putting any pressure on him.

He said he was treated fine with no problems. Here's a couple quotes from him. Quote, the guy was screaming all the way to the bushes. It rang right through my head. I don't know why I was scared. Then another quote, it makes it so you can't do anything. It's not so much you don't know what you're doing. You're fearless or heartless.

I have no remorse because I didn't know the people. Jay felt bad for Jeremy. Wow. Okay. Interesting. Now, Jeremy sits down, or Jason, I mean, sits down and he gives a partial statement too. He claims, though, that he only shot at the dashboard with his gun. So that's it. So I pretended to be doing it. Meanwhile, you missed. You missed and he hit a guy in the fucking head. Yeah, his confession here when they, this is the funniest thing. They're talking about murder. Yes, we did it. Yes, we did all this. But when asked how he got home the next day, he told police that, this is Tommy, he told police that he didn't drive Rieland home and they said, why? Why did you refuse to drive him home? He said, I didn't have valid insurance.

I didn't want to break the law? You know, I don't want to do it. Jesus Christ, I mean, come on here. Traffic laws are very important to me. Yeah, I am sorry, but I don't want tickets. My insurance is going to go through the roof over here. I don't have any, but it'll go through the roof when I get it. When I get it, the rates are going to be ridiculous.

So in the search of Tommy's room while they're doing this, they find a lot, a lot of evidence. They find the 45 caliber pistol, the 22 caliber revolver, bloodstained khakis with the victim's blood all over them. Uh-oh. Two empty 22-caliber cartridge boxes. Georgi O'Galera's Jim photo identification card. We can stop looking now. And 14 gun. 14 gun magazines.

Uh-huh. Like combat handgunning. That sounds like a lovely. That's a magazine? Hand-gunning. And guns and weapons. Okay. Then my face.

Finger gun guy. Yeah. Hey. Hey. Boom. Then a price list for crime-related activities. Like his price list that he's going to put out. I'll do crimes for you for his business.

His menu, if you will. Yeah. His menu. This included fake IDs, credit card frauds, and things like that. So this was like a thing. They also found a pair of black gloves. This is Rieland's gloves, an empty wallet, which is Galera's, bags of clothes and paperwork. Then also handwritten song lyrics about killing people, Tommy had.

He writes songs too. And five strips of paper taped above a coat hook. God damn it. We're running out of time. There's so much more to this. I don't know what to do here. This is crazy. There's so much more to this fucking story.

Five strips of paper. Five strips of paper taped above a coat hook. Handwritten in marker in Tommy's handwriting. They read Weapons spot. One. Anyone else we all kill you. Then one said Joe's spot. Anyone, anybody else, he kill you two.

Tom's spot. Anybody else he kill you too. Jason's spot. else, I kill you, then Cocoa Puff's spot. By the way, we have no idea who Coco Puff is and we'll never find out. It says Coco Puff's spot, I'll kill you. All right. Okay.

Now, both the confessions line up perfectly with forensics and physical evidence. It's crazy. Then they find out also the, they charge them with the Adventure Zone robbery there. Then they talked to Mike Conklin, who participated in the robbery. and Mike said after the murder he talked to Tommy. Tommy came out, stuck his hand out and said, how does it feel to shake the hand of a killer? Oh, Jesus.

He's such an idiot, man. He's such a fucking idiot. By the way, Jeremy Giordano's cousin Nicholas said, there are some people in my family who've never come to terms with Jeremy's death. Some people consider him St. Jeremy. I live with this every day. Every day I think about it. That's fucked up.

They charged Tommy with 16 counts of shit. Oh, yeah. Everything you can imagine. Murder and robberies and this while doing this. Felony murder. They didn't charge him with that. Then again, with eventual marijuana profession. Someday.

The state will seek the death penalty on Tommy. Yeah. Because he's over 18. Jeremy's only 17 and they can't seek the, or Jason's only 17. They can't seek the death penalty against him. Yeah, he's a minor. So anyway, Tommy while awaiting trial, is just. charged with heroin possession in prison or in jail after him and other inmates received

smuggled heroin. Idiot. Then July, they're talking about him pleading guilty. He might. And he's saying he's going to plead guilty, but then he tries to kill himself with an overdose of prescription pills and changes his mind. Has it dawned on him how fucked he is? Is that what happened?

I guess so. He's going to plead guilty and sit there forever. So during the trial, death penalty on the table. They're going to allow the strips with the names on it, the cocoa puff thing. Now, they insist it's a Stripes reference. The movie Stripes with Bill Murray. John Candy? John Candy, Harold Ramis and Judge Ryan Hold and all those guys.

They insist it's a Stripes reference. Even Jason Kelly, the guy who gave him the bullets, testified that it is a Stripes reference and that was a joke among their friends. Don't know. The trial court said, no, no, they're all coming in. the price list is allowed in, the gun magazines, that's to say he was experienced with guns and what he was doing, and his confession, everything's allowed in. All right.

A detective reads the murder, his song lyrics about killing people in a deadpan voice to the jury, which. It's a bad, right? If a detective reads anybody's lyrics, I mean, you could take the greatest lyrics in the world, you could sit in there with just a fucking list of Nas lyrics just, it would sound horrible coming from a deadpan detective. Spaghetti. Yes, over and over.

And he says, quote, about killing people, you can kill by, and then it's illegible, or on by guns, one night you break in somebody home and you take their money and kill by drive something, illegible, down the road and shout and shouting by the big heads the best. Those are lyrics. They don't write. So they bring everybody in. friend who, you know, a Dunkin' Donuts employee who saw them on the pay phone. You name it.

Everybody, the people who, you know, the girl who heard him talk, the Jason Kelly guy, everything. The defense case is, you know, you didn't really do that. You know, what are you talking about? That's basically their case. He wasn't there. Their case is, but he's a fucked up kid. He's got mental illness. Yeah.

So they bring shrinks in to say he's got mental illness. She his grandma's house? It's all fucked up. Yeah. So verdict comes in, unsurprisingly, he's guilty. Yeah. Yes. Now, after he's guilty to that, on the same verdict sheet, they say, did Tommy by his own conduct, fire the bullet or bullets that killed Jeremy, yes or no?

Unanimously, they vote yes. Now, that makes it go to the penalty phase, and now the death penalty can be used. If any of them said no, they can't have the death penalty. There's like a double, you know, safety mechanism there. so they're not just random death penalty he's given out. Sure. So they sentence him. During sentencing, they bring up a lot of mitigating witnesses talking about how horrible his childhood was. His grandmother fed him pills.

His uncle fucking fed him drugs, all this shit. His parents grew up together. Yeah, the Kelly family said that Tommy helped them out when, that's Jason Kelly's father. When Robert had cancer, he ran errands, he's kind. His uncle Lenny takes the stand. and says, quote, let me tell you something and I'll tell everyone in this courtroom. I'll tell anybody in the whole world and I mean it. This comes from the heart.

I would switch places with that boy right now today in a heartbeat. Give me his sentence. Let him go home. That's what he says. That's not how it works. He said, I did this. This is my fault. Oh.

He said, this is my fault. I put him on this road. I fucked them all up. And he said that it's something to do with basically a psychological breaking point. And he said, everybody has a point. He said, I had that point, too. But mine happened when I was in jail. He just happened to be out on the street so he could do more about it.

So you want to let him back out to do it again? He said, everybody in my family's dysfunctional. Tommy released his anger at the age of 18. I let it out in the Sussex County Jail. I let it out in reform schools. As they talk about that, he said, the very people in this institution right here named me a menace to society, a poor risk to the community. And I've been proven that time after time.

Send me to give me the lethal injection. Give me his sentence right now. Let me switch seats with that boy and give him psychologists. Find out what made him do it so you can teach the other kids not to. Wow. He says that, yeah. He says that my life got all fucked up. They said, what happened to your life to turn it on?

He said, my mother's former lesbian lover who was a bossy, mean, drunk, hog tied me for three days when I was little and beat me up because I tried to set fire to her bedroom. Okay. He said I wanted them dead. That's a fascinating day. Then about the house he grew up in, he said, I found cleaner living conditions in abandoned buildings in Harlem. Rats and dirty syringes were next to me and I was much happier. Wow.

They bring in the dad to say, I told him I loved him the least of all my children. And he says he did that. I got to get home to fuck my sister. Got to go fuck my sister now. Bye. Then they bring in a psychiatrist that says that he's been receiving whispers from an evil false prophet. He believes he can predict the future and that on this year in 1998, the Chinese were planning to invade America on July 1st. That's a prediction he wants everyone to know about. He said, quote, he's a very disturbed young man. He's mentally ill. Okay. The prosecution rebuttal was, who fucking cares? This was premeditated as shit. Then they bring out Loretta Giordano, Jeremy's mother. Oh, no. I love this lady.

She's a wonderful woman. She reads a 15-page victim impact statement about how much her great. Her son was. And also that her son was super into Jesus and religion and all that kind of shit. Okay. Then on cross-examination from the defense counsel, they ask her a question. And this is go either way. They hear she's real religious.

And they say, what's your family's views on the death penalty? she says this is a great very very this is what like I think if you're going to be Jesusy this is how you should be this is Jesusy stuff here quote my whole family would like to see Thomas Koscovich take the evil that he's done and turn his life over to Christ we're not in favor of the death penalty I would like the jury to evaluate everything according to what they feel their job is to do and according to the laws according to how they feel they have to answer to their God oh we're not in into it. So the jury on the other hand says you, sir, may fuck off death penalty. They are into it. We'll answer later. But if it's, okay, the whole point is if it's for the victim's family and they don't want it, then what the fuck are we doing? This is, it's silly. Anyway. It's very funny that they were like, we'll take your words, lady. We'll answer it another day. Yeah, well, that's fine. Javreeland also has a trial. He's tried as an adult but no death penalty. He has also found guilty as well, obviously. the same evidence. For him, though, you, sir, may fuck off life plus 35 years. Okay.

Eligible for parole in 2044 when he's 65. Jeez. This is, wow. He's still not, he's right in the middle of it now. Yep. Tommy appeals and gets the death penalty taken away. Uh-huh. By the way, the state appealed also saying who was error to let Loretta Gerdano testify

about her opposition to the death penalty. Oh, it's fine when the victim's families come up there and say, please put this guy to death for my, that's fine. But then when they come up and go, we don't believe in it. No, no, no. That's what I mean, they rig it against it. It's the same reason you have to have a death qualified jury, which is 12 people who say that they are, they believe in the death penalty. Rather than having some. So it's crazy.

That's wild. Why can you do that? I don't know. He gets resentenced, though, here to his earliest parole date will be 2072 when he's 94 years old. The fact that he gets that opportunity is insane. He's going to be 94? What opportunity is? He should not have, it should be life without, no fucking chance.

There is no chance. He's going to be 94. What do he's going to do? Rob pizza guy is at 94? If he makes it to 94, he makes it to 94, spend in 75 years. I hope he does. Who cares? That'd be funny and shit.

Yeah, let him live there forever. No pizza. He'll have a heart attack when he walks out the door. Now there's a civil lawsuit. where the family, the Galara family, sues Tommy Koscovich, they sue Vreeland, and they sue Adventure Sport

for not having a goddamn irresponsible gun fucking thing. Well done. Yeah. So anyway, the way that works is there's a settlement with figures for the combined civil claims

appear to be in the range of $17 million. So we don't know how that split up. But the boys aren't paying shit. Adventure Sport probably has to. But there's a settlement. They got it. Yeah. 2007, New Jersey abolishes the death penalty.

Yeah. So he ends up, by the way, Tommy starts writing Marshall Project essays and shit like that. And there's a book, David Loiza, Laosa called The Pizza Killers, that Tommy's family is very angry about because they say he lied and didn't talk to Tommy. Why? Called him a liar. There you go, everybody. There is Franklin, New Jersey. What a story.

That's a great. story, Mark. That's a crazy fucking story. And honestly, we might have been able to do a regular full-length episode on that one. Possibly. Just on all the aftermath. There's so much to cover with all the aftermath. But, yeah, we didn't want the story to be two hours of court proceedings. So we did it this way. I hope you enjoyed.

I hope you enjoyed taking care of, very well taken care of. I hope so. That's a fucked scenario of how we got the gun in the first place. I hope adventure sport just didn't claim bankruptcy. I don't know how that works. I hope not. But either way, there's New Jersey. Franklin and Franklin Borough, however you want to say it.

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