Beard Laws (00:00.194)
So we had another story submitted to us by a listener and I'm pretty stoked about it. So I just wanna give a quick shout out. Thank you, Rob from the Drink O'Clock podcast for bringing this story to us. It's a little bit different of a story than we typically do. We typically do stories from like way, way in the past. And this one occurred in 2017. So I'm kind of excited about it. What's your initial thoughts on this, Meg? Pretty recent. Very recent. Pretty different.
Different, wild, wild. I mean, it is in the whole kind of thing is your town, your story. So when Rob was like, hey, I have one for you guys. And I was like, let's do this. So dug into this, did the research, put together a story and pretty excited. Quick shout out to the Deluxe Edition Network, Drink O'Clock podcast is on there and podcast of the month, the Beardlaws podcast as well as take on the world podcast. So check them out, deluxeeditionnetwork.com. And again.
This story is wild. It happened in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which is very close, apparently, to where Rob lives. So that's why, hey, he's like, you should do this. Put your take on it. Super excited. And I don't know if you've ever heard of what went down in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Nope. I haven't either. I haven't either. But apparently there's movies and series and all sorts of crazy stuff that did it. And maybe you know it as the Lost Boys of Bucks County. Nope. Still don't. OK. Me neither. And that's OK. But I feel like.
We should do the intro. What do you think? Let's do it. Last time didn't work so well. Maybe this time it'll work better. Fingers crossed. If not, we'll just edit it in. Let's try, what do you think? Right now or when? Now.
Beard Laws (01:40.654)
doesn't appear to be working. I press play. It's doing nothing. Okay then, maybe we'll have to edit that in.
Beard Laws (01:55.474)
Let me make some sound effects. Let's go. Okay. Well, I did that in. Hopefully, I remember. If not, then you're just going to have us in this weird little video. But either way, let's just go right to the story. So between July 5th and July 7th, 2017, four young men were reported missing in Bucks County, which is in Pennsylvania. Obviously, in the United States, Buck County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
And guess what? The county is named after the English county of Buckinghamshire. Yeah, that was better. Yeah. I don't know why that's so weird. Saying words is hard sometimes. Anyways, what's cool about this is General George Washington might have heard of him in his wooden teeth and his troops that camped in Bucks County as they prepared across the Delaware River to take Trenton, New Jersey by surprise on the morning of December 26, 1776.
Beard Laws (02:51.606)
That happened just a little bit ago. But the story had many people, not only in the county, the state, but even the country focused on finding these boys. And what kind of started as a missing person case shocked the world with what actually went down. So shocking, as we mentioned in the introduction, there's documentaries, podcasts, books, shows, almost anything you can count of because or that you can watch or listen to because of this event.
So I think because of this, we're gonna have to check it out. And like I said, I watched a couple of episodes real, real quick, like kind of skipped through them and it's wild. So hopefully we can do this in justice. We're gonna put our take on there and the sources that we found. So let me think, jump right into this. Let's do it. All right, so the disappearances began on July 5th, 2017 with Jimmy Patrick being the first of the men or the boys to vanish. He was, I believe, 19 at the time.
He was a rising sophomore majoring in business at Loyola University, which is in Maryland. Was last seen around 6 p.m. and July 5th in Newtown, Pennsylvania. So assuming with the holiday, came home from college, or I guess it would be summer break, right? Yeah, at this point, yeah, summer break. Before going back to there. But it was a little weird because he didn't show up for work. So a missing report was filed. They started going there, obviously did all the things, called the cell phones, all that stuff, which is different because a lot of the cases and the other stories and stuff that we do.
They didn't have cell phones. They didn't have the technology that they have, you know, in 2017, let alone today. And then two days later, three more names end up on a missing person list in the area. Wow. Yeah. One of these names, super hard to say. I didn't look up it. Within two days. Within two days, four boys or men missing. All right. Did they all go to the same university? They did not. Same year. That's a great question. Same area.
And there is one common connection that we're gonna get into, but Dean A, I'm sorry to the family, Finaciaro, I'm gonna go with Thomas Mio and Mark Sturgis. That's what I'm gonna go with there. The other three boys that ended up missing two days later. I'm gonna go with a lot of first names here, easier to say for me. Dean was last seen around 6.30 p.m. on July 7th.
Beard Laws (05:15.982)
and he was being picked up by an unidentified person. They kind of hinted around who it could potentially be and you might recognize a name or two as we go on. Thomas and Mark, they both worked at Mark's father's construction company. They didn't show up for work again. Calls to the cell phones went directly to voicemail. Things aren't adding up. One of them too, I believe was a diabetic and there was a report to the vehicle and you'll hear about this, but the vehicle ended up being
found or whatever in reported missing and they found this insulin in the vehicle still, which was very Not common for obviously and they were all between 19 and 21 years old at the time of the reported missing So other the question that you asked, you know other than being from a small town being from the area Do they have anything in common? Well, apparently they all loved marijuana and it was reported that all four of these boys were to meet a local drug dealer to buy some marijuana
a drug dealer by the name of Cosmo DiNardo. So there's your, there's your link. They all know this guy, this Cosmo, and all in the market to buy some marijuana. Cosmo, let's, let's dive into kind of who he is in a little bit of the past. He was a straight A student, very dependable, hardworking. He was employed in the family's business in businesses, graduated from Holy Ghost Prep and won a scholarship to Arcadia University. He talked to becoming an orthodontist.
He was a 130 pound captain of the Bucks County Bears till his football career ended shortly with several concussions and a neck injury. January 2015, he was a senior at Holy Ghost Prep. He was appointed to serve like this anti-drug and alcohol task force. And then he was actually reappointed to this in 2016. He received an award from the township for his volunteer work, helping to rebuild the church and all of that stuff.
But 2015, he really started to have some mental issues. Him and his girlfriend split up. And then in February, 2016, he was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. And without going too into it, being a guy that loves sports and listens to sports and stuff, you just kind of wonder all these concussions, all these brain trauma, and then you start seeing depression, disorder, all this kind of stuff. But problems, they just continued to spiral, get worse and worse.
Beard Laws (07:41.45)
He then gets into an ATV accident May of 2016 on the family farm in New Hope. He was actually pinned under the vehicle for several hours. He had head injury. He had a compound leg fracture and actually ended up in a wheelchair with a cast that ran from his hip to his toes. Month after the accident, his mom, who is Sandra, said that she noticed that he began kind of acting bizarre, stopped eating his mother's cooking, saying that she was actually trying to poison him. He became
very physically aggressive. He actually started taking antidepressants, gained weight, and by weight he gained hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I mean, he went from 130 in shape to just a very, very large man. And then that summer, July of 2016, a year or so before these men start going missing, he was being driven by his mom to a memorial hospital to get him admitted.
for mental health evaluation and everything like that, but they never make it. They actually got into a fight on the way there over a cell phone and he actually bites his mom's arm very, very badly that she needed treatment and gave her a black eye. He then gets on crutches, obviously because of the accident, limps out into traffic and attempts to jump into a oncoming vehicle claiming he was trying to escape being kidnapped. He was apprehended, wound up in the mental hospital in handcuffs.
Then just over the next couple of years or months and everything like that, he ended up spending time in different treatment centers, facilities. And then for whatever reason, he just kind of turns into this dark, dark life selling drugs becomes very violent and, you know, just has a rough, rough mental health battle. I mean, just a terrible, terrible turn of events. And we're not doing this to try to say, Hey, let's have pity for this guy or anything like that. We're just kind of setting the scene.
setting the scene for the rest of the story. This was a very, very public story. So there's Cosmo, all right? So let's catch up back to July 8th, 2017 in The Missing Voice. Again, July 8th, authorities tracked Dean's cell phone to a 90-acre farm in the Solberry Township, which was actually owned by Cosmo's parents, Sandra and Antonio, who also owned a cement and construction company.
Beard Laws (09:59.97)
In those early days, new developments, new leads and information kept investigators very busy as they desperately searched for the boys and kind of tried to piece everything together. There was actually rumors and reports at this time that they found potential human body remains. They found some bones and some stuff. So again, these were all reports in some of the sources that I will name later. But what's crazy is this investigation is going on July 10th. Cosmo is arrested for an unrelated weapons charge.
He had over 30 run-ins with local police, and he comes from a very wealthy father and family, and was never convicted of a crime for whatever reason. He then was arrested on this charge with the weapons one, and the father posted a 10% of the $1 million bail to get him out. So he's in jail already. On July 8th, father bails him out, obviously not knowing or...
allegedly not knowing anything, but 30 run in with police. And we've done several stories. We're on episode like 32 or 33 of the Yorhtong podcast. Isn't there like a common theme where these criminals continually get away, get released, get away, get released until unfortunately things happen. Right. Until it's too late. Until it's too late. At this point, though, not trying to spoil. It is kind of too late. But now it's July 12th, a couple of days after he just gets out of jail on 10 percent of a million dollar bail.
He gets arrested for stealing and attempting to sell a car. And that car belonged to Thomas Mio. Tried to sell it for $500. Suspicion was already raised by the police and the fact that again, Thomas left his insulin inside car that he's trying to sell, which was not, very, very unusual. So they put him back in jail and his bail is set at $5 million. So he's sitting in jail again, and then he confesses.
to murdering the four boys. After- So the car was one of the boys that was missing? Yes, Thomas Mio, yep, one of the boys. It was his car and he was trying to sell it, assuming at this point it is stolen, and he tried to sell it for 500 bucks, gets arrested for it. So he admits to murdering, obviously, Dean, Tom, Mark, and Jimmy. All right, he then tells police, the very first victim, Jimmy Patrick,
Beard Laws (12:26.498)
that he killed him in self-defense because he saw a Glock in Jimmy's backpack. It was reported that Patrick went there to buy a couple of pounds of marijuana, and obviously it didn't go nearly as well as planned. And Cosmo was actually quoted saying, "'I knew he was gonna whack me, "'so I whacked him first with a.22 rifle "'and put two in the back of his head.'" And again, some of these details are a little graphic, but we'll try to clean them up a little bit. And I left a lot of the details out there, but the rifle.
that was, the police said, was reported stolen two years earlier from North Carolina. Cosmo then tells police that Sean, which is another name that's going to be in here, Sean was actually arrested as well, was kind of an accomplice in all of this, shot Dean in the back of the head several times and used a weapon that was Sandra's, which is the mother of Cosmo. And unfortunately, Dean on the ground.
whatever's going on and they just continue to unload bullets into him. And there's, again, disgusting details we're going to go ahead and leave out of there. Cosmo then says that he shot Tom, the third victim in the back, paralyzed him. And Mark, this one is, this one's, they're all terrible, but this one was a little bit worse that they, Mark was actually trying to run away. He shoots him, runs out of ammo.
and obviously cannot move and everything. And apparently they told cops that they get on a backhoe and without getting into details, kind of finish the job, I guess, in their aspect, and just can, you know, just hopefully there was no extra pain in that. But it was also said in Cosmos confession that he then used the backhoe, picked up the bodies, dumped them in a oil tank.
that they kind of also potentially used as a pig roaster, tried to burn them to kind of hide the evidence. Didn't really work, so then they decided to take a break while this was happening. Cosmo, the accomplished Sean, they go out for cheese steaks at Steve's, Prince of Steaks. And weird, Cosmo couldn't eat. He had an upset stomach thinking about what he had done. But after the murders, they returned to the house, the farm or whatever.
Beard Laws (14:48.062)
Use the backhoe, they dug a 12 foot deep grave and put the bodies in there. Just disgusting, isn't it? Cosmo was charged with four counts of criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, abuse of corpse, and 12 other charges. Sean Kratz, the Accomplished, was charged with three counts of criminal homicide, conspiracy to commit criminal homicide, abuse of corpse, and two other charges. Cosmo pleads guilty.
to four counts of murder and was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Kratz got life in prison with no chance of parole. And I guess one of their bargaining chips to get Cosmo in to kind of the jail to be able to interrogate him and stuff was said, hey, you come in, you tell us everything and we will not give you the death penalty. So that was apparently bargained and he got four consecutive life sentences.
Just a brutal story. I mean, you have so many family members, loved ones, friends, people in this community just unraveled by a serial killer. You know what I mean? These are people, whether they've seen him, they must have felt comfortable. I don't know for sure. It was never released, but maybe have even been to this place before. And just whatever went down just ended all of their lives. It's terrible. Wild, isn't it?
Four of them, four different missing people in one smaller community. I mean, the community, I guess, isn't like super, super small by any means in regards to everything, but in one county, one area, just unbelievable. So thanks, thanks Rob for sending that over. And I don't know, you got any questions? You got any comments on this wild, brutal, disgusting story that's in Pennsylvania?
I just wonder why, excuse me, I hadn't heard of it. Yeah, same. I mean, with it being fairly recent. Fairly recent. And not that far away. Yeah, fairly close to us within hours. And like I said, it's The Lost Boys of Bucks County. A lot of documentaries, a lot of podcasts. Like I was Googling it and picking up other podcasts that kind of talked about the story, covered the story and probably had more details, but we did.
Beard Laws (17:09.486)
Try our best to come up with the article here. We checked out, obviously, Wikipedia for some stuff. Shout out, philiburbs.com had a very well-written story kind of five years after the disappearance of this. And philimag.com, they released something like two or three years after it, just kind of talking about what went down in the trials and everything like that. And one thing that I kind of noticed as well is the difference in the stories on how quickly they were able to kind of find Cosmo, find the killer.
Yes, it kind of, I guess, not lucked out, but lucked out that he was in jail for some other stuff, obviously distraught by what he had done. But within days, hours, because of technology and everything, the people investigating were able to have a lead, have somebody in question. I mean, we've covered stories from the 70s, which aren't that long ago. I mean, they're a while ago, but just the technology isn't there, and they had a hard time finding leads in everything. So...
Shout out to everybody involved that were able to do this. And man, just a tough one for the community and the remembrance and everything like that. It seems like the insulin too was a big break. Yeah, him trying to sell the car. And maybe they don't find that honestly, if the father doesn't bail him out, you know what I mean? He's still in jail. Maybe he doesn't confess. Maybe he doesn't tell them exactly where everything is and has a change of heart. But man, just...
So one thing, you know, we always end it with a quote. And there was a quote that kind of stuck out to me in one of the articles. It was a quote that was read by a friend at Dean's funeral. And it's a Bob Marley quote that says, love the life you live and live the life you love. And like I said, from reading that, Dean tried to really live life to the fullest. And just one of those awful things that there's not really too much we can say to sugarcoat this one.
Again, thanks again Rob for sending that over. Man, some of these ones are tough and it puts you in a little bit of a downer of a mood after you read this or listen to it, but it helps make you appreciate things as well a little bit. But that's what we're doing, crazy wild stories, your town, your stories. If you have one, send us a message. And we got an email, social media, you can find us everywhere. And check out the website, we'll have a new pin on this place in Pennsylvania. So again, thanks everybody for listening. Thank you Meg, this is awesome.
Beard Laws (19:37.07)
Did you have fun? Yeah. Was that a good one? Mm-hmm. Yeah, pretty shocking. It's just one of those ones. But that's all we got. We'll be back next week. Zach, if you're listening and you made it all the way through this, will you please write an episode? Please? Pretty please. Everybody, let's get on the Instagram, the Your Town Instagram, comment on the last video or photo and be like, Zach, where are you? With a cherry on top? With a cherry on top, please. I know you're-
No, you're busy and you got like a bunch of kids, but we could use you. All kidding aside, either way, we'll be back and we'll, uh, we'll have something awesome for you next week. Maybe we've been recorded already. All right. So that's all I got. Uh, take care everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye.