The Mad Batter

WARNING! Article includes MAJOR SPOILERS!

If you have not yet read both Gray Rose and Fade to Gray, you are advised not to expose yourself to any of the information on this page.

The Mad Batter
Born	Giovanni Raffaele Lazzaro September 12, 1990 Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Other names	The Mouse (Il Topo) Lazy Lazzaro
Alma mater	Barbera Academy High School
Convictions	First degree murder (6 counts) Manslaughter (1 count) Aggravated assault (1 count) Possession with intent to sell (already served)
Criminal penalty	165 years to life in prison
Victims	7 killed, 1 wounded
Span of crimes	March 27, 2008 – February 29, 2016
State	New York
Weapon	wooden baseball bat
Date apprehended	March 15, 2016

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Gian Lazzaro (born Giovanni Raffaele Lazzaro; September 12, 1990), sometimes known by the mob nickname "the Mouse" (Italian: Il Topo) or more popularly as the Mad Batter, is an American serial killer who pleaded guilty to a series of seven homicides committed in New York City between 2008 and 2016. Each murder, and at least one additional attack from which his victim recovered, was perpetrated with a wooden baseball bat.

Lazzaro was never suspected of any of the crimes until weeks after his final murder in 2016. Despite suspicious circumstances, the death of his first victim was initially ruled an accident, and the bodies of his next three victims were not recovered until years later, hampering investigation. At first, no link between any of the victims was readily apparent, and even for some time later, the suggestion of a link was deemed theoretical at best. When police finally began to consider a connection among the cases, suspicion fell primarily upon Matteo Di Buca, a member of the Di Buca crime family who was known to have attended Barbera Academy High School in Brooklyn with several of the victims (as well as Lazzaro). For a brief time in early March 2016, homicide detective Patrick McMurphy was also suspected of involvement in at least some of the murders, which he allegedly committed in return for bribes from the Di Bucas. However, McMurphy was quickly proven innocent of any wrongdoing.

On March 15, 2016, Lazzaro was taken into custody by New York City police homicide detectives outside an abandoned building in Hunts Point, Bronx, a notorious red light district. In the months that followed, he was indicted and stood trial for all seven murders and one attempted murder, the latter charge eventually being downgraded to assault with a deadly weapon. Lazzaro pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for six of the killings and cooperated fully with authorities throughout the course of the investigation and trial. He bragged openly in court about his crimes, for which the judge frequently held him in contempt.

During the trial, it came out that Lazzaro's primary motive for the murders was revenge against two men he claimed had wronged him in years past: Matteo Di Buca, who bullied Lazzaro in high school, and Grayson Gaynes, a police officer who arrested Lazzaro on March 27, 2013 on an unrelated charge of felony drug trafficking. Prior to this confession, the Mad Batter was believed to have chosen his victims based upon a demographic profile, since all but one of them were women under the age of 25, primarily blue-eyed, brunette Caucasians.

Observers have noted that Lazzaro seems to enjoy the publicity the murders and his subsequent trial generated. In fact, Lazzaro admitted to calling in many of the anonymous tips police received while investigating his killings, though most of those tips were intended to implicate Di Buca. The same observers have pointed out that this kind of attention seeking is another common motive among serial killers. On numerous occasions in the years following his arrest, Lazzaro has attempted to sell book or film rights to his story, but New York State's Son of Sam laws have prevented any such arrangements, on the grounds that criminals should not profit financially from their crimes.

Lazzaro is currently incarcerated in state prison, serving five consecutive life sentences.

Fixations

Although neither Matteo Di Buca nor Grayson Gaynes were among Lazzaro's victims (despite a reported three attempts on Gaynes' life), Lazzaro himself has claimed that these two men were the individuals he most intended to hurt by his crimes. His motive was primarily one of revenge. Criminal psychologists familiar with the case suggest that Lazzaro hoped to humiliate or shame both men, having developed a psychotic fixation on them as a result of the humiliation he believed himself to have suffered while under their power.

Matteo Di Buca

Lazzaro's fixation on Matteo Di Buca began in high school. Both men were members of Barbera Academy High School's class of 2009 and were well acquainted with one another from their freshman year, despite the fact that Barbera's enrollment exceeds four thousand students. Other students from that time recall that Lazzaro was a "hanger-on" to a large clique centered around Di Buca and several of Lazzaro's later victims. By all accounts, Lazzaro's involvement in Di Buca's circle was easily forgettable aside from the times when he was a target for the group's ridicule and bullying. It has been reported that on numerous occasions, Lazzaro was subjected to publicly-administered "wedgies" and being held by his ankles over an open stairwell, and he was frequently required to perform menial acts (such as carrying books or retrieving lunch trays for other group members) in exchange for the "privilege" of group membership.

Psychologists familiar with the case have suggested that Lazzaro's fixation on Di Buca probably took the form of hero worship during their earliest association, presenting as a need for Di Buca's attention and approval. When the attention he received from Di Buca proved consistently negative, Lazzaro began identifying Di Buca as a "tormentor" instead of a hero (his own choice of words, as reported from his trial). This transition may have occurred over time, but more likely happened primarily during the critical moment when Lazzaro was "pushed over the edge" and committed his first murder.

After that first act of (unpremeditated) violence, Lazzaro's fixation changed form, manifesting as a desire to remove from the picture the very individuals Lazzaro saw as rivals for Di Buca's affection. Following high school, Lazzaro went so far as to seek employment with the Di Buca crime family, for whom he worked five years as a mid-level distributor of illegal narcotics. Nevertheless, Di Buca never came to regard Lazzaro as anything more than a sycophant and lackey, and Lazzaro in turn outgrew his awe for Di Buca. Lazzaro's later killings were therefore motivated by a deep-seated need for revenge; he wished to torment Di Buca as Di Buca had once tormented him, and eventually to destroy Di Buca's life by framing him for the murders.

Grayson Gaynes

By the time Lazzaro encountered New York City police officer Grayson Gaynes in 2013, his psychosis would have been well established. When he then suffered a traumatic event at Gaynes' hand, the fact that it was entirely accidental made no difference; his rage and hatred of Di Buca—and his thirst for revenge—easily grew to encompass Gaynes as well. That traumatic event was his arrest (on drug charges) from a public bathroom stall, during which Gaynes failed to give him adequate time to pull up his pants and fasten his belt. While being escorted to Gaynes' police cruiser, Lazzaro's pants came free, exposing him on a crowded sidewalk, drawing laughter and ridicule from bystanders.

During his subsequent yearlong prison sentence, Lazzaro began plotting to pit Di Buca and Gaynes against one another. His hatred for the Di Bucas had only grown when the crime family "left him out to dry," providing him no legal or monetary assistance despite the fact that he had allegedly been working for the family when arrested. In January 2015, Lazzaro called in his first anonymous tip to police, asking for Gaynes by name and implicating Di Buca in two of the four murders Lazzaro had by then committed. Other tips followed, and Lazzaro's dreams came true when a very public rivalry developed between Gaynes and Di Buca. And yet, despite Lazzaro's best efforts, which led to the March 27, 2015 arrest of Matteo Di Buca, New York City police were unable to make charges stick. Di Buca was released days later on April 1. So Lazzaro took matters back into his own hands.

On April 5, Lazzaro made his first attempt to murder Gaynes, fully expecting that suspicion would fall squarely on Di Buca as a result of the widely publicized antagonism between him and Gaynes. However, it was in the execution of this attack that Lazzaro made his two biggest mistakes in the entire series of killings. First, he let fear immobilize him for several hours; by the time he finally "psyched himself up" for the attack, Di Buca had arrived at a night club across town, which gave the alleged mobster an alibi for the attack. Second, Lazzaro failed to kill Gaynes; though the beating he administered left the officer in a short-lived coma, Gaynes ultimately survived. Gaynes' wife, who was also present for the attack, did not.

One year later, it would be Lazzaro's two blunders on April 5, 2015 that led to his discovery and arrest, primarily because the surviving Gaynes dedicated his life to revealing the truth behind his wife's murder.

Victims

Amanda Morrissey

Amanda Morrissey was Lazzaro's very first victim. Her murder was not planned, but it set the tone for Lazzaro's later premeditated killings, establishing the Mad Batter's modus operandi and giving him a taste for the power a killer wields over his victims.

According to other students of Barbera Academy High School at that time, Morrissey was "very popular and knew it." If Matteo Di Buca was the king of the clique that included so many of Lazzaro's future victims, Morrissey was its undisputed queen. On March 27, 2008, during Morrissey's sophomore year and Lazzaro and Di Buca's junior year, Morrissey encountered Lazzaro in a school hallway following the completion of late afternoon sports practices. As often happened, Di Buca had forced Lazzaro to carry his baseball equipment back to his locker, where Lazzaro was expected to retrieve Di Buca's books and homework as well. Upon seeing Lazzaro struggling under the load, Morrissey reportedly "burst into laughter, and something snapped inside me" (Lazzaro's testimony from 2016). Dropping everything but one of Di Buca's wooden baseball bats, Lazzaro beat Morrissey to death in a rage.

Due to the late hour, there were no witnesses to the murder. Initially horrified at what he had done, Lazzaro admitted in 2016 that he carried Morrissey's body to a nearby stairwell—one of the very stairwells Di Buca had often leaned over when dangling Lazzaro by his ankles—and dropped the body headfirst. The resulting trauma was enough to mask the true cause of death, and police later ruled Morrissey's death an accident, despite the suspicious circumstances.

In the years that followed, Lazzaro's horror faded, and he realized he liked the feeling of wielding power over others, especially those individuals who had once ridiculed him. By 2013, he was eager to kill again.

Alivia Odette

Alivia Odette was Lazzaro's second victim, and like all those who followed, her murder was premeditated. By this time, Lazzaro was almost four years out of high school, and had been unofficially employed by the Di Buca crime family that entire time as a drug trafficker. Although Lazzaro had little interaction with Odette following graduation, she remained friendly with Di Buca, and the two were known to be romantically involved at the beginning of 2013. Seeing this as an opportunity, Lazzaro sneaked into Di Buca's office at one of the crime family's warehouses and used Di Buca's own mobile phone to engage in a text message conversation with Odette. Under the impression she was speaking with Di Buca, Odette agreed to meet him at their favorite café later that day. Lazzaro immediately deleted the conversation history from Di Buca's phone.

Two hours later, Lazzaro intercepted Odette on the curb outside the café, explaining that plans had changed and Di Buca had sent him to pick her up. Knowing that Lazzaro worked for the Di Bucas, Odette accepted this story at face value, oblivious to the danger her old bullying victim now posed. She climbed readily into the car Lazzaro had rented for the occasion, where he incapacitated her with a chloroform-soaked cloth. Lazzaro then drove her out of the city to upstate New York, where he killed her with another baseball bat and disposed of her body at leisure.

Odette's parents reported her disappearance within days. Di Buca was suspected early on, considering his relationship to the victim and his apparent ties to organized crime, so a judge quickly signed a warrant granting police access to Di Buca's phone records. The text exchange from February 21 was soon discovered, and that served to implicate Di Buca even further. But no additional evidence was ever found (and Odette's body was not recovered until Lazzaro's arrest in 2016, when he himself told investigators where to find it). Di Buca was never arrested. In a press release months later, the missing persons detectives working the case admitted they didn't have enough evidence to suspect anyone, Di Buca included, in Odette's disappearance. Lacking a body, they suggested it was even possible Odette was still alive somewhere, having intentionally left her life and family in New York City behind.

Ann-Marie Toscani & Edward Vittorio

Ann-Marie Toscani and Edward Vittorio were the victims of Lazzaro's third attack against members of the clique that bullied him in high school, and Lazzaro's first double homicide. More than a year had passed since the previous murder, mostly because Lazzaro had been incarcerated following his March 2013 arrest by Grayson Gaynes. Following Lazzaro's release on April 17, 2014, he fell back into working for the Di Buca crime family, where he was welcomed back as if nothing had happened. This only served to enrage Lazzaro further, considering the family's lack of assistance in his criminal defense, and he began actively looking for another opportunity to sate his needs while hurting Matteo Di Buca at the same time. When Lazzaro discovered that Di Buca was now romantically involved with Ann-Marie Toscani, another member of the old clique, the killer knew he'd identified his next victim.

Lazzaro bided his time, however, fearing it might bring suspicion upon him if another Di Buca girlfriend disappeared so soon after Lazzaro's release from prison. Instead, he kept a careful watch on Toscani, who was employed at the time as a purchaser for her parents' small chain of discount clothing outlets. When Lazzaro learned (from Di Buca, ironically) that Toscani was driving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on an apparent business trip the first week of June, he rented another car and followed. Toscani never made it to Pittsburgh, however, for her true destination was a remote cabin getaway near Canaan Valley, West Virginia.

Knowing it would be far easier to torture, kill, and dispose of the young woman in this secluded place than it would have been in Pittsburgh, Lazzaro was ecstatic. He barged into Toscani's cabin the very same night of her arrival, on June 1, 2014. Much to his surprise, he discovered she was not alone, but had been met there by Edward Vittorio. Vittorio was yet another old member of the high school clique and a current dockworker-by-day, enforcer-by-night for the Di Buca crime family. He had also been carrying on a torrid affair with Toscani behind Di Buca's back. Recovering from the surprise more quickly than his victims, Lazzaro succeeded in killing both of them, once again with a wooden baseball bat.

The cabin rental had been paid for upfront in cash, since Toscani and Vittorio both feared discovery by Di Buca; Lazzaro simply stayed out the remainder of their reservation, during which time he cleaned the cabin thoroughly to remove all evidence of the double murder. The property management company never suspected anything untoward. On the contrary, one member of the housekeeping staff later recalled thinking herself fortunate, for "it's few renters that'll leave a cabin in better shape than it started."

Lazzaro returned his rental car to a nearby office of the national chain he had rented from (in Elkins, West Virginia, roughly 30 minutes away), returning to the cabin afterwards by taxi. Vittorio's body had already been buried in the woods less than a hundred yards away from the rental. Toscani's body, being smaller and thus more manageable, was carefully wrapped in plastic and packed in a large shipping box (which Lazzaro would later sneak into a dark corner of a warehouse managed by Matteo Di Buca). On June 6, 2014, Lazzaro drove Toscani's personally-owned SUV back to New York City, the young woman's own body sitting in a box in the back. He left the SUV in its normal parking spot, and the authorities that later investigated Toscani's disappearance never knew she had ever left town. (How Vittorio originally arrived at the cabin rental, and whether there was another vehicle for Lazzaro to dispose of, has never been firmly established.)

As with Odette before, Toscani's parents soon reported her missing. Di Buca came under suspicion much more quickly this time, but there was even less evidence linking him to Toscani's disappearance than Odette's. Vittorio wasn't reported missing for several more weeks, and even then, his disappearance was not linked to Toscani's, so secret had their affair been.

By January 2015, seven months after Toscani and Vittorio's murder, the related missing persons cases had gone cold. In the first stage of his plan to pit Di Buca against police officer Gray Gaynes, Lazzaro called in the first of his now-famous anonymous tips. He asked for Gaynes by name and implicated Di Buca not only in Toscani's death but also Vittorio's, which led Gaynes to officially connect the two disappearances for the first time. In the months that followed, Gaynes came to believe Di Buca guilty of Odette's death as well, and he even theorized that Morrissey was Di Buca's first victim. (Gaynes was later vindicated on all points except the identity of the killer.) On March 27, 2015, Gaynes performed Di Buca's very first arrest, but was forced to release him days later for lack of evidence. He couldn't yet prove that any of the four victims had been murdered, much less by Di Buca.

Rose Moynihan

Rose Moynihan was Lazzaro's fifth victim, and the only non-brunette woman he murdered (she was a redhead). By Lazzaro's own confession, Moynihan's death was nothing more than a "bonus"; his true target was Grayson Gaynes, Moynihan's husband, who had arrested and humiliated Lazzaro years earlier. By that time, Gaynes was actively investigating Matteo Di Buca for the murders Lazzaro had committed. Lazzaro intended to kill both Moynihan and Gaynes, and for Di Buca to take the fall. Considering the well-publicized animosity between Gaynes and Di Buca, and the fact that Gaynes had only just arrested and released Di Buca days prior, Di Buca would have made for a very plausible killer. With Gaynes dead and Di Buca in prison the rest of his life, Lazzaro believed his "debt" would finally be settled, both his "tormentors" repaid in kind for the humiliation they had visited upon him.

On April 5, 2015, Lazzaro stalked Gaynes and Moynihan as they entered Central Park for a picnic. They were celebrating their first wedding anniversary. The killer watched them for hours while awaiting his chance to kill them with a baseball bat, then get away clean. This was Lazzaro's second attempted double homicide (after Toscani/Vittorio), but the first killing he had attempted in public. He found himself unexpectedly afraid to act, and he delayed the murders until the sun was beginning to set, casting the park in deep shadow. Only then did he approach the young couple, attacking from behind with a few quick swings at their heads, then running. He did not stay long enough to confirm their wounds were fatal.

To Lazzaro's dismay, he later learned (from a local news report) that Gaynes had survived the attack, though Moynihan had succumbed to her injuries. To make matters worse, the delay meant Di Buca had an alibi for the time of the attack. Lazzaro had failed to settle his debt with either of his so-called tormentors.

Though Gaynes remained in a coma, Lazzaro feared the police officer might awake at any moment and name his attacker, so the killer went on the run. Stealing a hundred thousand dollars cash from his employers (money the Di Buca crime family had itself allegedly stolen in a 2014 armored car heist), Lazzaro fled to Toledo, Ohio, where he remained for the next month.

Still eager to shift blame onto the Di Buca crime family, even if Matteo Di Buca could not have personally carried out the attack on Gaynes and Moynihan, Lazzaro called in another of his anonymous tips. This time, he gave homicide squad detectives the exact location of Toscani's body inside the warehouse managed by Di Buca. Unfortunately for Lazzaro, that still wasn't enough for police to arrest Di Buca.

Matters worked out to the killer's advantage in a different way, however. For when Grayson Gaynes awoke from his coma, he claimed no recollection of the April 5 attack, including the identity of his attacker. Lazzaro was free to return to New York City, which he did in late May 2015. He immediately sought out employment—and protection—from the Russo crime family, chief rivals of the Di Bucas; Lazzaro dreaded retribution from the Di Bucas if he was ever suspected of the theft of that hundred thousand dollars, but his fears never materialized. Soon, Lazzaro was back on the streets, now selling guns for the Russos instead of drugs for the Di Bucas, his clientele consisting primarily of minors and gang members.

Alyssa Lori

Alyssa Lori was Lazzaro's sixth murder victim, and the first of his victims (aside from Moynihan) against whom he held no preexisting grudge. Lazzaro could not conscience the fact that ten months had passed since Moynihan's death and both Di Buca and Gaynes remained alive and free. Killing Lori was primarily about restarting the feud between the mobster and the police officer, though Lazzaro's psychosis also created an itch he "desperately needed to scratch."

For the first time since killing Morrissey in 2008, Lazzaro renewed a relationship with his intended victim before killing her. Citing a desire for assistance with legal matters arising from his 2013 arrest, Lazzaro entered into something like an attorney-client relationship with Lori, though she was only a first year law student at the time and had not yet been admitted to the New York State Bar. Lazzaro then used that relationship to set a meeting with Lori at a night club known as Flāmz on February 23, 2016—a meeting he never intended to keep. Rather, his purpose was to place Lori and Di Buca in the same room with one another for the first time since Di Buca's 2009 graduation from high school; Lazzaro was well aware that Di Buca frequented Flāmz.

A renowned womanizer after and even during high school, Di Buca was known to pursue multiple women romantically at any given time, all the more so if they expressed disinterest in his advances. (This was part of the reason he always seemed plausible for the Mad Batter killings.) Lori had been one such woman who repeatedly rebuffed Di Buca's overtures in high school. When he saw her again at Flāmz, his interest was immediately rekindled. As Di Buca told a friend that night, "she was the one that got away." Though Lori managed to escape again without giving Di Buca her phone number that evening, he secured it from mutual friends the very next day and sent her numerous text messages, despite repeated requests from Lori that he stop.

On February 24, 2016, the night after manipulating Lori into renewing Di Buca's acquaintance, Lazzaro again used his pretext of legal aid to set a meeting with Lori. (Because of attorney-client privilege, Lori never told anyone of her meetings with Lazzaro; privilege can extend to law students if acting under the supervision of a licensed attorney.) For this second meet-up, Lazzaro kept his appointment, kidnapping the aspiring young lawyer and transporting her to an abandoned warehouse, where he tortured and beat her to death. As always, he used a baseball bat. (Later, during the trial, Lazzaro would claim that she deserved death after all, for the way she condescended to him during their supposed legal aid interviews.) Lazzaro then transported the body to one of the baseball fields in Central Park, where it would be discovered by joggers within the hour.

The killing of Alyssa Lori resulted in a renewed frenzy of media attention surrounding Matteo Di Buca and Grayson Gaynes, during which time the journalist Andrew Weiford first referred to the killer as "the Mad Batter." This frenzy peaked when Gaynes was captured on live video one week later, beating Di Buca brutally during an arrest attempt while Di Buca laughed hysterically; that video footage went viral in minutes and led to Gaynes' suspension and ultimate dismissal from the New York City police department. Following Lazzaro's conviction for the Mad Batter murders, the Di Buca family finally filed a lawsuit against the City of New York (as they had been threatening to do since February 2016), citing police brutality, intimidation, defamation, and libel. In December 2019, the city awarded Matteo Di Buca $4.4 million in damages. When asked for comment on the settlement, Lazzaro expressed disgust, both that Di Buca had profited from the situation and that Gaynes had "not been required to fork up a [obscenity] dime."

Jennifer Thompson

Jennifer Thompson was the seventh and final victim in Lazzaro's series of murders. She was killed less than a week after Lori, and is one of the few victims (with Lori) whose death Lazzaro has ever expressed remorse over. In a February 2019 interview marking the third anniversary of that crime, Lazzaro called Thompson's murder "a necessary evil."

Thompson worked professionally as an escort, and just days before her death had come forward to provide Matteo Di Buca with an alibi for Lori's murder. Her statement to police indicated that she had been with Di Buca "all that night." Lazzaro later confessed to murdering Thompson first and foremost so she could never testify in court to Di Buca's innocence; however, Lazzaro also leveraged Thompson's death in an attempt to implicate homicide detective Patrick McMurphy in the earlier murder of Rose Moynihan. Lazzaro accomplished this by planting DNA evidence within McMurphy's apartment, along with the remainder of the money he had stolen from the Di Bucas, knowing that comparison of serial numbers would suggest McMurphy had gotten the money from the Di Bucas. In this way, Lazzaro hoped Di Buca would be held accountable for Moynihan's murder after all, even though he had an alibi proving he could not have killed the woman personally.

Thompson's body was found the morning after her murder in a vacant apartment within the same building where McMurphy lived.

Discovery, Arrest, & Sentencing

Lazzaro was arrested on March 15, 2016 and charged that same day with the first degree murder of all seven of his victims. He had been personally responsible for bringing himself to the attention of investigators just two weeks prior, when he offered evidence of Di Buca's guilt in exchange for an immunity deal (Lazzaro had just been arrested again, this time on a weapons charge). If not for that immunity deal, Lazzaro would have served ten years and returned to the streets. Instead, he gambled, directing police to the location where he himself had hidden three of his own murder weapons. Even though he had faked the evidence to implicate Di Buca and McMurphy, he exposed himself as being knowledgeable about the murders, which eventually led investigators to take a closer look at him. When it was discovered that he had motive against Di Buca, Gaynes, and most of the murdered or missing women, police realized for the first time that Lazzaro could himself be the Mad Batter. In the words of one court reporter, "by gambling on that immunity deal, he overplayed his hand."

Like a house of cards, Lazzaro's entire deception regarding Di Buca's guilt in the Mad Batter killings collapsed in a matter of days. He was tricked into admitting his guilt while under recorded audio surveillance just minutes before his arrest. After that, his desire for attention was such that he could not remain silent, instead bragging to police, reporters, and court officials about any and all details of his crimes.

On June 12, 2017, Lazzaro was sentenced to 25-years-to-life for each murder, to be served consecutively at an Upstate New York supermax prison.