The Mad Batter: Difference between revisions

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! Born

| Barbera Academy High School

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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn 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.

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 \nmous 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_seeking 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Sam_law Son of Sam laws] have prevented any such arrangements, on the grounds that criminals should not profit financially from their crimes.

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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescent_clique 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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedgie "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.

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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=\nmous_tip \nmous 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.

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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_operandi modus operandi] and giving him a taste for the power a killer wields over his victims.

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.

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.

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 \nmous 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 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.

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 \nmous 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.

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."

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."