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Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not intended for all audiences.
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Listener discretion is advised. I heard screaming and stuff, so I just left. I couldn't see it no more.
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Where'd you leave from? That old lady's house. Hello and thank you for joining us. This is Season 13, Episode 340.
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What? 347 of Sword and Scale. A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.
00:00:59
Starting a business sounds exciting until you actually do it. Then suddenly you're the product guy, the website guy, the shipping department, the marketing department, customer service, all of it.
00:01:28
And if you're anything like me when I started, you're thinking, am I doing this right?
00:01:33
Is anyone going to actually care? That's where Shopify makes a lot of sense. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S.
00:01:46
They give you hundreds of ready-to-use templates so you can build a clean, professional online store that actually looks like your brand.
00:01:53
And once you're up and running, Shopify has tools for inventory, payments, analytics, returns, and international shipping all in one place.
00:02:02
They even have AI tools to help you write product descriptions, improve page headlines, and enhance product photography.
00:02:10
Plus, easy email and social media campaigns to help customers actually find you.
00:02:15
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:02:28
Go to shopify.com slash sword and scale. That's shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:02:36
Cha-ching. It's March 1st, 2015 in Niles, Ohio. Yeah, Ohio again. Niles is an aging steel town in Trumbull County.
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The narrow streets are lined with ranch and Cape Cod homes, where families have lived for generations.
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On Lafayette Avenue, the houses sit close together, with alleys running between them and neighbors that notice when something is out of place.
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Just before dinner, a teenage boy stumbles home and into the front door. He's not hungry, and he's not thirsty either.
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In fact, he's already had too much to drink, and he's a drunken mess. 911, what's your emergency?
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Hi, my son came home and said he got jumped by several people, and he's not acting right.
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Okay, where does that occur? I'm a 502 Lafayette. He said he was at Theater Park.
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Okay. And he has blood on his hands and stuff. Her voice echoes through the house as she speaks to the dispatcher.
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She's not in panic. He doesn't look injured. But he has blood all over him. And he's not wearing pants.
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He's been staggering through the neighborhood in his underwear and a t-shirt. He has blood on his hands?
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Yeah, and on his shirt, and he's like coming in and out of it. How old is he? He's 15.
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15? Yeah, he's not. Okay, so you need an ambulance? Yeah. All right, I want you to come down to the station when he's done.
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Okay. And file a report. Okay. Okay, stay on the line. So far, his mom doesn't seem to notice somehow that his breath also reeks of alcohol.
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Or at least she doesn't report this. How old is your son? He's 15. He said he was drunk.
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When you say he's not acting right, what do you mean? He's like laying on the bathroom floor and he tries to lift up his head and his eyes roll back.
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And he throws himself back down. And then he was like... Can he be able to talk to you?
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He mumbled. And he has blood on his hands and his shirt. Her son, Jacob LaRosa, tells her he's been attacked by some other teenagers.
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That's Niles. I have a call on the line at 502 Lafayette. Our 15-year-old son was at a fight.
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And he came home and she said he's not acting right. The Niles squad car pulls up quickly.
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It's only a short drive to the station. The Lafayette houses are cluttered tightly in a neighborhood
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where officers can cross yards and alleys in seconds. Inside, he finds Jacob on the bathroom floor.
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An ambulance gets there in just minutes, and they whisk Jacob away to the hospital, where he's interviewed.
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Mind if I come in? No, sir. No, sir. You can come in whenever you want I do sir Jacob how are you Doing good sir Good My name Lieutenant Adkins Don talk or move yet okay
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Yeah, you put stuff for this young lady first, though, okay? Don't talk and don't move yet.
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You're moving, so you're going to screw up your test, buddy. Don't talk, don't move.
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That nurse wasn't playing games and didn't have the time for her drunk patient. You know where my mom is?
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She's out in the waiting room. These guys came up to me with a gun. It happens. The streets can be violent, especially in Ohio.
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Tell me, how'd you end up here tonight? Well, this kid, Derek Davies and the Monson Jackson,
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they put a gun to my hand. Okay, Derek Davies and what was the other guy's name?
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Derek Davies and Devontae Jackson. Devontae? Yes. Jackson. They put a gun to my head.
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They were making me smoke, drink. I got in the car. I told them I was scared. Okay, where were you with these guys?
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I was down the street in Lafayette. I told them I wanted to go home. I was just scared.
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My mom wanted me home. I was making up excuses. So they believed me that I needed to be home.
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Okay. I told them I was going to steal something. So I told them I was going to steal something, but I lied to them.
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I went straight to my house and they told me to get the car, so I went. To anyone in the room listening, it sounds like he was being held at gunpoint
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and told to rob somebody or something. So, according to Jacob, he lied just so he could go home, where his mom was expecting him.
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The officers have more questions, but all of a sudden, Jacob passes out. what kind of gun was it?
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it was 9mm ok what color? black? silver? black black black black ok had a grip on it
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on the bottom of it on the bottom of it had it in your hand what kind of car were they in?
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they were in a grey car you know what kind? it was a jeep yes it was a jeep it was a jeep
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ok it was a great jeep Wait, wait, wait. It had like a bald eagle on top of it on the hood.
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Okay. On the hood. Got that? Jacob's account of what happened was only getting more interesting.
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Okay. So, they made you get in the car. They made me drink. What did they make you drink?
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They made me drink vodka, whiskey, for love. I don't want to do it. I want to be happy. I want to be sober.
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Okay. You said they made you smoke. Were they making you smoke cigarettes? They made me smoke cigarettes.
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They made me smoke weed and made me drink. You said they made you smoke weed? No, they made me smoke cigarettes, but they made me drink.
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Okay. I told them I wanted to... They made me... They forced me to smoke the weed, but I didn't.
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Again, I say something like my probation officer said to me to do. Okay. I did it.
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Who's your probation officer? Miss Calloway. Okay. Miss Calloway. Okay. Miss Calloway.
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How'd you meet up with these guys? I was down at the Quays and they trapped me. They trapped me.
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They what? They trapped me. Peer pressure. You've been there, right? Just trying to do the right thing, mind your own business,
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follow all the rules, and then some kids your age pull guns, pour vodka down your throat, and shove weed at you.
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You try it, but like Bill Clinton once famously claimed, you don't inhale. No, there's no way I could have lived.
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I was trying to rant, but they caught me. They caught me. Okay. I'm sorry. Please don't arrest me.
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Jacob, I'm just talking to you right now. Oh, thank you. Okay. So, they make you get in the car.
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Where do you guys go? We go to Dollar General. Okay. On Robbins Avenue? Yeah, the way up there.
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Way down there. You know where you go? What is it called? Giant Eagle. You know where Giant Eagle is at?
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Yeah. You know how you go down to Giant Eagle? You go across. You go, you turn. You turn right.
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And you go all the way up to Robbins. Yeah? We're going all the way up to Robbins and they're having a car and they're saying that they're going to beat me up.
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I was scared. I always wanted to call my mom. I want to make sure my mom is safe.
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Yeah, you are safe. How old are these guys? They're like 17, 18 years old, 19. Are they from Niles?
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Yeah, this is why I told my mom I didn't want to go to school there. Okay. The more questions the officer asked, the harder it was for Jacob to spit out his version of what happened.
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His words turned into sobs. His sentences trailed off. And what little sense he did make only raised more questions.
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So after you go to Dollar General, where do you guys go? They're all making me...
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Concentrate Maybe buy a bottle of it I get a little He wanted to be a good kid A great kid.
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But that wasn't how the first 15 years of his life had gone. He wasn't going to be nominated for Alter Boy of the Year anytime soon.
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Good kids don't come home drunk and coherent and covered in somebody else's blood, after all.
00:12:41
Good kids don't spin stories to get out of serious crime. And great kids don't leave a dead body in their wake.
00:12:55
Starting a business sounds exciting until you actually do it. Then suddenly you're the product guy, the website guy, the shipping department, the marketing department, customer service, all of it.
00:13:16
And if you're anything like me when I started, you're thinking, am I doing this right?
00:13:21
Is anyone going to actually care? That's where Shopify makes a lot of sense. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world,
00:13:31
including 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. They give you hundreds of ready-to-use templates
00:13:35
so you can build a clean, professional online store that actually looks like your brand.
00:13:41
And once you're up and running, Shopify has tools for inventory, payments, analytics, returns,
00:13:46
and international shipping all in one place. They even have AI tools to help you write product descriptions, improve page headlines, and enhance product photography.
00:13:57
Plus, easy email and social media campaigns to help customers actually find you.
00:14:03
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com slash swordandscale.
00:14:15
Go to shopify.com slash swordandscale. That's shopify.com slash swordandscale. Cha-ching.
00:14:36
On March 31st, 2015, 15-year-old Jacob LaRosa staggers home in a Niles, Ohio neighborhood.
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He's half-dressed, bleeding, and reeking of alcohol. His mother calls 911 convinced her son's been attacked.
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At the hospital, Jacob claims that teenagers with guns trapped him. But his slurred lies can't hide the truth.
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Something way more gruesome happened that afternoon. And just across the street, the evidence was waiting.
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Marie Belcastro was a 94-year-old widow with kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids.
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Her great-granddaughter, Lena, called her Gigi. Gigi was like a really sweet person.
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She was very spiritually in tune with herself and religious to the degree of wanting to be just like Jesus.
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And she always gave back. She was very kind-hearted. And I think, you know, a lot of people mistake kindness for weakness.
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And I think what happened to her was kind of tragic in the sense that the expression kind of came true to itself with what had happened to her.
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And I think it kind of proves that no matter how good your intentions are, no matter how kind you are, there's always going to be some jerk that's going to try and affect that, destroy that.
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Marie was born in 1920 to immigrant parents from Italy. Her dad was a carpenter who came to the U.S. at the age of 11.
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Marie herself married Fred Belcastro, a member of the Army Corps in World War II.
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Marie also helped with the war effort, working at Packard Electric, making tanks and military equipment.
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She was like Rosie the Riveter, but in real life. This is her grandson, Brian Kirk.
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She was a housewife, and the Italian-American community in Niles was very close-knit.
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In fact, I've heard wonderful stories about the Italians banding together with other minorities.
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It was a very different time in American history. Back then, just getting into the United States was a different process than it is today.
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Irish, Italian, and Jewish families traveled weeks by ship in cramped spaces. hoping they didn't die along the way.
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They came to Ellis Island with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. They stood in long lines, went through the humiliating medical inspections,
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fought language barriers, and hoped they wouldn't be turned away. No jobs were waiting, no handouts, no safety nets, certainly no welfare.
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All they had was each other. And in Niles, Ohio, the Italian families banded together with other newcomers to find their way in a city that didn't always welcome them.
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They faced suspicion and prejudice, but they worked long hours in the mills, raised families, and built communities of faith and tradition that held them together.
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My grandfather suffered a stroke in the 70s and my grandmother became a bus aide and then a school bus driver She was quite short about four foot nine And so the idea of her driving a big bus was pretty funny to us
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But she did what she had to do to thrive and survive. And she was a product of that Great Depression era.
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She had a hip side to her. And by that, I mean she was plugged into the culture.
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She loved stand-up comedy. she liked comics like Ron White and Louis Black. When I was six years old I remember watching Saturday Night Live on her living room floor
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something that my parents would never let me do. Brian says that even though his grandmother was a devout Catholic
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she didn't push her beliefs on anyone and didn't get stuck in the dogma. When Brian and a friend visited her on their first college break
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the first thing she did was offer them 20 bucks to go buy some beer. She gave me the freedom to make mistakes.
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And she was just a very funny woman with a very advanced sense of humor. In a different era, she could have been a college professor.
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But in 1920s Ohio, you know, the child of immigrants and relatively poor, she didn't have the same opportunities that young women have today.
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But a learned woman, a smart woman. And a really good Italian cook, I might add.
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who wouldn't want a grandma like her the thing brian remembers most is her humor and her laugh
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things she inherited he went on to become a comedian i remember doing howard cosell
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impersonations of age six for her friends and neighbors on the sidewalk in niles so she was my
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first audience and her laugh was wonderful and infectious and um the last conversation i ever
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had with her was on an iPad, and she asked me if I had any new impressions, and I gave her one.
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I told her about a new character that I was learning, and she was up to the end, always
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looking to laugh. 94 years old, and according to her family and doctor, she would have easily lived
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another 10 years. But on March 31st, 2015, her laugh was silenced. That afternoon, Marie's daughter
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walked into the house on Cherry Avenue, the one that Marie's father had built for her with his
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own hands, and found what the killer or killers had left behind. 911, what's your emergency?
00:20:33
I'm at 509 Cherry Street Niles. I'm Marie Belcastro's daughter. I just walked into her house and I finally found her. She looks like she's all smashed. There's blood in every room. It looks like her house was ransacked.
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fact how old is she how old yeah she was 94 i think she's dead she looks she's been a twisted
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she's twisted in here in the bedroom and i saw an ambulance when i walked in and saw all kind
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of stuff i saw me one walk above so i ran up there and i said i need someone i thought maybe
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they went to the wrong place and maybe she called them but i think somebody came in i know somebody
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came in here. The ambulance she saw just across the street was for Jacob. Did it any time you go
00:21:26
to a house over on Cherry Street, the old lady that lives behind you? I'm so sorry, guys.
00:21:32
Okay, I just got an answer, Lieutenant. What did you say, sir? The house behind you on Cherry
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Street, the old lady that lives back there, did you go to her house? No, ma'am. No, sir. Okay.
00:21:43
Did any of those guys go to that house? Yeah, but I told him I'm not going in there.
00:21:48
They left. They started, I heard screaming and stuff. So I just left. I couldn't see it no more.
00:21:56
Where'd you leave from? The old lady's house. Were you inside and left or? No, I left.
00:22:01
I couldn't, I just heard screaming so I left. Where'd you hear screaming from? The old lady's house.
00:22:07
Okay, but were you outside? Were you in the car? Where were you? No, I was in an alley, but I ran.
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I ran at home, got one on my, what's it called? The swing thing. The swing, swing thing.
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The swing set? The swing set, yeah. Okay. Jacob said he ran home as the boys who held him at gunpoint went inside Marie's house.
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He said he only heard the screams. Whether he was inside the house or not, Marie was indeed screaming.
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And what her daughter found was the end of a struggle no one should ever have to fight.
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especially a sweet old woman. Back at the scene an officer steps through the side entrance at 509
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Cherry. The doorframe is splintered. The lock has been forced. Evidence of violence is pervasive
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in multiple rooms. In the living room the floor is stained with blood especially
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in front of a recliner where the struggle started. It's not a single pool. It's smeared.
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soaked into the carpet, streaked across furniture, and spattered on walls. On the couch, more stains.
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He sees fragments of bone, sections of Marie Belcastro's skull lying on the floor among the blood.
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We interviewed Chris Becker, the lead prosecutor on the case. The coroner indicated that she had been beaten so brutally that he could not determine how many blows had rained down on her head.
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A trail of bloody dragmarts leads into the dining room. More blood on the floor.
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Another fragment of skull. Shards of her hearing aids lay in various places and...
00:24:00
One is broken and lodged inside her ear canal. A detail the coroner would later say he had never seen before in over 8,000 autopsies.
00:24:10
The officer follows Dragmark's smeared lines of blood leading away from the front rooms through the kitchen down the hallway.
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Along the baseboard of one wall, there are more fragments of skull and brain tissue.
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In the guest bedroom, he finds the body. Marie Belcastro lies twisted on the floor at the foot of her bed.
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She is face down. Her pajama pants are gone. Her shirt is soaked in blood. Her arms are contorted, with one pinned under her and the other bent unnaturally.
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Blood has pooled beneath her and saturated deep into the carpet. They will later discover there's so much blood that it is dripping through the floorboards into her finished basement.
00:25:01
He gets down on his knees, careful not to disturb the scene, and sees her crushed face.
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The injury measures almost five by one and a half inches. It's not a fracture. The bone and tissue are completely caved in.
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Nearby, he spots the murder weapon. A maglite flashlight stained with blood. There are also bloody shoe prints marking the carpet.
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The house reeks of iron. Every room he passes through has signs of a violent struggle.
00:25:34
A veteran with decades on the force, he freezes for a moment. In 24 years of law enforcement, he has never seen anything like this.
00:25:43
And this could have been his grandmother, he thinks to himself. Meanwhile, Jacob is still in the hospital being questioned.
00:25:53
His drunken version is starting to crack. He had already blamed the murder on two other young men, or kids,
00:26:01
who held him at gunpoint and then decided to let him go. So he's running through all the alleys with no pants and ends up at a playground.
00:26:10
And what did you do there? I hung out. So when he came back, I seen blood all over him.
00:26:15
All over him? Blood all... Oh my God. Oh my God. Who did you see blood all over?
00:26:23
Devontae Jackson. Devontae Jackson had blood all over. He had blood all over him.
00:26:28
Is Devontae white or black? He's black. Okay, how about this other guy? What's his name again?
00:26:32
Derek Davies. Is he white or black? He's white. Okay. He hangs up at McDonald's.
00:26:39
At McDonald's, every single morning, he would be up hanging out at McDonald's. Okay.
00:26:43
Oh, my God. Isn't that Jeep? No, in a car, a black car. it's a lot of the right license price up front looks like a race car okay so you were in the
00:26:55
house at any time with them no so i won't find anything in yours in that house because i'm going
00:26:59
guys up there right now looking for stuff in that house nothing in there's going to come back that's
00:27:04
yours right no sir and you're not going to have any blood in there you're not going to have anything
00:27:09
in there no sir okay because i want to believe you're being honest with me right now i'm completely
00:27:16
Thank you, officer, for saving my life. Oh, you're welcome. And you too. Oh, thank you.
00:27:22
Thank you. You're welcome. God bless you. Well, thank you. In the hospital, Jacob was safe.
00:27:29
He only had minor injuries, and he was grateful, even thanking and blessing the officer and the nurse who were helping him.
00:27:36
He'd make it home after all. But across the street, Marie Belcastro was lying dead in a heap of blood.
00:27:44
While Jacob blamed two boys with guns, investigators canvassed the neighborhood.
00:27:51
They questioned everyone who might have seen somebody, anybody, really, going into or out of Marie's house that afternoon.
00:28:00
No one had. Why are the neighbors saying that they didn't see anybody over there but you?
00:28:06
Uh. Huh? I don't know. Well, the couple of the neighbors over there said they saw you coming out of the house.
00:28:14
Why would they say that? Me? Yeah, why would the neighbors say they only saw you come out of the house?
00:28:23
Oh, because first I don't know what the hell. I don't know what the hell I said.
00:28:29
They were saying that because it was true. But Jacob's lies kept coming along with new names.
00:28:36
Tavon Jackson. Yes? When did he come on scene? I thought it was Devonte and the other guy, the white guy.
00:28:43
No, it was Tony, I think. Jacob, let me explain something to you. You watch TV a lot?
00:28:52
You watch TV at all? Yeah, you ever watch CSI or any of that where they do crime scene stuff?
00:28:59
Yeah. Yeah, well, I got my crime scene guys up right now, and your story isn't adding up to what you're telling me.
00:29:05
And see, I'm up here trying to help you out and get you in front of this so that you don't end up with a bigger mess than it could be already.
00:29:12
And I don't think you're telling me the truth because your story keeps changing a lot.
00:29:17
And I've got witnesses up there. Jacob's story kept shifting, full of names and details that led nowhere.
00:29:24
By then, investigators already knew this wasn't some random encounter. Jacob had been in and out of detention for years with probation officers and judges
00:29:34
trying and failing to rein him in. He had just been released from the Juvenile Justice Center about five hours earlier.
00:29:42
He had been literally in jail until about, he was released, I think we found out about
00:29:48
11 o'clock. We had video of that 11 in the morning. And of course Marie was murdered sometime between four o between like three o and four o because we had people that had been to her house uh and seen her uh after the lunch hour during the lunch hour so we know she
00:30:06
was alive at least during you know like say one or two o'clock and jacob what he did was
00:30:12
he broke into her house there was video of him in the alley security from the neighbor actually
00:30:19
showed him in the alleyway. He broke into the house. He obviously committed the murder of Marie,
00:30:25
beat her in three different locations. And at that point, then he rifled through her purse.
00:30:31
He went down to the basement where this was an older kind of 1950s built house. There was an old
00:30:37
little bar down there. I don't think Marie Bocaster had used that bar for a number of years, but
00:30:43
there were some liquor bottles that he ended up taking and he was seen on the video in the alleyway.
00:30:49
with those bottles. They actually were recovered, and a couple of those bottles of alcohol had his
00:30:55
DNA on the bottle. That wasn't the only place they found DNA evidence. When Jacob was in the
00:31:02
hospital, nurses noticed blood in his underwear. When they took him to the restroom to urinate,
00:31:08
they discovered that his penis and groin area had blood, and it was Marie's. Later,
00:31:17
the police would confirm this by recovering the washcloth the nurse had used to wipe him.
00:31:23
He eventually drug her to a bedroom where he attempted to rape her. She was still bleeding
00:31:28
at that point, but for all intents and purposes, she was brain dead. We know for a fact that he had
00:31:34
her blood on his penis because we were able to swab that and get that information or get that
00:31:40
evidence. This wasn't the story of a troubled kid who just needed another chance. Prosecutors
00:31:47
said Jacob had already burned through every chance he'd ever been given. And what he did to
00:31:53
Marie Belcastro proved he was beyond redemption. Sorry to say, but sometimes it's just time to give
00:32:00
up and put a bullet in their head or a couple thousand volts through their body. I mean, what
00:32:07
do we need these people for anyway? But Jacob had a long history of behavioral problems and he had
00:32:15
bombed out of a number of programs that were designed to help him. He didn't respond well
00:32:20
to any treatment. He was in a treatment facility called the Smith House Quest for about three
00:32:27
months in late 2014. And if you recall, this murder happened in March 31st of 2015. And while
00:32:36
he was there, he made threats against residents, was caught masturbating. He'd punched another
00:32:43
juvenile there. He was found to be in the computer room and admitted that he liked to look at women
00:32:49
and masturbate to them. He used another inmate's computer there to send sexually explicit emails
00:32:56
to a teacher. So he had a long history of behavioral problems and sexual deviation and violence.
00:33:04
Even his own parents were afraid of him. Now, he had a little bit of a difficult start. His parents
00:33:11
were divorced, but by all accounts, his mother was pretty good to him. His other siblings were
00:33:16
pretty decent kids. They didn't commit these type of crimes and didn't even come close to committing
00:33:22
any types of crimes. At one point, he was sentenced for domestic violence when he threw a mason jar
00:33:29
candle at his seven-year-old sister and he hit her in the eye, and she required 18 stitches.
00:33:35
At one point, the stepfather said we had to put padlocks on all the other children's bedrooms doors because Jacob would steal anything and everything and then sell it for drugs.
00:33:47
So all the children had padlocks on their bedroom doors so Jacob could not get in there and steal anything from them that he could use to sell.
00:33:56
The father also told us in a written statement and a recorded statement, I believe,
00:34:01
that he was so afraid of Jacob and his violence that he was sleeping with a gun under his pillow.
00:34:06
That's how bad Jacob was. Even with that history, what drove Jacob on March 31st is still unclear.
00:34:14
He had been released from juvenile detention only hours earlier, full of restlessness and agitation.
00:34:22
Maybe he was simply looking for a dopamine hit. He'd been diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but of course most people with ADHD aren't violent.
00:34:32
Most people in general aren't violent. Maybe he was looking for money or alcohol.
00:34:38
Things he knew Marie kept in her home. She offered him meals and snacks before and even gave him loose change.
00:34:45
But her daughter was clear. Those small acts of kindness happened only on the porch.
00:34:52
Marie never let them inside. I have no idea what Jacob's motive was. He never stated it.
00:35:00
He never gave the police any information. Of course, he deflected and lied and even lied about where he got the blood on his clothes from to his own parents.
00:35:10
But it's clear that he was sexually deviant. There's a long track record of him having sexual fantasies and deviations and masturbating and looking at pornography.
00:35:22
and the other thing was he clearly has a violent track record. He is just one of those individuals that if you were beside him,
00:35:30
he didn't care if it was broad daylight because Marie was killed in the middle of the afternoon.
00:35:35
If he wanted something, which maybe he wanted the liquor in this case or maybe just had sexual fantasies
00:35:41
and wanted to have some kind of sexual fantasy with a woman, he knew Marie was 94 years old and lived basically in his backyard.
00:35:52
and he could take advantage and enter her home. And that could be part of the motivation too Whatever Jacob reasons the evidence left little doubt His bloody shoe prints tracked through Marie home
00:36:07
A maglite flashlight stained with her blood. DNA all over the scene. And on Marie.
00:36:15
Neighbors saw him wandering half naked and drunk, his body smeared with Marie's blood.
00:36:22
By the time investigators finished collecting evidence, there was no question who had been inside 509 Cherry that afternoon.
00:36:30
And who had not. Jacob left the hospital that evening after being treated for minor injuries.
00:36:37
He went back home, hoping he had somehow convinced the police that not only was he innocent, but that he was also a victim.
00:36:46
By this time, his family was beyond suspicious. They already knew what life with him was like.
00:36:54
His siblings are normal human beings, are normal people. And he just put this whole family, including his mother and his siblings,
00:37:02
obviously by causing the injuries to the sister, he just put them through hell. The fact that they had to padlock the bedroom doors,
00:37:11
the fact that the stepfather had to sleep with a gun. I mean, this kid was just a devil incarnated inside this house and in this whole neighborhood.
00:37:20
Just after midnight, deputies surround his house after hearing from dispatch that he's threatening suicide by cop.
00:37:27
Spotlights flood the house. A PA system booms his name, ordering him out. Jacob hesitates.
00:37:36
He tells officers on the phone he's worried about his dogs, and then he's quiet.
00:37:41
Minutes drag on as Jacob's parents coach him. Finally, Jacob steps into the doorway.
00:37:48
He edges forward, but then backs up. The officers keep calling him. At last, he walks into the open.
00:37:57
He doesn't fight. He just says, I'm going to jail. Well, Dave, after spending all day yesterday
00:38:03
trying to sit a jury in this case, Jacob LaRosa himself pleaded no contest to charges named in an amended indictment this morning.
00:38:13
Now, Judge Wyatt McKay found LaRosa guilty of the charges, including aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, and attempted rape.
00:38:22
The charges stem from the brutal attack on 94-year-old Marie Belcastro inside her Niles home back in March of 2015.
00:38:29
Now, LaRosa was arrested shortly after the crime and has been held on $3 million bond at the juvenile detention center ever since.
00:38:37
But now that he's 18 and convicted of the crime, he'll be moved over to the Trumbull County Jail at some point very shortly.
00:38:46
Jacob pleaded no contest but would be sentenced as an adult. This meant that for the charges of aggravated murder, the court could impose the maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
00:38:59
The death penalty was off the table because he was a juvenile when he committed the crime.
00:39:05
when they were trying to seat a jury, they couldn't get people to have any sense of
00:39:12
fairness or impartiality on the question of Jacob La Rosa, because they had all heard about the
00:39:17
murder. And they all had a very strong opinion about what should happen to La Rosa. And it just
00:39:23
shows you the goodness of the man on the street, who when presented with something very black and
00:39:29
white and clear cut, like the murder of a helpless old lady. They know what to do.
00:39:36
And this is part of what Chris Becker had to say in his closing arguments at Jacob's sentencing.
00:39:41
He had beaten her in the living room and in the dining room, and parts of her skull were found in
00:39:47
both places. Her hearing aids had been basically beat out of her head. That's why I refer to Jacob
00:39:53
LaRosa as just an animal. He should be locked up forever. You know, my grandfather used
00:39:59
to say all the time, if you act like an animal, you should be treated like an animal. And Jacob
00:40:03
LaRosa is clearly an animal. Of course, the defense team didn't see it that way. They saw him as a
00:40:09
child of 15 with his whole life ahead of him. Just a little baby boy, just ready to go out into the
00:40:16
world. You know, such a bright future ahead. And that was exactly the problem. What other heinous
00:40:23
crimes would he commit with an entire life ahead of him? Remember, in the hospital, Jacob was
00:40:29
grateful his life had been saved. But only hours earlier, he had snuffed out the life of a sweet
00:40:37
old lady and then lied about it. God bless me. God bless you. Why would I do? You saved my life.
00:40:44
You got me here. You guys saved my life. Okay. It's hard to believe that Jacob would be capable
00:40:51
of believing in God. It does take a certain amount of humility to admit there's a higher power.
00:40:59
And it's even hard to believe that he was truly grateful for anything except himself, his life.
00:41:08
Jacob, for whatever reason, whatever wires were crossed in his brain, whatever happened to him,
00:41:13
something got into him and made him this animal that ended up taking the life of a wonderful, by all accounts, 94-year-old woman.
00:41:23
Oh, she was a very nice lady. She'd do anything for you. I can't understand why anybody would want to hurt her, really.
00:41:31
Because she'd do anything for you. She'd go out of her way for you. Jacob's life had been spared once already.
00:41:38
Or at least he pretended to see it that way. But now it was really on the line. Like, for real, real.
00:41:46
He couldn't be given a death penalty because he was a minor, but he would be eligible for life without parole.
00:41:53
And that exactly what Marie family was hoping for Would the justice system spare him Or would the judge know what to do as Marie grandson Brian pointed out Fortunately Attorney Becker didn have to prove
00:42:08
motive. Some people on this earth are just sociopaths. And that's all they'll ever be.
00:42:17
The good news is, I don't have to prove motive. And thank goodness he never told us what his
00:42:23
motive was because I don't think there's any real reason. You know, you can always understand why
00:42:28
maybe someone who's homeless or a drug addict may steal something because, you know, I'm hungry or
00:42:34
I have a drug addiction. But this is a case where you're just dealing with a psychopath
00:42:39
who's a violent sexual predator. And he's like I say, you know, I still believe this day. He's one
00:42:46
of the one of the people that I've prosecuted. There's a number of them, but he is definitely
00:42:50
one of the people that probably should have got the death penalty, but because he was under 18,
00:42:55
the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited that. But he certainly should be dying in prison.
00:43:01
At the sentencing hearing, Marie's daughter spoke, wanting to remind the judge exactly what she found
00:43:07
the day she walked in on what Jacob had left behind. I'm seeing splatter on the wall and mom's purse dumped. So I go into the first bedroom
00:43:19
and there she was on the floor. And I knelt down and I put my hand on her head and I put my hand on her back
00:43:26
and her back was still wet. It was wet with blood. Jacob tried to seem remorseful,
00:43:33
but some things you just can't fake. I'm sorry for what I did and I hope and pray Mary Bacasa's family
00:43:40
and everyone else can reach down deep in their hearts and forgive me. I am sorry to the people I hurt and let down.
00:43:47
I am sorry to my family that I hurt for so long. I'm sorry to the people I bullied, disrespected, stolen from, and I'm sorry to the court system for everything I've done.
00:43:57
I'm sorry to the staff I disrespected in the past. The thing is, her name was Marie, not Mary.
00:44:04
But he was either too stupid to remember it, or he just didn't give a shit. And the list of people he disrespected kept rolling out of his mouth.
00:44:13
More like a fifth step from a chronic double-A regular. making amends because they have to, rather than anything resembling real remorse.
00:44:24
Even more damning than his robotic apology was what he said to a jail inmate while awaiting trial.
00:44:31
This quite possibly explains his motive. According to him, Jacob said that he was at a party with friends and they were drinking.
00:44:40
They ran out of alcohol, so he said he was going to go find some more. And he knew that this old lady had alcohol in her house.
00:44:48
so he went there to take it, but he couldn't find it. He said he saw her sitting in the living room,
00:44:55
and he just grabbed the flashlight from the table and hit her with it. He said she fell over and started to scream,
00:45:01
so he kept hitting her until she stopped. Then he dragged her to the bedroom. He was going to try to rape her, but he couldn't get it up,
00:45:11
so he just left her there on the floor. A prison term of life without parole in a state penal institution.
00:45:17
Showing no remorse, the now 19-year-old Jacob LaRosa was given the maximum sentence allowed by law for the aggravated murder of 94-year-old Marie Belcastro.
00:45:30
And on top of that, 30 additional years for charges of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and attempted rape.
00:45:38
All stemming from what happened inside Belcastro's Cherry Avenue home back in March of 2015.
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But this is Ohio, and in Ohio, sometimes up is down and down is up. And sometimes even a sentence of life without parole doesn't really mean life without parole.
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Cha-ching. Jacob LaRosa was 15 years old, living with his mother on Lafayette Avenue in Niles, Ohio.
00:47:57
On March 31st, 2015, Just out of juvie, he came home drunk, barefoot and covered in blood.
00:48:05
Across the street, his 94-year-old neighbor, Marie Belcastro, was found beaten to death inside her home.
00:48:13
The evidence was overwhelming. Jacob's bloody shoe prints, the Maglite flashlight, Marie's DNA in his underwear.
00:48:21
He was arrested within hours, charged as an adult, and in 2018 sentenced to life without parole.
00:48:30
But this is Ohio, and that sentence wouldn't hold. The Ohio legislature then passed Senate Bill 256, which retroactively gave defendants such as Jacob that were serving life sentences with no parole, parole eligibility after serving 25 years.
00:48:51
It was an absolute, I can't even put a proper adjective on how awful this legislation was, not only for the victims, but for the state of Ohio.
00:49:02
And it was done for political purposes. Isn't that always the case? Is there really any justice when lawmakers negotiate, make deals, and set themselves up to win the next election by sabotaging the rest of us?
00:49:16
Am I a little jaded? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just spitting some truth. Matt Dolan, who his family owns the Cleveland Guardians, is a horrible, horrible legislature.
00:49:28
And everyone that voted for this did a horrible job of looking at the facts. And anytime you retroactively let monsters like Jacob LaRosa give them a benefit, it's just horrible.
00:49:41
And our Ohio legislature did a horrible job on the passage of Senate Bill 256. This was a law that basically said anyone who committed a crime while under the age of 18, and was given life without parole, was given a get-out-of-jail-free card.
00:49:58
Maybe not quite free, but they are now allowed to seek parole after 25 years. Some idiot thought that'd be a good idea, to just set an upper limit, no matter how horrendous the crime.
00:50:12
Oh, why? Because you're just a little baby? Just a little baby? Just a little tiny little baby, just a little innocent little baby.
00:50:19
Sorry. Let's get back to it. In Jacob's case, he would be in his early 40s if let out.
00:50:26
Plenty of time to commit who knows what. I mean, he killed Marie Belcastro over alcohol within eight hours of being released from juvenile detention.
00:50:36
Do you really think he's going to be reformed somehow? Not to sound dramatic, but that hit me harder than the murder.
00:50:45
to be honest, because not to minimize it, but she was 94 years old. I knew that that call would come
00:50:53
someday soon-ish. I didn't realize the manner of death. It was hard, but it was also people lift
00:51:01
you up in prayer when someone in your family gets murdered. I think there's a combination of shock
00:51:08
and prayer and the Holy Spirit that just enveloped our family for weeks and still does.
00:51:19
But when the Ohio legislature retroactively changes a law, given your loved one's killer
00:51:27
rights that he didn't previously have, there's no Hallmark card for that. There's no prayer
00:51:35
shame for that. There is the shock that the party that you supported all your life, I'm a lifelong
00:51:41
Republican, and it was my old Republican buddies in Ohio. I used to work for the Ohio Republican
00:51:47
Party I raised money for Governor Mike DeWine When your own political family betrays you and basically says which is what SB256 did it said you have to go to parole hearings every five years
00:52:03
Your own political family? Let's be clear. There's no such thing as a political family.
00:52:10
There's nothing familial about politics. Well, it happened because a lot of these Republicans are the typical rhinos.
00:52:18
They want to save money at the state penitentiary system. They pander to a lot of special interests.
00:52:29
And in this particular case, like I said, it was led by some very wayward legislators that took the bait of this poor little kid.
00:52:38
He's going to have to spend the rest of his life in prison. It wasn't just Jacob.
00:52:42
It was a number of individuals that were serving life sentences. But every one of them deserved it.
00:52:47
The law doesn't guarantee Jacob's release, but it guarantees something else. Marie's family will have to keep showing up every time he asks for parole to remind the board of what he actually did.
00:53:03
And they'll have to do this reliving the murder for the rest of their lives, or until he finally gets released.
00:53:12
Talk about punishing victims. It was such a betrayal, such a punch in the gut, such a hard thing to fathom.
00:53:26
And you contrast that with the security of a life without parole sentence, and it's night and day.
00:53:35
We have been fighting ever since we learned about it. We had one victory a couple years ago.
00:53:41
They changed that time from five years to ten years. So it's parole hearings every 10 years, which is certainly more manageable than every five years.
00:53:52
But at the same time, to force a family to defend their safety against their loved one's killer, when prior to that, you didn't have to, is, I think, cruel.
00:54:05
Imagine losing someone you love to murder, then being told you're going to have to stand in front of a parole board every few years
00:54:12
to explain why their killer should stay in prison. That's the reality Marie's family now faces.
00:54:21
And they're not alone. Because when lawmakers decide to water down sentences and add upper limits,
00:54:28
it's a gift to all those hardcore criminals out there. And it's a punishment to all the families of victims.
00:54:38
Brian has a message if you want to understand just how big this problem really is.
00:54:44
The best resource I could recommend is a mouthful. It's the National Organization for Victims of Juvenile Murderers, novjm.org.
00:54:58
They're going to find state-by-state status on bills that might impact innocent people.
00:55:09
They're going to find studies and links to books. And they're going to find stories.
00:55:17
And they're going to find an article that I wrote when my grandmother was killed.
00:55:21
And when you're a legislator, I understand you have a lot of bills to read and digest and understand.
00:55:27
But I think a simple litmus test ought to be, does this strengthen the innocent and punish criminals,
00:55:35
or does it do the opposite? And if you're a believer in goodness and you're doing the people's work,
00:55:42
you want to help victims and not criminals. So that a nice little litmus test for any legislator that is confused As far as Ohio goes I have a feeling that the next governor Vivek Ramaswamy will be receptive to overturning or doing what he can
00:56:00
The problem is, I guess, once you give a class of people new rights, it's very hard to then take them away.
00:56:08
Yeah, think about that for a second. The bigger the government and the more money it spends on stupid ideas or programs that aren't working, the harder it is to undo the mess they create.
00:56:20
It becomes one big, tangled, bureaucratic mess. And instead of fixing it, the next guy comes and spends more of your money, adding another layer of laws on top of it.
00:56:33
But Brian and his family have actually taken action because for them, it's personal.
00:56:39
Well, 2021, our family did sort of an RV tour of Ohio. We visited 13 county courthouses and did interviews with the press and just sort of raised awareness about Senate Bill 256. It was really nice. We met all kinds of regular folks, some riffraff, everybody we talked to from homeless people to clearly people who are showing up for probation drug tests.
00:57:08
You know, when you're at a courthouse, you see all kinds of folks, right? We're here to file documents.
00:57:14
Oh, I'm here to file a urine sample. I met a guy who was in prison with La Rosa, who was out.
00:57:21
And when I explained to him what we were doing, he said, oh my gosh. Like, I've never met anybody who thinks it's a great idea to undo the sentence of a judge to give killers a second, third, eighth chance.
00:57:37
Brian's daughter, Lena, Marie's great-granddaughter, is a very young adult, but has a surprising amount of common sense and wisdom that many of us don't have.
00:57:48
Here's what she said about the changing law and what her family has gone through.
00:57:53
Just have hope in a time of darkness and conflict. Because I think having hope and unity with every community there is, I think that is the strongest form of expression.
00:58:06
that is the perfect way to fight in the face of the very ones who control us which is the
00:58:14
government we we need to really wake up and realize like we're not divided on either party
00:58:18
we're divided because of the people trying to divide us we need to stay focused not let us just
00:58:24
like not let them distract us i just feel like it's humanity versus insanity and it's not even
00:58:30
about party versus party. I think it's both parties versus the government. That's what I feel.
00:58:36
But this is really about Marie Belcastro, a sweet grandma who didn't deserve to die in such a
00:58:43
monstrous way. No one does. We asked Brian and Lena what Gigi would have said today if she were
00:58:52
still alive. If you find yourself in a position to fight for something, don't stop fighting for that.
00:59:00
So that's what I'm getting from her. And I think she would say that with love and all the kindness in her heart and lust from her head.
00:59:09
Because she was the kind to be with her heart, not her mind. Marie lived for 94 years in Niles, Ohio.
00:59:17
She was a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She was the kind of neighbor who baked cookies
00:59:24
Who gave kids a few coins for their help And made people laugh with her humor She had seen hard times
00:59:33
She had raised a family And she had outlived so many of her peers Only for this to happen to her She deserved to live out the rest of her years in peace in the home her dad built for her and her family Instead her life was cut short in the most brutal
00:59:53
way imaginable by a snot-nosed kid hell-bent on ruining lives, including his own. Still,
01:00:03
while parents were putting padlocks on their bedroom doors and neighbors were placing surveillance
01:00:08
cameras, Marie was giving him cookies and love on her front porch. She was a woman defined by her
01:00:17
laughter, her love, and the simple good things she left behind. At her 90th birthday party,
01:00:26
she told us herself how she wanted to be remembered. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
01:00:37
You make me happy when skies are gray. What would you like to be remembered for?
01:00:46
For all the good things that I might have done, which I don't know too many of them.
01:00:53
But not the bad things. Marie Belcastro will live on the minds of those who knew her for all the good things she did.
01:01:04
Jacob LaRosa, however, will never achieve anything. This is a waste of human flesh.
01:01:13
A waste of space. A waste of oxygen. the fact we have a criminal justice system that pities,
01:01:24
feels sorry for, and even defends him instead of the real victim is what the actual crime is here.
01:01:34
When are we going to fucking wake up out of this haze of suicidal empathy for literal monsters?
01:01:41
I got nothing else to say about it. I'm disgusted. Literally disgusted by how we treat actual victims
01:01:51
for the sake of appearances. Fuck this shit. I've been doing this for 13 years for you.
01:02:24
Can you do me a quick favor and head on over to youtube.com slash sword and scale TV and subscribe?
01:02:32
Would you mind? Would it kill you? Could you just, could you just please? Kindly thank you.
01:02:42
See you next week. Stay safe. Thank you. Thank you.