Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: I heard screaming and stuff, so I just love I
couldn't say the little lead from that lady's house.
Speaker 1: Hello, and thank you for joining us. This is season thirteen,
episode three hundred and forty what three hundred and forty
seven of Sword and Scale show that reveals that the
worst monsters are real. It's March first, twenty fifteen in Niles, Ohio, Yeah,
Ohio again. Niles is an aging steel town in Trumbull County.
The narrow streets are lined with ranch and cape cod
homes where families have lived for generations. On Lafayette Avenue.
The houses sit close together, with alleys running between them
and neighbors that notice when something is out of place.
Just before dinner, a teenage boy stumbles home and into
the front door. He's not hungry, and he's not thirsty either.
In fact, he's already had too much to drink and
he's a drunken mess.
Speaker 3: Nine one how much emergency?
Speaker 4: Hi?
Speaker 5: My trin came home and said he got jumped by
several people and he's not actingly okay.
Speaker 3: Where did the sthroom? I'm not five or two off yet,
He says he was at Feeder Park, okay, and he
has blood on his hands and stuff.
Speaker 1: Her voice echoes through the house as she speaks to
the dispatcher. She's not in panic. He doesn't look injured,
but he has blood all over him and he's not
wearing pants. He's been staggering through the neighborhood in his
underwear and a T shirt.
Speaker 3: He has blood on his hands, yeah, and on his shirt.
Speaker 5: And he's like coming in and out of it.
Speaker 3: How old is it he's fifty? Well, he's fifteen. Fifteen?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's not.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you need an ambulance?
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: I want you to come down to the station when
he's done, okay, and file a report. Okay, not stay
on the line.
Speaker 1: So far, his mom doesn't seem to notice somehow that
his breath also wreaks of alcohol, or at least she
doesn't report this.
Speaker 5: How is done? He's fifteen? He said he was jumpy
when he said he's not acting right?
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
Speaker 5: He's like playing on the bathrooms floor, and he tried
to lift up his head and his eyes rolled back
and he throws himself back down and Kayley goes to
talk to you. He mumbled, and he has blood on
his hands and his shirt.
Speaker 1: Her son, Jacob LaRosa, tells her he's been attacked by
some other teenagers.
Speaker 3: That's a Nile that will call on the line. At
five oh two, Lafayette, fifteen year old fun was it
a fight and came home and she said he's not
acting right.
Speaker 1: The Niles squad car pulls up quickly. It's only a
short drive to the station. The Lafayette houses are cluttered
tightly in a neighborhood where officers can cross yards and
alleys in seconds. Inside, he finds Jacob on the bathroom floor.
An ambulance gets there in just minutes, and they whisked
Jacob away to the hospital, where he's interviewed.
Speaker 6: Wond if I come in? No, no, sir, Come.
Speaker 7: Sir, Jacob. How are you good? Sir good? My name
is Lieutenant Atkins.
Speaker 8: Don't conquer move yet, okay, yeah, you could still finish
young lady first though.
Speaker 7: Okay, I'm don't you're moving, so you're gonna screw up
your test, buddy, don't.
Speaker 6: Talk, don't move.
Speaker 1: That nurse wasn't playing games and didn't have the time
for her drunk patient.
Speaker 6: Normal, my mom, she's on the waiting room. These guys
came up, game up. They meant they got it.
Speaker 7: Happens.
Speaker 1: The streets can be violent, especially in Ohio.
Speaker 7: Tell me, tell me how did you end up here tonight?
Speaker 2: Well, this this kid dere Gaius and Vonte Jackson, they
play a gun.
Speaker 6: They gone to my end.
Speaker 7: Reason what was the other guys?
Speaker 6: Sa Ry Davis and Vonte.
Speaker 7: Yeah Jackson.
Speaker 6: They believe going into my head. They were making me
a drink.
Speaker 2: I got a card.
Speaker 6: I told him I was just scared.
Speaker 7: Where were you with these guys?
Speaker 2: I was on the street of lost. Yeah. I told
him I want to go oh. I was just scared.
My mom wanted me. I wanted to make up excuse.
So they believed me that I needed to be okay.
I wanted I told him so why they let me
also block, I told him all the time to go
get I was gonna steal something.
Speaker 6: So I told him I was to steal something, but
I lied to them. I went straight to my house
and they told me to get the cars.
Speaker 1: So I went to anyone in the room listening, it
sounds like he was being held at gunpoint 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. The officers have more questions, but all
of a sudden, Jacob passes out.
Speaker 6: You all right, still, there would be Jacob Jacob.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, Jacob, need to talk to the lieutenant here.
Speaker 6: Oh how you doing today? Good?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: Well, this kid he made me get a car.
Speaker 3: He had a gun.
Speaker 7: Which kid had the gun?
Speaker 6: Derek Davies, Who kind of gun was it? It was
not even one?
Speaker 7: Me here, okay, we'll color black black black.
Speaker 2: Wife had a grip on it the bottom where we
have it.
Speaker 6: In your hand. What kind of car were they in?
They're in a great car. You know what kind it was?
It was like it was it was a jeep. Yes,
it was a jeep. Jeep. It was a jeep. Okay,
it was a great jeep. And wait wait wait, you
had l a bald egel on top of it. I
want to on the hood on the hood on the hood.
Speaker 1: Got that. Jacob's account of what happened was only getting
more interesting.
Speaker 7: Okay, so they made you get in the car, They
made me drink what do you make you drink.
Speaker 6: It made me drink would keep for loco. I did
not want to do it. I wanted to be happy.
I wanted to be roll over.
Speaker 7: Okay, when you said they made you smoke the smoke
cigarettes or maybe it's a little.
Speaker 6: They made men. We didn't make me drink.
Speaker 7: You said they made you smoke weed.
Speaker 6: No, they made but they made me drink. I told
I want to. I want to.
Speaker 2: They made They forced me to sunk the weed. But
I didn't. Again, I say shaw like our probation officers
said to me to do Okay, I call away, callaway kid.
With these guys, I was, I was down. I look
way that they track me. They to me, they tracked me.
Speaker 1: Peer pressure. You've been there, right, just trying to do
the right thing, mind your own business, follow all the rules.
And then some kids your age pull guns, pour vodka
down your throat, and shove weed at you. You try it,
but like Bill Clinton once famously claimed, you don't inhale
no one.
Speaker 6: There's no way I go to leave. I was trying
to ram, but they got me.
Speaker 7: They got me.
Speaker 6: Okay, I'm sorry, please right.
Speaker 7: Jacob, I'm just talking to you right now, Thank you. Okay,
so they make you get in the car. Where do
you guys go?
Speaker 6: We go do Dollar in General?
Speaker 7: Okay? On Avenue?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the way up there? Wait, way down there. You
know where you're going to?
Speaker 9: Uh?
Speaker 6: What is it called? Johnny Eagle? You where's at? You
know how?
Speaker 2: You go down to donag and you go across, you go,
we turn, you turn right 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 gonna be beat me up.
Speaker 6: I was scared. I always wanted to call him mom.
I want to make sure my mom's safe.
Speaker 7: How old are these guys.
Speaker 6: Like seventeen, eighteen years old? Nineteen? Yeah, I didn't want
my mom. I didn't want to go to the school there.
Speaker 1: The more questions the officer asked, the harder it was
for Jacob to spit out his version of what happened.
His words turned into sobs, his sentences trailed off, and
what little sense he did make only raised more questions.
Speaker 6: They're going to go to the littler General.
Speaker 7: Where do you guys go?
Speaker 8: They're all making me either conser tree, maybe.
Speaker 6: Buy a bottle off.
Speaker 2: I get a little dollar so they can have they
can buy a bottle of loco.
Speaker 6: All is a dune and he.
Speaker 2: Wants to sparko And now I was a Sparko and
my freaking I want a fad.
Speaker 6: I want to be a good kid. I want to
be a good kid.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a good kid, a great kid.
But that wasn't how the first fifteen years of his
life had gone. He wasn't going to be nominated for
Altar Boy of the Year anytime soon. Good kids don't
come home drunk and coherent and covered in somebody else's blood.
After all, good kids don't spin stories to get out
of serious crime, and great kids don't leave a dead
body in their wake. On March thirty, first, twenty fifteen,
fifteen year old Jacob LaRosa Dagger's home in a Niles,
Ohio neighborhood. He's half dressed, bleeding, and wreaking of alcohol.
His mother calls nine to one one, convinced her son's
been attacked. At the hospital, Jacob claims that teenagers with
guns trapped him, but his slurred lies can't hide the truth.
Something way more gruesome happened that afternoon. And just across
the street, the evidence was waiting. Marie bel Castro was
a ninety four year old widow with kids, grandkids, and
great grandkids. Her great granddaughter Lena called her Gigi.
Speaker 9: Gigi is like a really sweet person. She was very
spiritually in tune with herself and religious to the degree
of one to be just like Jesus, and she always
gave back. She was very kind hearted, and I think,
you know a lot of people the state kind is
for weakness, 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.
And I think it kind of proves that no matter
how good your intentions are, no matter how kind you are,
there's always gonna be some jerk that's going and try
and effect that destroy that.
Speaker 1: Marie was born in nineteen twenty to immigrant parents from Italy.
Her dad was a carpenter who came to the US
at the age of eleven. Marie herself married Fred Belcastro,
a member of the Army Corps. In World War Two.
Marie also helped with the war effort, working at Packard
Electric making tanks and military equipment. She was like Rosie
the Riveter, but in real life this is her grandson,
Brian Kirk.
Speaker 4: She was her housewife and the Italian American community at
Niles was very close knit. In fact, I've heard wonderful
stories about the Italians banding together with other minorities.
Speaker 1: 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. Irish, Italian and Jewish families traveled
weeks by ship and cramped spaces, hoping they didn't die
along the way. They came to Ellis Island with nothing
more than the clothes on their backs. They stood in
long lines, went through humiliating medical inspections, bought language barriers,
and hoped they wouldn't be turned away. No jobs were waiting,
no handouts, no safety nets, certainly no welfare. 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. 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.
Speaker 4: My grandfather suffered a stroke in the seventies, 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. But she did what she had to
do to thrive and survive, and she was a product
of that Great Depression era. She had a hip side
to her, and by that I mean she was plugged
into the culture. She loved stand up comedy. She liked
comics like Ron White and Lewis Black. When I was
six years old, I remember watching Saturday Night Live on
her living room floor, something that my parents would never
let me do.
Speaker 1: Brian says that even though his grandmother was a devout Catholic,
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, the first thing she
did was offer them twenty bucks to go buy some beer.
Speaker 4: She gave me the freedom to make mistakes, 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. But in nineteen twenties, Ohio, you know,
the child of immigrants and relatively poor, she didn't have
the same opportunities that young women have today. But a
learned woman, a smart woman, and.
Speaker 1: A really good Italian cook, I might add, Who wouldn't
want a grandma like her? The thing Brian remembers most
is her humor and her laugh, things she inherited. He
went on to become a comedian.
Speaker 4: I remember doing Howard Cosell impersonations at age six for
her friends and neighbors on the sidewalk in Niles. So
she was my first audience and her laugh was wonderful
and infectious. And the last conversation I ever had with
her was on an iPad, and she asked me if
I had any new impressions, and I gave her one.
I told her about a new character that I was learning,
and she was up to the end, always looking to laugh.
Speaker 1: Ninety four years old, and according to her family and doctor,
she would have easily lived another ten years. But on
March thirty first, twenty fifteen, her laugh was silenced. That afternoon,
Marie's daughter walked into the house on Cherry Avenue, the
one that Marie's father had built for her with his
own hands and found what the killer or killers had
left behind.
Speaker 3: Nine.
Speaker 10: Well on what you Emerjacay, I'm at five on nine
Cherry Street, Niles. I'm Marie Belcast's daughter. I just walked
into her house and I finally found her. She looks
like she's all smashed and there's lead in every room.
House was ransacked.
Speaker 3: How old is sheha?
Speaker 10: How old? Yeah, she was ninety four. I think she's dead.
She looks she's been twisted.
Speaker 6: She's twisted in.
Speaker 10: Here in the bedroom. And I saw an ambulance when
I walked in and saw kind of stuff I saw
on the amblys one walk above. So I ran up
there and I said, I need someone. I thought maybe
they went to the wrong place and maybe she called them,
But I think somebody came in. I know somebody came
in here.
Speaker 1: The ambulance she saw just across the street was for Jacob.
Speaker 7: Did it any time you go to a house or
on Cherry Street the old lady who.
Speaker 6: Lives behind you A ry guy.
Speaker 7: Okay, I just got an answer. The house behind you
on Cherry Street, the old lady that loves back there,
did you go to her?
Speaker 6: House, No, ma'am, no, sir. Okay.
Speaker 7: Did any of those guys go to that house?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: But I told him I'm not going in there. They left,
they started.
Speaker 2: I heard screaming and stuff, so I just left. I
couldn't the old lady's house.
Speaker 7: Were you inside and left or no?
Speaker 2: I left, I couldn't. I just heard screaming, so I left.
Where do you hear screaming from the old lady's house?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 7: But were you outside?
Speaker 6: Were you in the car? Where were you?
Speaker 2: No? I was in an alley, but I ran. I
ran home that one on my what's it called the
swing thing? The swing swing thing, the swing set, the
swing set? Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Jacob said he ran home as the boys who held
him at gunpoint went inside Marie's house. He said he
only heard the screams whether he was inside the house
or not. Marie was indeed screaming, and what her daughter
found was the end of a struggle. No one should
ever have to fight, especially a sweet old woman. Back
at the scene, an officer steps through the side entrance
at five o nine Cherry. The door frame is splintered,
the lock has been forced. Evidence of violence is pervasive
in multiple rooms in the living room, the floor is
stained with blood, especially in front of a recliner where
the struggle started. It's not a single pool. It's smeared,
soaked into the carpet, streaked a cross furniture, and spattered
on walls. On the couch more stains. He sees fragments
of bone sections of Marie bel Castro's skull lying on
the floor among the blood. We interviewed Chris Becker, the
lead prosecutor on the case.
Speaker 11: The corner indicated that she had been beaten so brutally
that he could not determine how many blows had rained
down on her head.
Speaker 1: A trail of bloody drag marts leads into the dining room.
More blood on the floor, another fragment of skull. Shards
of her hearing aids lay in various places, and one
is broken and lodged inside her ear canal, a detail
the coroner would later say he had never seen before
in over eight thousand autopsies. The officer follows drag marks,
smeared lines of blood leading away from the front rooms,
through the kitchen, down the hallway. Along the baseboard of
one wall, there are more fragments of skull and brain tissue.
In the guest bedroom, he finds the body. Marie Belcastro,
lies twisted on the floor at the foot of her bed.
She is faced 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. 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. He
gets down on his knees, careful not to disturb the scene,
and sees her crushed face. The injury measures almost five
by one and a half inches. It's not a fracture.
The bone and tissue are completely carved in. Nearby, he
spots the murder weapon, a maglite flashlight, stained with blood.
There are also bloody shoe prints marking the carpet. The
house shrieks of iron. Every room he passes through has
signs of a violent struggle. A veteran with decades on
the force, he freezes for a moment. In twenty four
years of law enforcement, he has never seen any thing
like this, and this could have been his grandmother. He
thinks to himself. Meanwhile, Jacob is still in the hospital
being questioned. His drunken version is starting to crack. It
already blamed the murder on two other young men or
kids 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.
Speaker 6: And what did you do there? I hung out? So
he came back.
Speaker 2: I seen blood all over him, the blood all Oh
my blood, Oh my god?
Speaker 6: Did you see blood all over Davonte Jackson?
Speaker 7: Davante Jackson, has Davante white or black?
Speaker 6: He's black? Okay? How about this other guy with his
name again, Davy?
Speaker 7: He is white.
Speaker 2: Middald mid donald's. Every assume the morning he would be
hanging out mc donald's.
Speaker 6: Oh my god. No, in a car, black car. It's
the right license place on far looks like a race car. Okay.
Speaker 7: So you weren't in the house at any time with them. No,
So I won't find anything of yours in that house
because they guys up there right now looking for stuff
in that house. Nothing in there is gonna come back
that's yours, right, no, sir, And you're not gonna have
any blood in there. You're not gonna have anything in there, noir, Okay,
because I want you're being honest with me right now.
Speaker 2: I'm completely august. Thank you, Aunt the same my life
took you.
Speaker 6: Thank you, God blessed you.
Speaker 1: In the hospital, Jacob was safe, he only had minor injuries,
and he was grateful, even thanking and blessing the officer
and the nurse who were helping him. He'd make it
home after all. But across the street, Marie belt Castro
was lying dead in a heap of blood, while Jacob
blamed two boys with guns. Investigators canvas the neighborhood. They
questioned everyone who might have seen somebody, anybody really going
into or out of Marie's house that afternoon. No one had.
Speaker 7: Why are the neighbors saying that they didn't see anybody
over there but you?
Speaker 6: Oh huh, Well.
Speaker 7: A couple of the neighbors over there said they saw
you coming out of the house. Why would they say that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Why would the neighbors say they only saw you come
out of the house.
Speaker 6: Ah, there was first act over there.
Speaker 1: They were saying that because it was true. But Jacob's
lies kept coming, along with new names.
Speaker 7: Jackson when did he come on scene? I thought it
was DeVante and the other guy, the white guy.
Speaker 6: No, it is t I think Jacob.
Speaker 7: Let me explain something to you. You watch TV a lot,
You watched TV all.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Have you ever watched CSI or any of that where
they do crime scene stuff?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well I got my crime scene guys up right now.
And your story isn't adding up to what you're telling me.
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. And I don't think you're telling me the
truth because your story keeps changing a lot, and I've
got witnesses up there.
Speaker 1: Jacob's story kept shifting, full of names and details that
led nowhere. 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 trying and failing
to rain him in.
Speaker 11: He had been just been released from the Juvenile Justice
Center about five hours earlier. He had been literally in
jail till about he was released. I think we found
out about eleven o'clock. We had video of at eleven
in the morning, and of course Marie was murdered sometime
between four o'clock, between like three o'clock and four o'clock,
because we had people that had been to her house
and seen her after the lunch hour during the lunch hour,
so we know she was alive at least during say
one or two o'clock. And Jacob what he did was
he broke into her house. There was video of him
in the alley. Ob security from the neighbor actually showed
him in the alleyway. He broke into the house. He
obviously committed the murder of Marie, beat her in three
different locations and at that point then he rifled through
her purse. He went down to the basement where this
was an older, kind of nineteen fifties built house. There
was an old little bar dout there. I don't think
Marie Bilcaster had used that bar for a number of years.
But there were some liquor bottles that he ended up taking,
and he was seen on the video in the alleyway
with those bottles. They actually were recovered and a couple
of those bottles of alcohol had his DNA on the bottle.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the only place they found DNA evidence. When
Jacob was in the hospital, nurses noticed blood in his underwear.
When they took him to the restroom to urinate, they
discovered that his penis and groin area had blood and
it was Marie. Later the police would confirm this by
recovering the washcloth the nurse had used to wipe him.
Speaker 11: He eventually drug her to a bedroom where he attempted
to rape her. She was still bleeding at that point,
but you know, for all intents and purposes, she was
brain dead. We know for a fact that he had
her blood on his penis because we were able to
swab that and get that information, or you know, get
that evidence.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the story of a troubled kid who just
needed another chance. Prosecutors said Jacob had already burned through
every chance he'd ever been given, and what he did
to Marie bel Castro proved he was beyond redemption. Sorry
to say, but sometimes it's just time to give up
and put a bullet in their head for a couple
thousand vaults through their body. I mean, what do we
need these people for anyway?
Speaker 11: But Jacob had a long history of behavioral problems, and
he had bombed out of a number of programs that
were designed to help him. He didn't respond well to
any treatment. He was in a treatment facility called the
smith House Quest for about three months in late twenty fourteen,
and if you recall, this murder happened in March thirty
first of twenty fifteen, and while he was there, he
made threats against residents, was caught masturbating. He'd punched another
juvenile there. He was found to be in the computer
room and admitted that he liked to look at women
and masturbate to them. He used another inmates computer there
to send sexually explicit emails to a teacher. So he
had a long history of behavioral problems and sexual deviation
and violence.
Speaker 1: Even his own parents were afraid of them.
Speaker 11: Now he had a little bit of a difficult start.
His parents were divorced, but by all accounts, his mother
was pretty good to him. His other siblings were pretty
decent kids. They didn't commit these type of crimes and
didn't even come close to committing any types of crimes.
At one point was committed or sentence actually for a
domestic violence when he threw a Mason jar candle at
his seven year old sister and a hit her in
the eye, and she required eighteen stitches. 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. So all
the children had padlocks on their bedroom door so Jacob
could not get in there and steal anything from them
that he could use to sell. The father also told
us in a written statement and a recorded statement, I
believe that he was so afraid of Jacob and his
violence that he was sleeping with a gun under his pillow.
That's how bad Jacob was.
Speaker 1: Even with that history, what drove Jacob on March thirty
first to still unclear. He had been released from juvenile
detention only hours earlier, full of restlessness and agitation. 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, most people in general aren't violent.
Maybe he was looking for money or alcohol. Things he
knew Marie kept in her home, offered him meals and
snacks before and even gave him loose change, but her
daughter was clear those small acts of kindness happened only
on the porch. Marie never let them inside.
Speaker 11: I have no idea what Jacob's motive was. He never
stayed in it. He never gave the police any information.
Of course, he deflected and lied, and you know, even
lied about where he got the blood on his clothes
from to his own parents. 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.
And the other thing was he's clearly as a violent
track record. He is just one of those individuals that
if you were beside him, he didn't care for his
broad daylight, because Marie was killed in the middle of
the afternoon. If he wanted something, which maybe he wanted
the liquor in this case, or maybe just you know,
had sexual fans and wanted to, you know, have some
kind of sexual fantasy with a woman. He knew Marie
was ninety four years old and lived basically in his backyard,
and he could take advantage and enter her home. And
you know though that could be part of the motivation too.
Speaker 1: Whatever Jacob's reasons. The evidence left little doubt. His bloody
shoe prints tracked through Marie's home, a mag light, flashlight
stained with her blood, DNA all over the scene and
on Marie. Neighbors saw him wandering half naked and drunk,
his body smeared with Marie's blood. By the time investigators
finished collecting evidence, there was no question who had been
inside five h nine Cherry that afternoon and who had not.
Jacob left the hospital that evening after being treated for
minor injuries. They went back home, hoping he had somehow
convinced the police that not only was he innocent, but
that he was also a victim. By this time, his
family was beyond suspicious. They already knew what life with
him was like.
Speaker 11: His siblings are you know, normal human beings, are normal people,
and he just put this whole family, including his mother
and his siblings obviously by you know, causing the injuries
to the sister. He just put him through hell. You know,
the fact that they had the padlock the bedroom doors,
the fact that the stepfather had to sleep with a gun.
I mean, this kid was just just the devil incarnated
inside this house and in this whole neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Just after midnight, deputies surround his house after hearing from
dispatch that he's threatening suicide by cop. Spotlights flood the house.
A PA system booms his name, ordering him out. Jacob hesitates.
He tells officers on the phone he's worried about his dogs,
and then he's quiet. Minutes drag on, as Jacob's parents
coach him. Finally, Jacob steps into the doorway. He edges forward,
but then backs up. The officers keep calling him. At last,
he walks into the open. He doesn't fight, He just says,
I'm going to jail, Well Dave.
Speaker 12: After spending all day yesterday trying to sit a jury
in this case, Jacob LaRosa himself pleaded no contest to
charges named in an amended indictment. This morning, Now Judge
Wyatt McKay found LaRosa guilty of the charges, including aggravated murder,
aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, and attempted rape. The charges stem
from the brutal attack on ninety four year old Marie
Belcastro inside her Niles home back in March of twenty fifteen.
Now LaRosa was arrested shortly after the crime and has
been held on three million dollars bond at the Juvenile
Detention Center ever since. But now that he's eighteen and
convicted of the crime, he'll be more moved over to
the Trumbull County Jail.
Speaker 13: At some point very.
Speaker 1: Shortly, 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. The death penalty was
off the table because he was a juvenile when he
committed the crime.
Speaker 4: When they were trying to see the jury, they couldn't
get people to have any sense of fairness or impartiality
on the question of Jacob LaRosa because they had all
heard about the murder and they all had a very
strong opinion about what should happen to LaRosa. And it
just shows you the goodness of the man on the
street who when presented with something very black and white
and clear cut, like the murder of a helpless old lady,
they know what to do.
Speaker 1: And this is part of what Chris Becker had to
say in his closing arguments at Jacob's sentencing He.
Speaker 11: Had beaten her in the living room and in the
dining room, and parts of her skull were found in
both places. Her hearing aids had been basically beat out
of her head. That's why I refer to Jacob Leosa
as just an animal. Is he is? He should be
locked up forever.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 11: My grandfather used to say all the time, if you
act like an animal, you should be treated like an animal.
And Jacob Rosa is clearly an animal.
Speaker 1: Of course, the defense team didn't see it that way.
They saw him as a child of fifteen with his
whole life ahead of him, just a little baby boy,
just ready to go out into the world, you know,
such a bright future ahead And that was exactly the problem.
What other heinous crimes would he commit with an entire
life ahead of him? Remember, in the hospital, Jacob was
grateful his life had been saved, but only hours earlier
he had snuffed out the life of a sweet old
lady and then lied about it.
Speaker 7: God bless me, Why would I do?
Speaker 6: We saved him on life? You got me hearing you
guys sayed my life.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that Jacob would be capable of
believing in God. It does take a certain amount of
humility to admit there's a higher power, and it's even
hard to believe that he was truly grateful for anything
except himself. His life.
Speaker 11: Jacob, for whatever reason, whatever wires were crossed in his brain,
whatever happened to him, something got into him and made
him this animal that ended up taking the life of
a wonderful by all accounts, ninety four year old woman.
Speaker 6: Oh, she was a very nice lady.
Speaker 1: She'd do anything for you.
Speaker 5: I can't understand anybody would want to hurt her, really,
because she'd do anything for you.
Speaker 6: She'd go out of her way for you.
Speaker 1: Jacob's life had been spared once already, or at least
he pretended to see it that way. But now it
was really on the line, like for real, real. He
couldn't be given a death penalty because he was a minor,
but he would be eligible for life without parole, and
that's exactly what Marie's family was hoping for. Would the
justice system spare him or would a judge know what
to do? As Marie's grandson Brian pointed out, fortunately, Attorney
Becker didn't have to prove motive. Some people on this
earth are just sociopaths and that's all they'll ever be.
Speaker 11: The good news is I don't have to prove motive,
and thank goodness, he never told us what his motive was,
because I don't think there's any real reason. You know,
you can always understand why maybe someone who's homeless or
a drug addict may steal something because you know, I'm
hungry or I have a drug addiction, But this is
a case where you're just dealing with a psychopath who's
a violent sexual predator, and he's like, I say, you know,
I still believe this day he's one of the one
of the people that I have prosecuted, and there's a
number of them, but he is definitely one of the
people that probably should have got the death batalty, but
because he was under eighteen that the US Supreme Court
has prohibited that. But he certainly should be dying in prison.
Speaker 1: At the sentencing hearing, Marie's daughter spoke, wanting to remind
the judge exactly what she found the day she walked
in on what Jacob had left behind.
Speaker 14: I'm seeing splattered on the wall and mom's curse dumped.
So I go into the first bedroom and there she
was on the floor, and I knew, and I put
my hand on her head, and I put my hand
on her back, and her back was still wet.
Speaker 6: It was wet with blood.
Speaker 1: Jacob tried to seem remorseful, but some things you just
can't fake.
Speaker 15: I'm sorry for what I did, and I hope pray
Mary Lekasho's family everyone else can reach down deep in
their hearts and forgive me. I am sorry to the
people I hurt and let down. I am sorry to
my family that I heard for so long. I'm sorry
to the people I bullied, disrespecting, stolen from. And I'm
sorry to the court system for everything I've done. I'm
sorry to the staff I disrespected in the past.
Speaker 1: The thing is her name was Marie, not Mary, 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 more like
a fifth step from a chronic double, a regular making
amends because they have to, rather than anything resembling real remorse.
Even more damning than his robotic apology was what he
said to a jail inmate while awaiting trial. This quite
possibly explains his motive According to him, Jacob said that
he was at a party with friends and they were drinking.
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 at her house, so he
went there to take it, but he couldn't find it.
He said he saw her sitting in the living room
and he just grabbed the flashlight from the table and
hit her with it. He said she fell over and
started to scream, 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,
so he just left her there on the floor.
Speaker 11: The prison term of life without parole in the State
Peen Institution.
Speaker 13: Showing no remorse, The now nineteen year old Jacob LaRosa
was given the maximum sentence allowed by law for the
aggravated murder of ninety four year old Marie Belcastro, and
on top of that, thirty additional years for charges of
aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and attempted rape, all stemming from
what happened inside bel Castro's Chair Avenue home back in
March of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: 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.
Jacob Loosso was fifteen years old living with his mother
on Lafayette Avenue in Niles, Ohio. On March thirty first,
twenty fifteen, just out of juvie, he came home drunk, barefoot,
and covered in blood. Across the street, his ninety four
year old neighbor, Marie bel Castro, was found beaten to
death inside her home. The evidence was overwhelming, Jacob's bloody shoe, prince,
the maglite flashlight, Marie's DNA in his underwear. He was
arrested within hours, charged as an adult, and in twenty
eighteen sentenced to life without parole. But this is Ohio,
and that sentence wouldn't hold.
Speaker 11: The Ohio legislature then passed Senate Bill two fifty six,
which retroactively gave defendants such as Jacob that were serving
life sentences with no parole eligibility after serving twenty five years.
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, and it
was done for political purposes.
Speaker 1: 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
am I a little jaded, maybe, or maybe I'm just
spitting some truth.
Speaker 11: Matt Dolan, who his family owns the Cleveland Guardians, is
a horrible, horrible legislature and everyone that voted for this
did a horrible job of looking at the facts. And
anytime you retroactively let monsters like Jacob l Rosa give
them a benefit, it's just horrible. And our Ohio legislature
did a horrible job on the passage of Senate Bill
to fifty six.
Speaker 1: This was a law that basically said anyone who committed
a crime while under the age of eighteen and was
given life without parole was given a get out of
jail free card. Maybe not quite free, but they are
now allowed to see parole after twenty five years. Some
idiot thought that'd be a good idea to just set
an upper limit, no matter how horrendous the crime. Ah,
why because you're just a little baby just a little baby,
just your little tiny baby, just in you. No baby, Sorry,
let's get back to it. In Jacob's case, he would
be in his early forties if led out, plenty of
time to commit. Who knows what I mean. He killed me,
a rebel castro over alcohol, within eight hours of being
released from juvenile detention. Do you really think he's going
to be reformed somehow?
Speaker 4: Not to sound dramatic, but that hit me harder than
the murder, to be honest, Because not to minimize it,
but she was ninety four years old. I knew that
that call would come someday soon, ish, I didn't realize
the manner of death. It was hard, but it was
also People lift you up in prayer. When someone in
your family gets murdered. I think there's a combination of
shock and prayer and the Holy Spirit that just enveloped
our family for weeks and still does. But when the
Ohio legislature retroactively changes a law given your loved ones
killer rights that he didn't previously have, there's no hallmark
card for that, there's no prayer chain for that. There
is the shock that the party that you supported all
your life. I'm a lifelong Republican and it was my
old Republican buddies in Ohio. I used to work for
the Ohio Republican Party. I raised money for Governor Mike DeLine.
When your own political family betrays you and basically says,
which is what SB. Two five six did, it said,
you have to go to parole hearings every five years your.
Speaker 1: Own political family. Let's be clear, there's no such thing
as a political family. There's nothing familial about politics.
Speaker 11: Well, it happened because a lot of these Republicans are
the typical rhinos. They you know, they want to save
money at the at the state penitentiary system. They you know,
they pander to a lot of special interests. And in
this particular case, like I said, it was led by
some very wayward legislators that you know, took the bait
of this poor little kid. He's going to have to
spend the rest of his life in prison. It wasn't
just Jacob, it was a number of individuals that were
serving life sentences, but every one of them deserved it.
Speaker 1: 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, and they'll have to do this reliving
the murder for the rest of their lives or until
he finally gets released. Talk about punishing victims.
Speaker 4: It was such a betrayal, such a punch in that
got such a hard thing to fathom, and you contrast
that with the security of a life without parole sentence,
and it's night and day. We have been fighting ever
since we learned about it. We had one victory a
couple of years ago. They changed that time from five
years to ten years, so it's parole hearings every ten years,
which is certainly more manageable than every five years, but
at the same time, to force a family to defend
their safety against their loved one's killer, when prior to
that you don't have to, is I think cool.
Speaker 1: Imagine losing someone you love the murder, then being told
you're going to have to stand in front of a
parole board every few years to explain why their killer
should stay in prison. That's the reality Maurice's family now faces,
and they're not alone because when lawmakers decide to water
down sentences and add upper limits, it's a gift to
all those hardcore criminals out there, and it's a punishment
to all the families of victims. Brian has a message
if you want to understand just how big this problem really.
Speaker 4: Is, the best resource I could recommend is a mouthful.
It's the National Organization for Victims of Juvenile Murderers NVJM
dot org. They're going to find state by state status
on bills that might impact innocent people. They're going to
find studies and links to books, and they're going to
find stories, and they're going to find an article that
I wrote when my grandmother was killed. And when you're
a legislator, I understand you have a lot of bills
to read and digest and understand, but I think a
simple litmus test ought to be does this strengthen the
innocent and punish criminals or does it do the opposite.
And if you're a believer in goodness and you're doing
the people's work, you want to help victims and not criminals.
So that's 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 Ramaswami will be
receptive to overturning or doing what he can. The problem is,
I guess once you give a class of people new rights,
it's very hard to then take them away.
Speaker 1: 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. 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. But Brian and his
family have actually taken action because for them it's personal.
Speaker 4: Well, twenty twenty one, our family did sort of an
RV tour of Ohio. We visited thirteen county courthouses and
did interviews with the press and just sort of raised
awareness about Senate Bill two fifty six. It was really nice.
We met all kinds of regular folks, some riff wrath
everybody talked to, from homeless people to clearly people who
are showing up for probation drug tests. You know, when
you're at a courthouse, you see all kinds of folks.
Right you're filing we're here to file documents. Oh, I'm
here to file urine sample. I met a guy who
was in prison with La Rosa who was out, 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.
Speaker 1: Brian's daughter, Lena, Murray'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. Here's what she said
about the changing law and what her family has gone through.
Speaker 16: Just how 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.
That is the perfect way to fight in the face
of the very ones who control us, which is the government.
Speaker 9: We need to really wake up and realize, like we're
not divided on either party.
Speaker 16: We're divided because of the people trying to divide us.
We need to stay focused, not let us just like
not let them distract us. I just feel like it's
humanity versus insanity, and it's not even about party versus party.
I think it's both parties versus the government. That's what
I feel.
Speaker 1: But this is really about Marie Belcastro, a sweet grandma
who didn't deserve to die in such a monstrous way.
No one does. We asked Brian and Lena what Jigi
would have said today if she were still alive.
Speaker 16: You find yourself in a position to fight for something,
don't stop fighting for that. So that's what I'm getting
in her, and I think she would say that would
like love and you know, with all the kindness in
her heart and lust from her head, you know, because
she was the kind to me with her heart, not
her mind.
Speaker 1: Murray lived for ninety four years in Niles, Ohio. She
was a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother. She
was the kind of neighbor who baked cookies, who gave
kids a few coins for their help, and made people
laugh with her humor. She had seen hard times, 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 way imaginable by a snot nosed kid
hew bent on ruining lives, including his own. Still, while
parents were putting padlocks on their bedroom doors and neighbors
were placing surveillance cameras, Marie was giving him cookies and
love on her front porch. She was a woman defined
by her laughter, her love, and the simple good things
she left behind. At her ninetieth birthday party, she told
us herself how she wanted to be remembered.
Speaker 4: You love my.
Speaker 6: Son, Shine, my only son. Shine.
Speaker 2: You make me.
Speaker 16: When skuys are great?
Speaker 6: What would you like to be remembered for?
Speaker 16: Were all the good things that I might have done,
which I don't know too my name were not bad things?
Speaker 1: Marie, though Castro, will live on the minds of those
who knew her for all the good things she did.
Jacob LaRosa, however, will never achieve anything. This is a
waste of human flesh, a waste of space, a waste
of oxygen. The fact we have a criminal justice system
that pities, feel sorry for, and even defends him instead
of the real victim is what the actual crime is here.
Why are we gonna fucking wake up out of this
haze of suicidal empathy for literal monsters. I got nothing
else to say about it. I'm disgusted, literally disgusted by
how we treat actual victims for the sake of appearances.
Fuck this shit. I've been doing this for thirteen years
for you. Can you do me a quick favor and
head on over to YouTube dot com Slash Sword and
Scale TV and subscribe. Would you mind? Would it kill you?
Could you just? Could you just please kindly? Thank you?
See you next week. Stay safet,