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Cops Unearth Corpses of Four Missing Men After Weeklong Search

Two 20-year-olds have now been charged with their murders.
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Mugshots of Cosmo Dinardo (left) and Sean Kratz (right) via the Bucks County District Attorney's Office / AP

Two 20-year-old Pennsylvania men have been charged with murdering four young men who disappeared outside Philadelphia last week, Bucks County district attorney Matthew Weintraub said Friday at a press conference. Last week's disappearance of Dean Finocchiaro, 19, Thomas Meo, 21, Jimi Patrick, 19, and Mark Sturgis, 22, sparked a massive search operation that eventually led police to a 12-foot mass grave on one of the alleged killers' family farm, as NPR reported.

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Cosmo Dinardo, 20, fatally shot each of the victims, according to Weintraub. He agreed to plea guilty to four counts of criminal homicide on Thursday, as CNN reported. In exchange for his confession, prosecutors promised not to pursue the death penalty.

Police also arrested 20-year-old Sean Kratz in connection with the case Friday, who they say aided Dinardo and corroborated his account of the killings. They charged Kratz with three counts of criminal homicide—according to Weintraub, Dinardo alone is responsible for Patrick's death.

The missing men all disappeared within days of one another last week from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A search led police to Dinardo's Solebury Township farm, a sprawling $5.4 million property owned by his parents. After combing the grounds, cadaver dogs uncovered a mass grave on Wednesday, in which they found Finocchiaro's remains, the Washington Post reports. At Friday's press conference, Weintraub announced police had recovered Meo and Sturgis's bodies from the same site. As part of the DA's deal with Dinardo, the accused killer directed him to Patrick's body, found roughly half a mile away from the mass grave.

"We've brought four young men one step closer to their loved ones so they can rest in peace," Weintraub said Friday. "Our boys get to go home to their families, which was always our priority."

A source close to the investigation told the Associated Press on Friday that Dinardo has previously been diagnosed with mental illness, is an admitted drug dealer, and has been involved with police roughly 30 times. Though investigators haven't indicated a motive for the alleged killings, the source said Dinardo confessed to murdering the boys in connection with drug deals that had gone sour.

The two alleged killers are set to be arraigned Friday.

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