The Ax Murder Zombie

Delmar, New York, is a hamlet inside the town of Bethlehem in Albany County, about fifteen minutes outside Albany. In 2004 it was a quiet suburban place, and the Bethlehem detective bureau had four detectives and no homicide squad, because there had been only about three murders in forty years.

Peter Porco was born on 22 August 1952 and grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, the son of Ralph and Jane. He graduated from the University at Albany in 1974 and from Albany Law School in 1977, and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1978. He worked first as a public defender for Albany County and then at Ainsworth and Sullivan, where he turned down a partnership because the hours would have kept him from his family, and became a law clerk to Judge Anthony Cardona, following him to family court and then to the Appellate Division, Third Department. Colleagues called him Gentle Peter. He was a eucharistic minister at St Francis de Sales in Loudonville, helped build a students-in-court programme at Bethlehem High School and coached youth soccer.

In college he had met Joan Belzano, who was about two years older. She stopped him to ask directions to the library, and they married. Joan was a speech pathologist who worked for years at Jefferson Elementary School and in the Schalmont Central School District in Rotterdam. Friends described her as devoutly Catholic, at daily Mass, an excellent cook and an exceptional homemaker. this part of the story is covered for now

In 1991 the family bought a two-storey, four-bedroom house on Brockley Drive in Delmar. Neighbours described Peter as an excellent father, and everyone who knew the family said there was no hidden side to them. details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He told his fraternity brothers that his grandmother owned much of Fairfield County, Connecticut, that the family had ocean-front homes and that he was waiting for a large inheritance. None of it was true. His parents paid $32,000 a year in tuition, but he spent money he did not have, ran up credit-card debt and gambled online, and stole when he needed more. At Thanksgiving in 2002 the family home was burgled: a window screen was cut and two laptops were taken, including Joan's work laptop. this part of the story is covered for now Electronics also vanished from the veterinary hospital, and similar items appeared on his eBay account weeks later.

His grades collapsed. Rochester placed him on involuntary separation and told him to take a year at community college; instead he enrolled at Hudson Valley Community College, did not attend classes, failed everything, then forged the failing transcript into A's and B's and mailed it back with a readmission application. He was readmitted. He asked his parents for a $2,000 loan and used the information they gave him to sign his father's name electronically on a $31,000 Citibank loan. With a line of credit obtained the same way he bought a lifted, bright yellow Jeep Wrangler with oversized tyres, a winch, a W sticker and a Bush-Cheney decal. He also sold goods on his parents' eBay account without sending them, and when buyers complained he posed as his brother Jonathan and told them Jonathan had died. details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it At 10.30 p.m. on Sunday 14 November a campus surveillance camera recorded the yellow Jeep leaving the University of Rochester; he later said he was moving it to avoid a parking ticket. At 10.36 p.m. a camera on the roof of a medical centre caught it heading east towards the thruway. At 10.45 p.m. toll collector John Fallon at Exit 46 in Rochester handed a ticket to a young white man in a baseball cap driving a yellow Jeep with large tyres. At 1.51 a.m. toll collector Karen Russell remembered a yellow Jeep speeding into her lane at Exit 24, less than ten miles from Brockley Drive.

At 2.14 a.m. the burglar alarm at the house was disarmed with the master code, known only to Peter, Joan, their sons, an uncle and a close family friend, and the keypad was smashed; the alarm's memory, in a box in the basement, recorded it. Between about 2.15 and 4.54 a.m. Peter and Joan were attacked in their bed with the family's fire axe. Peter took sixteen distinct serious wounds, including a blow that penetrated his skull and another that removed part of his jaw. At 4 a.m. the neighbour Marshall Gokey, leaving for construction work, saw the yellow Jeep in the driveway. At 4.54 a.m. the telephone line at the back of the house was cut and a garage window screen was cut and left open, staging a break-in. At 5.12 a.m. the Jeep re-entered the thruway at Exit 24 heading back to Rochester, and at 8.30 a.m. the medical centre camera caught it returning towards campus. this part of the story is covered for now

Peter did not arrive at the Albany Court Complex that morning. Judge Cardona sent court officer Michael Hart, who found the front door ajar with a single key in the lock. Peter was dead at the foot of the stairs, his face turned up the staircase. The house was covered in blood, and detectives first read it as a struggle. details of the account remain covered until revealed

Joan was found in the master bedroom, her skull fractured, her left eye gone, her jaw shattered. She had been lying there for about an hour and a half while officers processed the scene, and then she moved. Paramedics took her to hospital, where a neurosurgeon operated for twelve hours. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Two paramedics corroborated the nods. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed That night police interviewed him for six hours. He denied everything, and the interview later became a case study in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling on how not to question a psychopath. The only forensic trace of him at the scene was a single fingerprint on the outside of the basement door.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed The six-hour interview was suppressed, but the judge allowed Joan's nod. The prosecution case rested on the Jeep's movements, the toll collectors, the master code, the staged break-in, the financial fraud and the estate: Peter and Joan each had a will leaving everything to the sons, and with life insurance and death benefits the estate passed a million dollars, against a living worth of about $60,000. The defence, led by Terry Kindlin and his wife Laurie Shanks, argued that no one would commit a secret 460-mile round trip in the most conspicuous vehicle on the road, that the alarm code was known to the family and that Peter often disarmed it for the dog, that the cut phone line suggested a professional, that the mitochondrial DNA on the toll ticket could fit much of the population, and that Joan's nod meant nothing because she had no memory and her brain was injured. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed Peter is buried at St Agnes Cemetery in Menands.