Police knew killer well
PHILADELPHIA — Bensalem police first encountered Cosmo DiNardo when he was about 14.
In the six years since, officers in the Bucks County township have made contact with DiNardo 40 times, Public Safety Director Fred Harran said Wednesday.
Police fielded calls about DiNardo riding his ATV around the neighborhood. They responded to reports of mental-health issues. Officers looked into whether DiNardo was a suspect in minor crimes, for which he never faced charges, Harran said. And just last year, DiNardo was banned from his alma mater, Holy Ghost Preparatory School, and Arcadia University.
Details about past interactions with police paint a more vivid picture of the troubled 20-year-old from Bensalem, who last week confessed to the gruesome killings of four young men whom he had lured to his parents’ sprawling Solebury Township property to sell them marijuana.
In the Holy Ghost incident, DiNardo showed up — unannounced and uninvited — to an Oct. 23 open house for prospective students of the Catholic boys’ school. He was “disruptive” and subsequently escorted from campus, said spokesman Bill Doherty.
Holy Ghost then contacted DiNardo’s parents, Doherty said, and told them their son was no longer welcome there.
Doherty said that he did not know exactly how DiNardo was being disruptive but that there was no weapon involved. To Doherty’s knowledge, this was the first incident involving DiNardo at Holy Ghost.
But it was not the Bensalem Police Department’s first encounter with DiNardo, who prosecutors said had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia and involuntarily committed to a mental institution.
In early November, a few weeks after the Holy Ghost incident, DiNardo also became “persona non grata” at Arcadia University in Cheltenham, according to a source close to the university.
DiNardo was only enrolled at Arcadia for the fall semester in 2015.
