Murder in the Family

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Speaker 5 After years of a domineering husband putting her in her place, the Miami woman was starting the first day of the rest of her life with a new hairstyle and a manicure.

Speaker 10 She was saying that she had to take care of herself.

Speaker 2 Maggie Locasio had finally taken the step.

Speaker 14 The next day, the divorce would be on its way to being final, a last deposition in court.

Speaker 17 As she drove her Mercedes back to the nice house in Coral Gables, we don't know if she was thinking about the end of her 28-year marriage or her next chapters.

Speaker 19 Her son, Ed Locasio Jr., had been urging her to call their marriage quits for years.

Speaker 20 She cried a lot about it, but afterward, I think she knew it was for the better.

Speaker 21 But once the garage doors closed, Maggie Locasio had only a few minutes of life remaining.

Speaker 18 Homicide detective John Buchko found a disturbing crime scene when he arrived at 2806 Granada.

Speaker 24 There was an alarm that sounded,

Speaker 24 which indicated that the victim was in the house with the alarm on. It was a very bloody, violent scene.
There were bloody footprints into a kitchen and bloody fingerprints on a wall.

Speaker 14 Maggie lay dead on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 16 She'd been bludgeoned in the head, an awful wound, then stabbed, kicked, even choked by her killer.

Speaker 24 There was indication that the victim resisted, that she fought back.

Speaker 25 So it could have been a home intruder at that point.

Speaker 24 Yes, it could have been. However, there seemed to be more to it than that.

Speaker 13 An icon of the cruelty of this murder, a barometer of the rage in that kitchen, was a black metal police baton found on the floor. It had been used to bash in Maggie's head.

Speaker 28 Did the nature of the death tell you anything about who the perpetrator was?

Speaker 24 Yes, it seemed to have been done in anger. It appeared to be somebody that would have some sort of relationship as opposed to a stranger.

Speaker 6 Her son, Eddie Jr., was in medical school running some lab experiments that night, so he didn't get home to Coral Gables until after 10.

Speaker 17 By then they were flashing cop cars, gawkers, police lines.

Speaker 6 Eddie elbowed his way to the front.

Speaker 20 And finally, I asked, where the hell is my mother?

Speaker 11 The son didn't get any answers.

Speaker 13 He was taken to the police station where detectives put him in a room and started asking him questions.

Speaker 11 The detectives began to piece together the unhappy soap opera of the Lacasio family.

Speaker 34 Maggie, the 45-year-old victim, had been an accountant with a master's degree, but had mostly been a stay-at-home mom since son Eddie Jr.

Speaker 35 came along.

Speaker 14 Edward Lacasio Sr., the husband and father, was an accountant too, and he'd done well with investments, a family with a net worth estimated at up to $6 million.

Speaker 15 But the house was bitterly divided.

Speaker 17 Mother and son joined against a cold, abusive husband and father, at least by Eddie Jr.'s account.

Speaker 7 You call your father Ed?

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 15 Rather than father or dad or probes.

Speaker 25 It seems a little bit funny, Eddie, you know?

Speaker 2 Nothing funny at all about childhood or memories of his father as he tells it.

Speaker 40 Ed Jr., bookish, happy to find sanctuary in a library.

Speaker 13 The father berating him for not being more than a scrub on the track team he coached with fire-breathing intensity.

Speaker 20 One of the kids who he actually coached came up to me and told me, you're so lucky to have a father like Ed.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 I was absolutely shocked.

Speaker 42 The obvious question to the detectives was, what's up with this husband?

Speaker 12 Described as an abusive character in the final stages of a bitter divorce.

Speaker 44 Did he have the motive and the rage to actually beat and stomp his wife to death?

Speaker 24 Ed Lacasio was abusive to her. He's threatened her before.

Speaker 34 So in the ranking of possible suspects, he's moved up ahead of the unknown intruder.

Speaker 24 He was a strong suspect.

Speaker 15 The detectives asked the son who he thought might have done it, and he didn't hesitate.

Speaker 20 I think my exact words, I can't believe the bastard finally did it.

Speaker 45 The bastard finally did it, meaning Eb, your father.

Speaker 28 Right.

Speaker 14 But Ed Lacasio Sr.

Speaker 15 had an airtight alibi.

Speaker 13 He was at his condo on Miami's South Beach when the murder occurred, and a security camera picture proved it.

Speaker 46 And something else.

Speaker 18 The cops had had extraordinarily good luck in finding a trove of evidence in a gym bag ditched in a neighbor's shrubs near the murder house.

Speaker 19 DNA, and not the husband's.

Speaker 41 A forensic clue just waiting to be matched up to a killer out there.

Speaker 11 Maybe the guy in the white pickup who did an illegal U-B out of the scene as officers screamed up.

Speaker 48 Who murdered Maggie of that very unhappy Lacasio household?

Speaker 49 It was the first minutes of Halloween morning 2001, and police were taking their photos, measuring blood spatter stains, trying to understand who had so viciously murdered the homeowner lying on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 13 They knew early on the victim, Aggie Lacasio, and her estranged husband, Edward LaCasio, had been living apart for several months.

Speaker 6 She'd gotten a restraining order against him.

Speaker 18 They called the husband at his Miami Beach condo, telling him only the briefest version of the truth to lure him over to the house.

Speaker 25 They told him there was trouble at his house.

Speaker 24 Yeah, there was a problem there with the alarm. He needed to come there.

Speaker 51 When he arrived at the street outside, Edward Lacasio, the husband, seemed to the detectives talking to him quite placid, even incurious about why the home of his wife and son was marked off as a crime scene.

Speaker 18 Down at the police station, he told detectives he said he and his wife were split and he didn't keep up with her lately.

Speaker 29 What with the ugly divorce proceedings and the restraining order?

Speaker 33 When the cops finally told him his wife had been murdered, they noted that his reaction was blank.

Speaker 52 Nothing.

Speaker 8 Unbeknownst to the husband, the detectives were interviewing his son, Eddie Jr., in a room down the hall.

Speaker 6 They would pass in the hall afterward.

Speaker 20 An officer is escorting him one way and me another way, and we crossed in the hallway. I think the look on his face as he saw me was one of both anger and surprise.

Speaker 25 Did he say anything to you?

Speaker 3 Are you okay?

Speaker 25 Did you reply?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 25 At that moment, you believed that he had killed your mother?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 29 But there'd been hostility between the father and son for years and years.

Speaker 8 A son who despised his dad and suspected the worst of him didn't add up to evidence against Edward Locasio Sr.

Speaker 14 The father, the victim's husband, said he'd been at his beach condo miles away when Maggie was murdered, and the time-coded security tapes of comings and goings at his building showed he was telling the truth.

Speaker 22 So Locasio wasn't the likely killer, but cops are trained not to lock onto one suspect early to the exclusion of other possibilities.

Speaker 17 And now one of the first officers responding to the burglar alarm that night was thinking back to that white pickup truck he'd seen near the Locasio house.

Speaker 6 The driver had pulled an illegal U-turn.

Speaker 49 And if he hadn't been running hot to the scene, the officer would have pulled him over.

Speaker 43 The white pickup would be a detail they would pursue.

Speaker 3 But bigger, more immediate evidence had fallen right into their laps the morning after the murder.

Speaker 53 We received a phone call from one of the residents that they had found a small sports bag in the bushes between the houses.

Speaker 21 The gym bag turned out to be a cop and prosecutor's dream.

Speaker 30 Inside a knife, the killer's bloody clothes, and the victim's stolen credit cards.

Speaker 22 Lab experts had every reason to hope for some solid DNA evidence. Hair, fibers, maybe even some fingerprints.

Speaker 15 Then something a little odd happened.

Speaker 41 Two days after the murder, the police get a call from Edward Lacasio saying that someone's broken into his accounting office.

Speaker 41 The cops go check out the reported burglary and find nothing stolen, just some papers scattered around the floor. But that supposed burglary becomes the turning point of the murder investigation.

Speaker 41 Because the detectives use that opportunity to talk to some of Locasio's employees about their boss and his family.

Speaker 48 The name of one family member in particular came up.

Speaker 24 One thing we learned was that he had a brother that lived in North Carolina. And

Speaker 24 during that next day,

Speaker 24 we actually found out that his brother had a white pickup truck.

Speaker 32 The brother, Michael Lacasio, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Speaker 54 And in a heartbeat, police officers there were searching his white pickup.

Speaker 29 The upholstery had been ripped out, the inside of the cab hosed down.

Speaker 24 I believe he had blood all over him, and that would be the motive for tearing the seat cushions out of his car and for washing out the vehicle.

Speaker 54 Michael Lacasio, it would turn out, was the obverse image to his brother's success.

Speaker 43 A mostly unemployed guy, addicted to pills, and who'd been busted once on a fraud charge.

Speaker 16 The investigators kept Michael Lacasio squarely in their sights as the lab experts processed each bit of evidence from the scene.

Speaker 38 The police baton, the bludgeon known formally as an ASP, yielded no fingerprints.

Speaker 17 But prosecutor Gail Levine said the killer did leave his mark behind.

Speaker 10 He thought he was smart enough to have used gloves and he didn't bleed. So he thought he was okay.
Well, then he came back and bingo, as they say, there was DNA on the ass

Speaker 10 and there was DNA on the inside of some latex gloves that were in the green bag that he had tried to throw away.

Speaker 2 DNA that matched Michael Locasio.

Speaker 12 Just two weeks after the murder, he was charged with killing his sister-in-law, Maggie LaCasio.

Speaker 25 Eddie, how do you even take that information in?

Speaker 45 The detective is telling you, we believe we have your mother's killer, and he is your uncle, Uncle Michael.

Speaker 20 At first, I was optimistic about it, actually, because I thought, well, there must be some link to Ed.

Speaker 2 And the son wasn't the only one thinking that way.

Speaker 27 The detectives, the prosecutor, all saw the hand of Eddie's father, Ed Sr., behind the heinous murder.

Speaker 10 I think in most cases, it's the, we got it. And it's scientific, it's DNA, it's everything we need.
But in this case, it was, we got one, now we got to get another.

Speaker 18 It sounded straightforward.

Speaker 29 Who had the motivation, the temper to dispose of Maggie Lacasio?

Speaker 40 Easy, the husband, Ed.

Speaker 2 But that isn't the way the law and evidence work.

Speaker 16 And maybe there was something that no one knew about between the accused, Michael Lacasio, and the victim, his sister-in-law.

Speaker 26 Michael Lacasio was going on trial for murder, and his brother Edward was going to work and dating.

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Speaker 13 Michael Lacasio was charged with the bludgeoning and stabbing murder of his sister-in-law Maggie Lacasio in her Miami home.

Speaker 5 If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Speaker 13 Prosecutors were hoping Michael Lacasio would stew in his juices to think about being injected to death.

Speaker 52 They were hoping he'd flip and testify against his brother.

Speaker 16 That's what Lacasio's son certainly wanted.

Speaker 20 For a long time that's why we were holding to hope that Michael Lacasio would say

Speaker 20 either he himself would confess to committing the murder and saying how Ed was connected to it or how a payoff was to be made.

Speaker 57 He never did.

Speaker 51 So the trial was on.

Speaker 41 Michael Lacasio charged as the lone killer, but the prosecutor made it clear she thought the brothers were in on it together.

Speaker 10 Maggie Locasio and her husband Ned were involved in a contested divorce.

Speaker 10 Her husband and his brother, this defendant, decided to end the marriage not by waiting for the judge's ruling, but by murdering her.

Speaker 32 And the facts were bad for him.

Speaker 12 The white pickup truck leaving the scene was like his white pickup recovered at his home in North Carolina.

Speaker 13 The one with police found the upholstery ripped out.

Speaker 3 And most of all, that gym bag recovered near the crime scene with the murderer's bloody clothes, a weapon, and also Michael Lacasio's DNA on a latex glove.

Speaker 7 Lacasio's defense attorney made a familiar argument in criminal trials.

Speaker 15 The lab work was flawed.

Speaker 26 The motivation wasn't proven.

Speaker 28 The state's case is based mainly on DNA and circumstantial evidence. The DNA evidence in this case is highly suspect.

Speaker 28 Bring the jury, please.

Speaker 29 But the jury took only six hours to convict Michael Lacasio of first-degree murder.

Speaker 10 We, the jury, find the defendant Michael Daughtery Lacasio guilty of first-degree murder as charged.

Speaker 14 The jury recommended a life sentence, which Judge Stanford Blake imposed.

Speaker 15 It was a brutal, brutal, brutal killing.

Speaker 46 No one...

Speaker 59 No living thing deserves to be killed like that. The death that she suffered that night at your hands.

Speaker 25 Someday we maybe all meet our Maker.

Speaker 59 Life sentence may be the easy part for you.

Speaker 20 Prosecutors.

Speaker 26 But Eddie Jr., in an impassioned speech, had argued for the death penalty.

Speaker 10 We do not believe that you should show this killer any mercy, just as he showed Maggie no mercy when she begged him for her life.

Speaker 13 Eddie Lacasio Jr.

Speaker 38 was both brilliant and tortured.

Speaker 13 He graduated from college at 19 and was accepted at the University of Miami Medical School, where he was one of the top students.

Speaker 6 But Eddie was also living a role out of an ancient Greek tragedy.

Speaker 2 The son determined to bring down the father, avenging the death of his quiet, much put-upon mother, Maggie.

Speaker 29 Eddie Jr.

Speaker 15 was getting through his studies at a double-time pace so he could get his medical career up and running and get his mother away from the father he called Ed, never dad.

Speaker 20 Something that drove me really hard to study for was, you know, eventually to become financial independent.

Speaker 4 So you could make the money as soon as possible to get her out of that situation. Right.

Speaker 5 His mother's first step had been the restraining order.

Speaker 33 The second, getting a good divorce lawyer.

Speaker 18 In Florida, it's 50-50, and there seemed to be enough community property to share. A net worth estimated at up to $6 million.

Speaker 18 And they freeze his assets, huh?

Speaker 10 They freeze his assets because in order to pay the alimony, he starts to take it out of the joint assets. Judge said, no, you're supposed to take it out of your income.
He doesn't want to do that.

Speaker 10 He wants it all for himself.

Speaker 15 Edward Sr. was an accountant, and so was his wife Maggie.

Speaker 6 So she knew how to read the books on the family finances, knew the accounts where the money was invested, and she knew that her husband hadn't disclosed their true net worth to the judge.

Speaker 19 She was going to tell the judge, in effect, that Edward had been squirreling away some money from the court and from her.

Speaker 25 So she could say in her deposition, look, this is what this marriage, this guy, is really worth.

Speaker 26 Exactly.

Speaker 10 She had actually been a CPA, and she was finding every single account.

Speaker 15 But hours before that courtroom confrontation, she was murdered by her brother-in-law from North Carolina.

Speaker 32 That was the jury's finding.

Speaker 6 The day after his wife's murder, Edward Lacasio's lawyer did go to court to have his divorce case dismissed, his assets unfrozen, and to declare him sole beneficiary of the estate.

Speaker 20 How someone could have such an utter lack of regard for human life that immediately after this woman that he was married to for 28 years, after after he murders her, then right away he moves to cash in on the money that he murdered her to obtain.

Speaker 32 Eddie Jr.

Speaker 46 pursued his father into civil court to keep him from getting his hands on the family money.

Speaker 15 Eddie, the medical student, found himself in courtrooms as much as classrooms.

Speaker 20 I had to basically teach myself how to become a lawyer and I actually would go to probate court and I had to defend on various occasions against motions from his attorneys to unfreeze his assets.

Speaker 20 And I actually prevailed on those motions.

Speaker 38 Eddie Jr.

Speaker 46 was winning against his father in civil court, but he was having less luck with the criminal case.

Speaker 15 Even four years later, while his uncle was awaiting trial, the prosecutor cautioned Eddie Jr.

Speaker 46 about getting his hopes up of ever nailing the person he regarded as the mastermind of the crime, his father, Ed.

Speaker 20 Two said we'll probably never arrest him. He'll probably get away with it.

Speaker 13 Pushed by Eddie Jr.

Speaker 15 and his aunt, the prosecutor went hard after some heretofore reluctant witnesses.

Speaker 31 The investigators went through the evidence one more time, and in November 2005, they thought they finally had it.

Speaker 27 Edward Lacasio Sr.

Speaker 2 was brought before a judge and charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy in the killing of his wife Maggie.

Speaker 2 Five and a half years after his mother, Maggie Lacasio, had been found beaten and stabbed to death in her home, a year after his uncle had been convicted of the murder,

Speaker 2 Eddie Locasio Jr.

Speaker 13 was staring across a courtroom at the man he saw as the evil architect of the crime, his father, Edward Locasio Sr.

Speaker 48 The moment had been long in coming.

Speaker 10 Guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 32 The conviction of the brother, Michael, had been a prosecutorial snap.

Speaker 6 He'd left his DNA on tools of the murder.

Speaker 54 It wouldn't be that easy with the brother, the husband, the father, Edward Lacasio Sr.

Speaker 45 You've charged him with first-degree murder, but you don't have a great case against him.

Speaker 10 Every single prosecutor says what's the defense case going to be and where are my weaknesses. And I was aware that I had a circumstantial case.

Speaker 58 One, because...

Speaker 26 Gail Levine and her co-prosecutor were telling the jury that the buttoned-up middle-aged accountant before them was tired of his wife, didn't want her to get half in the pending divorce, so he got his ne'er-do-well brother to do the dirty work.

Speaker 10 A pact was formed, a blood pact between brothers, a silent pact, with this defendant advising and inciting his brother Michael to murder Maggie.

Speaker 13 The jury was introduced to the stomach-churning crime scene photos, the police baton used to bash in Maggie La Casio's skull,

Speaker 46 murder news that the defendant, the victim's husband of 28 years, seemed to take in stride when detectives told him.

Speaker 10 Did he ever say to you, what's going on at my house?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 The officer wearing the badge that says, Miami-Dade homicide, says, you know, your wife is dead,

Speaker 10 and he has no reaction.

Speaker 25 That's an important moment.

Speaker 10 Extremely important. And very, very telling to the detective that was sitting across from him.

Speaker 3 How Lucasio reacted, or failed to react, and what he said about his wife would become building blocks in the circumstantial case against him.

Speaker 36 Please approach the clerk.

Speaker 2 One of the key prosecution witnesses would be a former employee in his accounting office, Gudale Gonzalez.

Speaker 10 He was talking on the phone with his brother, Michael. He hung up the phone and he said to me, Man, my brother's crazy.
And I said, why? He goes, because

Speaker 10 he told me that if I ever wanted to have the bitch killed,

Speaker 10 he could have it done and no one would ever find out.

Speaker 25 Is that the kind of quote you can build a case around?

Speaker 10 Well, we thought that that statement that he used to this young woman was a powerful statement. Again, his conscience speaking to us.

Speaker 16 But if Edward Lacasio had, in effect, hired his brother to kill his wife, where was the contract?

Speaker 9 The agreement about money perhaps to be paid at some future time?

Speaker 6 Unfortunately for the prosecution, there was no evidence like that.

Speaker 3 But it did have records of phone calls, brother-to-brother calls in the months leading up to the murder.

Speaker 6 Unusual for the two of them.

Speaker 10 Between Michael and Ed, there had been no contact except for birthdays. Now there's a barrage of phone calls.

Speaker 24 A lot of calls.

Speaker 10 39

Speaker 10 in six weeks.

Speaker 25 But again, it's circumstantial. You don't know what they said.

Speaker 10 I know what they said. They were planning a murder.

Speaker 29 After La Casio's brother was arrested for the murder, Edward Sr.

Speaker 33 learned that his secretary, Gutale Gonzalez, had been talking to the cops about all those overheard phone calls between the brothers.

Speaker 42 Her boss, she testified, went nuts on her.

Speaker 10 He went like this, like, because because of you, my brother is going to be in prison and he could die. Did he attempt to grab you by your throat?

Speaker 10 Almost.

Speaker 10 What did you do? And I went and I called Detective Estopignan.

Speaker 28 Attorney Square from the admission of that.

Speaker 13 Detective Julio Estopignon had taken the secretary's original statement.

Speaker 10 When you got the cell phone call from Ms. Gonzalez, could you describe her demeanor to you on the phone or her attitude?

Speaker 26 She was very angry.

Speaker 60 Scared.

Speaker 15 Then came a long-awaited moment.

Speaker 15 sat at his table.

Speaker 13 In 1999, the prosecutor led the son through testimony focusing on his recollection of years of his father's physical and mental abuse of his mother.

Speaker 13 There was the time his father threatened to strike her with a heavy piece of sculpture.

Speaker 20 It was too heavy for him to throw at her, but he was able to pick it up and he was going to throw it at her.

Speaker 40 And five months before Maggie La Casio's murder, the son told the jury about the blunt, simple threat his father had made, almost a promise.

Speaker 20 He told her,

Speaker 20 I will kill you, I will end you, and I will destroy you. And after that, he proceeded to,

Speaker 20 as he would usually do, bump into her with his chest and told her, I could kill you with one blow.

Speaker 32 And the prosecution put an exclamation point on its depiction of Edward Lacasio Sr.

Speaker 15 as a menacing bully by calling his former mistress.

Speaker 16 Eleanor Salazar, a masseuse, had been outside La Casio's South Beach condo the night of the murder.

Speaker 15 She testified that she spotted La Casio's brother Michael, the now convicted killer, trying to get into the apartment a little after 11.30 that night.

Speaker 2 In court, the girlfriend testified with the help of a translator.

Speaker 10 And what did he tell you?

Speaker 28 That I couldn't tell that to the police.

Speaker 10 What did he say?

Speaker 28 That if I called the police, something worse than what happened to his wife would happen to me.

Speaker 43 And the same condo security camera that gave Edward Lacasio his alibi, he was home when the murder occurred miles away, turned out to be a double-edged double-edged sword because that security cam verified the mistress's story about the brother showing up.

Speaker 11 Michael Lacasio, time-coded at 11.41 p.m.

Speaker 54 He's seen ringing the buzzer repeatedly.

Speaker 48 What was he doing there two hours after murdering Maggie Lacasio?

Speaker 43 The security tape shows him walking away, his shirt soaked.

Speaker 50 Had he just hosed down the interior of his bloody pickup, as the prosecution suggested.

Speaker 10 Clearly, Michael would have never come back to the apartment to report or to get help if Ed wasn't aware. So really the pieces of the puzzle were big pieces that fit together.

Speaker 54 All along, the prosecution's theory of motive was this.

Speaker 17 Edward Lacasio had decided that his wife Maggie had to be killed the night that she was.

Speaker 34 Otherwise, the following morning, she was going to tell the divorce judge where he'd stashed away millions of dollars in secret accounts, money that he would lose in the impending settlement.

Speaker 34 The brother argued the prosecution was dispatched to fix the problem.

Speaker 38 The prosecutor, with help from the medical examiner, brought the murder of Maggie Lacasio vividly into the courtroom.

Speaker 9 As the medical examiner testified as to what the wounds told him about the violent attack, he stuck pieces of color tape to a mannequin, each color representing the different ways he believed Michael Lacasio tried to kill his sister-in-law.

Speaker 10 She was initially hit on the head with a baton that wasn't bent initially,

Speaker 10 and then ultimately bent and is rendered useless.

Speaker 36 Eight blows to the head with a metal police baton, then savagely slashed with a stake knife, a finger all but severed.

Speaker 13 Defensive wounds were evidence that she fought back, but the ME said Michael Lacasio began choking her.

Speaker 10 Pushing her into the wall

Speaker 12 until she gives up,

Speaker 10 stamping on her stomach or chest,

Speaker 10 and then walking her way, they're leaving her to die.

Speaker 15 The bloody footprints leaving the murder scene were clearly Michael Lacasio's.

Speaker 2 Had the prosecution convinced the jury that it was his brother Edward who had caused them to be there and was therefore guilty of murder too?

Speaker 61 When you want to lie under oath, you'll lie under oath.

Speaker 11 The defense was about to argue its case, saying in part, star witnesses shouldn't sleep with lead detectives.

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Speaker 61 ed and maggie locasio

Speaker 61 just wanted to get divorced nothing more

Speaker 56 nothing less

Speaker 61 little did they know that brother mike had other ideas.

Speaker 32 Edward Locasio's defense attorney, Bob Amsell, argued that the prosecution got it right in the trial of Michael Lucasio, the brother.

Speaker 10 Conspiracy to commit harsh degree murder.

Speaker 29 It was Michael who indisputably murdered his brother's wife.

Speaker 11 The criminally bent drug-addicted brother claimed the defense with a warped idea about how to help his brother out of a failed marriage.

Speaker 36 No conspiracy at all.

Speaker 40 And Edward Lacasio was not his brother's keeper.

Speaker 45 So your theory of the crime is that in some crazed manner he's doing his brother a nice thing.

Speaker 7 Right. By killing the wife.

Speaker 61 That bloody scene was not a contract-type murder. When Mike killed her, he did it with such passion and such rage that it defies imagination that he was doing that to help his brother.

Speaker 3 The defense had to paint jurors a different portrait altogether of Edward Locasio Sr.

Speaker 12 That he wasn't the abusive bully of a husband and a father.

Speaker 13 That there were family snapshots of happy times when even Eddie Jr. had a smile.

Speaker 7 And he wanted jurors to think about the son's possible motivation for going after his father.

Speaker 27 Money.

Speaker 7 With his father behind bars, Eddie Jr.

Speaker 15 would get everything, millions.

Speaker 61 You're clearly seeking all of your father's money, aren't you? In the civil side of the case.

Speaker 10 Technically, I mean, it passes as if

Speaker 26 answer yes or no. No.

Speaker 58 Well, technically, yes, I'm sorry, yes. Answer is yes.

Speaker 13 And what about the prosecution's depiction of a suspiciously indifferent Edward Lacasio when authorities informed him his wife had been murdered?

Speaker 42 Another Lacasio brother testified that Edward Lacasio was in fact devastated by his wife's death.

Speaker 59 He was very upset, very sad.

Speaker 28 I didn't think he could keep things together.

Speaker 46 In a circumstantial case, maybe the most damaging testimony was a story told by La Casio's secretary.

Speaker 2 She said, after a phone conversation with his brother Michael, he blurted out, my brother's crazy.

Speaker 9 He told me that if I ever wanted to have the bitch killed, he could do it and no one would ever find out.

Speaker 41 The key words here are the bitch, crude shorthand in Lacasio's office for his wife.

Speaker 46 The defense told the court that that damning quote had a dubious history.

Speaker 15 The secretary, in a follow-up sworn deposition, watered down her initial recollection of Edward Lacasio's outburst.

Speaker 50 He hadn't used the words the bitch, he said.

Speaker 26 Rather, he'd said someone.

Speaker 12 The brother was crazy enough to kill someone.

Speaker 32 Quite a different thought.

Speaker 50 Now, during trial, the secretary reverted to the original version, the one with the bitch.

Speaker 10 you're the one who told this jury that you actually did lie under oath I'm telling the jury today if I lied about the bitch word was because I didn't want to get myself more involved in this case and I wanted to get out of it plain and simple your choice is that when you want to lie under oath for whatever reason it is you'll lie under oath you can continue accusing me from lying I'm trying to ask you a question and I'm answering your question well I don't think you are oh maybe you're not happy with it and there was something else about the secretary and her story She had become intimately involved with the lead detective on the case, Julio Estopignon, an affair that turned out to be a cringing embarrassment and ethical taboo for the prosecution.

Speaker 61 She's literally sleeping with the lead detective in this case

Speaker 61 for a year, a year and a half.

Speaker 54 To this day.

Speaker 26 The defense berated the detective for living with his star witness in a pending first-degree murder trial.

Speaker 61 You see nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 60 Explain that

Speaker 60 it is wrong.

Speaker 54 So if it's wrong, why didn't you stop it?

Speaker 13 Was the affair with the cop why the secretary had changed her mind and gone back to telling the more damaging story about hearing Lacasio say the brother could kill the bitch for him?

Speaker 61 Isn't this why your testimony changes over time? No. It's because of your relationship with him.

Speaker 10 Has nothing to do with my relationship with him.

Speaker 61 You wanted to make him look good and make his case for him.

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 32 There was a call made to the prosecution's best evidence of a brotherly plot was thin.

Speaker 38 What the the prosecution characterized as a barrage of phone calls, 39 in six weeks, between the usually distant pair.

Speaker 61 The strongest part of my case was that any juror would necessarily have to guess what was said between Ed and his brother.

Speaker 13 The defense argued that Maggie Lacasio's murder had never been about money.

Speaker 46 Edward La Casio may not have been happy to split his millions with his wife, but he was loaded, and killing his wife just to hang on to more of his wealth simply simply didn't make sense.

Speaker 23 What did add up, the defense told the jury, was the picture on that condo security camera of a wild-eyed brother fresh from a bloody murder.

Speaker 61 I think that's about someone who is sick, who has lost his mind, who is panicking. How in the world could that be part of this conspiracy? The last place you'd go to is back to your brother.

Speaker 61 The last place.

Speaker 39 So, what was it?

Speaker 46 Edward Lacasio Sr., a plotting murderous husband, or the unwitting victim of an unguided missile of a crazy brother.

Speaker 13 Edward Lacasio wouldn't take the stand to explain himself.

Speaker 34 The case was headed for the jury.

Speaker 34 All rise to the jury, please.

Speaker 23 The prosecution and the defense had rested.

Speaker 44 Each side had one last chance to summarize its case for the jury.

Speaker 47 The prosecution.

Speaker 60 He had a plan,

Speaker 10 and that plan was for her to die. He was the one that needed this done, not Michael Locasio.

Speaker 38 The defense.

Speaker 61 Very idea that Ed Locasio, a man who is no doubtedly smart, would use someone like Michael Locasio, a man whose life is spinning out of control, is absurd.

Speaker 54 All eyes for the jury, please.

Speaker 12 Edward Locasio Sr.

Speaker 46 was on trial for his life.

Speaker 18 His fate was in the hands of the jury the central question for jurors to resolve was the relationship between the two brothers had michael lacasio acted alone when he killed his sister-in-law or was it a conspiracy between the two

Speaker 13 a question that led them to wonder why prosecutors had been so long in bringing edward licasio sr to trial they had a pretty difficult case It's all circumstantial.

Speaker 63 There's no evidence, no physical evidence, no DNA.

Speaker 25 Maybe then that the defense's theory of the crime is accurate, that the brother was a crazy off by his own, and the other brother wasn't involved.

Speaker 64 That's what made it difficult.

Speaker 46 The prosecution had asked the jurors to understand the accused's motive and state of mind through stories told by witnesses like the secretary Gutale Gonzalez.

Speaker 15 She testified that after a phone call between the brothers, she heard her boss Ed blurt out that his crazy brother would kill his wife for him if he wanted.

Speaker 21 One juror thought that outburst actually spoke to Edward Lacasio's innocence.

Speaker 64 I felt that anyone who's premeditated a crime of this type

Speaker 64 isn't going to blurt something like that out to somebody in their office. It didn't make any sense.

Speaker 40 And jurors wondered why the secretary had changed her original story about that phone call and had lied under oath in a later deposition, as she admitted.

Speaker 13 She said for fear of getting dragged into a murder investigation.

Speaker 45 Robert, did it bother you that she amended her story a little bit?

Speaker 64 Very much so. Very much so.
It implied that the detective had somehow influenced her giving testimony.

Speaker 40 And all the jurors thought the son, Eddie Jr., depiction of his father as a domestic brute was both poignant and credible.

Speaker 65 Your son calling you Ed?

Speaker 7 That struck me very strange that this is the way that family grew up.

Speaker 13 The string of phone calls between the brothers, where previously there had been few, were points for the prosecution.

Speaker 63 I would have liked a little more information on what was being said in the phone calls

Speaker 63 but for me it was it was the key evidence.

Speaker 12 As for that security cam picture of Michael Lacasio at his brother's condo door the night of the murder, these jurors didn't buy the defense's spin that it showed how out of control the wacky lone wolf brother was.

Speaker 64 I thought it had more to do with what went wrong after the murder than really coming back to report anything to his brother. It was one of the more incriminating pieces, I think.

Speaker 16 For two days, the jurors had gone back and forth trying to get into Edward Lacasio's head, but they didn't have irrefutable evidence that showed them what was going on there.

Speaker 35 On the third day, they reviewed again.

Speaker 9 Motive.

Speaker 61 At the end of the day, Michael didn't have a motive.

Speaker 37 They sent out a note.

Speaker 15 They had a verdict.

Speaker 60 The state of Florida versus Edward Stanton Lacasio, defendant.

Speaker 52 Waiting to hear the verdict.

Speaker 5 Edward Lacasio Sr.

Speaker 3 looked grim.

Speaker 12 Across the courtroom, Eddie Lacasio gripped his grandmother's hand and closed his eyes.

Speaker 60 Verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant, Edward Stanton Lacasio, as to count one first-degree murder, guilty of first-degree murder as charged.
So say we all.

Speaker 50 Guilty.

Speaker 2 Eddie Jr.

Speaker 21 took in the words he'd been waiting almost six years to hear.

Speaker 39 His father shook his head.

Speaker 32 He now faced a possible death sentence.

Speaker 25 It has to be a densely complicated emotion. It's your mother, it is your father, and yet you want this verdict.

Speaker 20 What we wanted to have come out was the truth, because for so many years my mother and I had suffered in silence.

Speaker 25 Your father found guilty of murdering your mother.

Speaker 34 Did you also believe that he should be put to death?

Speaker 20 We certainly didn't oppose the state's desire to seek it. To me it was like flipping a coin.
Either way he was gonna, you know, he's gonna die in prison.

Speaker 38 Thank you, Judge.

Speaker 11 The jury was out only a few hours in the penalty phase.

Speaker 60 The jury recommends to the court that it impose a sentence of life imprisonment upon Edward Stanton Lacasio without possibility of parole.

Speaker 45 Nothing will ever bring back your mom or your sister or your daughter.

Speaker 32 Edward Lacasio would not be put to death.

Speaker 15 He was taken from the courtroom and never looked once at the son who called him Ed.

Speaker 14 Lacasio never told his story to the jury during trial, but six months into his life sentence behind bars in a high-security lockup, he talked to Dateline.

Speaker 32 Mr.

Speaker 41 Lacasio, you were convicted of, in fact, putting your brother up to kill your wife.

Speaker 59 Did you do that?

Speaker 66 Did you have your wife killed? Absolutely not.

Speaker 65 Even to the point of her death, I always thought we were probably going to get back together.

Speaker 55 At trial, you'll remember, Lacasio's defense was that his brother was a lone wolf killer who took it upon himself to fix Lacasio's messy divorce.

Speaker 37 When we spoke to him after the verdict, Lacasio had a different theory.

Speaker 18 Do you accept that your brother Michael did it, that he killed Maggie?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 65 I could never see my brother doing that. No.

Speaker 65 And I can't even say, it's so surreal.

Speaker 37 Edward Lacasio told us he believed it was a member of his family who killed his wife, not his brother Michael, but, get ready for this, his son Eddie Jr.

Speaker 9 Are you implying that Edward Jr.

Speaker 37 might have been responsible for the death of your wife? Yes.

Speaker 45 That he might have killed her?

Speaker 65 Yes.

Speaker 25 And his motivation would have been what?

Speaker 65 Money. And to keep me out of the house.

Speaker 18 He'd kill his mother that he dearly loved. He was a mama's boy.

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 15 And he would get rid of her and get you put into the state prison system so he could have the money.

Speaker 25 That's the...

Speaker 20 Yes, sir.

Speaker 66 He lied throughout this thing. And it's taken me a long time to say this.

Speaker 65 There was a love-hate relationship between Eddie and his mother. Absolutely.

Speaker 50 The way Eddie tells it, it was a love-love relationship.

Speaker 18 And you were the odd person out in that household.

Speaker 65 It's just the opposite. She and I were hooked at the hip.

Speaker 66 You know, people who watch you tell this story, believing that you're guilty as charged, that you conspired with your brother to have your wife killed, and now hear you laying off the crime against your own son.

Speaker 25 They'd say, how poisonous is this guy?

Speaker 67 That's their opinion.

Speaker 25 Talking about Eddie, of course, in the bad blood.

Speaker 34 Eddie, your son, tells the prosecutor you should get the death penalty.

Speaker 3 It's incredible, isn't it?

Speaker 67 That's pretty vicious for your own son to say something like that, right?

Speaker 67 That's a sad, that's a sorry, sad son.

Speaker 54 Police and prosecutors say Eddie Jr.

Speaker 12 was thoroughly investigated and cleared after the murder.

Speaker 37 Knowing what his father was saying about him, Eddie Jr. described him as a desperate man saying desperate things.

Speaker 25 I think I know the answer to this. Will you ever see your father in prison?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 20 We didn't want to have anything to do with him before a divorce, and I certainly don't know that he's murdered my mother.

Speaker 21 In 2008, a jury awarded Eddie Lacasio Jr.

Speaker 34 $125 million in damages and a wrongful death suit against his father and his uncle Michael.

Speaker 39 Both men are in Florida prisons for life without the possibility of parole. Both guilty of murdering a woman who only wanted a fresh start, new chapters to a life that would never be written.

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